zach sims
@zsims
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co-founder and ceo of @codecademy , the easiest way to learn to code
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Joined February 2007
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Pinned Tweet
Today is my last day leading
@Codecademy
after 12 years.
@ryanbubinski
and I went from a prototype we hacked together in 3 weeks…
To a business with more than 50m users that we sold for $500m+.
Here are a few things we learned turning a breakout product into a great company:
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For
@Codecademy
's first 4yrs, we were in the 📰 every wk. Those weeks, we made $0. The past 4 years, we've been out of the headlines. Now, we've raised $40m, our first raise in ~4yrs.
How'd we go from the center of the hype cycle to the brink of bankruptcy and back? Read on...
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1/ To help students and teachers affected by COVID-19 and school closures around the world, we are offering 10,000 scholarships to
@Codecademy
Pro for free to students and teachers across the world. What does this mean?
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after 10 years of building
@Codecademy
, our next chapter will be with
@Skillsoft
! i'm so grateful to our team, our learners, and our investors for helping us to build something that's helped tens of millions of learners (and it's only the beginning!).
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if I had a dollar for every VC congratulating themselves on the plaid deal, i would probably have $5.3bn by now.
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We struggled, but hit $1m ARR in ~6 months to raise a successful Series C to keep the company alive.
On the way, we learned an important lesson: hype doesn't pay the bills.
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Most startups die of self-inflicted wounds, not because of their competitors. Keep your head down and focus less on competitors and more on product market fit.
Hire the right people and remember that the user is your customer, and your investors and journalists aren't.
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Ignoring the hype: I find this one hard myself. Every day, one of your competitors is in the news or goes viral on Twitter.
Don't pay attention. Your Twitter followers don't pay the bills. If someone *really* wants something you've built, they'll pay you for it.
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.
@sama
was the first person to invest in and believe in us at
@Codecademy
. he’s been an inspiration and driving force behind many founders since then and went on to change the world with openAI. rooting for his success.
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Building a sustainable company: raising money doesn't make you sustainable.
Understanding how to make more than you spend does.
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does anybody actually help companies these days or do they just tweet about helping companies?
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We pledged to do things differently this time: we focused not on vanity metrics, but on real metrics. We stopped tracking press mentions and started tracking how quickly we could get to cash flow positive. It felt impossible, but we made it happen 18 months later. 📈
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For the past 4 years, we've built Codecademy to be a generational *and* sustainable company. We've built a $50m+ revenue business, controlling our own destiny, all while avoiding the hype we'd built the first four years of the business.
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This time, we raised 💸 not on hype, but on substance, with a business growing nearly 2x/yr scale, with a growing market and a product that helps millions of learners access economic opp. But we know the truth: fundraising doesn't mean much. Here's what does:
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.
@Codecademy
Go launches today on iOS and android. stop crushing candy and learn important skills while you're on the go!
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We've learned these lessons
@Codecademy
, but have tons more to learn. One of the hardest things in startups is to be persistent, but it's easier when what you're building makes the lives of tens of millions of learners better.
Come join us:
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With a few months of cash left in 2015, we scrambled to build Codecademy Pro, our first paid product, with new courses and new features for learners.
Going from the center of attention to the brink of bankruptcy was a rude awakening.
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.
@codecademy
was started to create opportunity for all. proud to be a team of americans and immigrants working to advance this mission.
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We started
@Codecademy
in 2011. With software eating the world and few ways to learn to create it, we saw a huge opportunity. In YC, we built Codecademy as "the easiest way to learn to code." We posted it to HN as a Hail Mary before Demo Day and got 200,000 signups in 3 days.
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We were off: the press loved it, we were on every 30 Under 30 list, won awards, and more. As a founder, all of this felt great...until we had to raise 💵 to stay alive. All the press clippings didn't add up to enough $ to demonstrate we'd built something people would pay for.
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Next time you see a hot new AI demo or the launch of a new crypto token that seems likely to take over the world, remember: building a product is easy. Building a company is hard
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this week's silicon valley productivity protip: block coinbase on your company internet
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Blockefeller (noun): a person of astronomical wealth created through the blockchain, the twenty-first century railroad
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To go from a viral product to a lasting company, we had to focus on:
- People: pay with passion when you can’t afford anything else.
- Perseverance: this is your only edge at a startup.
- Profitability: it’s hard to run a company if you run out of money!
Let’s dig in…
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As a first time CEO, I thought I needed to know everything, but our team said “we know you don’t have all the answers. We’re here to help you find them.”
It’s OK not to know something, but it’s not OK to pretend you do. Your job is to hire people who know the things you don’t
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In 2011, we built and launched
@Codecademy
in the 3 wks before
@ycombinator
demo day. We hit a nerve: 200k+ users in 3 days.
We thought our success as a company was guaranteed, until
@paulg
reminded us that if we’d built the first version of Codecademy in 3 wks, others could too
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At
@Codecademy
, we want to make sure learning doesn’t stop during these challenging times, so we’ve partnered with
@Skillshare
,
@Quizlet
,
@Duolingo
, and
@Brainly
to create the
#LearnFromHome
Club, where you can find offers, tips, and more:
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excited to be a part of
#foundersforchange
. at
@Codecademy
, we care about helping to create a tech industry (and a world!) that's diverse and inclusive.
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the circle of life: i drop out of college for
@Codecademy
, which participates in
@ycombinator
2)
@gdi2290
(also a dropout) learns to code on
@codecademy
, then his
@TipeIO
becomes part of YC too!
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Growing the team marks a transition from “building the machine” yourself to the CEO’s eventual job: “building the machine that builds the machine.” (per
@jerrycolonna
)
While we start companies to build products and write code, the job becomes all about the people very quickly
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All startup problems are people problems. With every stumble, I resisted fixing it myself. Could I coach the team to do so? If not, it was time to find someone else.
It’s counterintuitive to not do it yourself, but it’s the CEO’s job to fix the machine, not the problems
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welcoming
@NaspersVentures
to the
@codecademy
family to teach millions more people the skills they need to find jobs
Codecademy, the free online coding school, raises another $30M led by Naspers by
@ingridlunden
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Founders turn into CEOs when they go from doing the thing they’re good at to *managing* people doing the things they haven’t done.
Learning to do this means meeting a *lot* of great executives and asking them how they do their jobs, even if you aren’t interviewing them
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amazing
@codecademy
story from a learner who, three years ago, was unemployed and today is a CTO.
http://t.co/ZhiVsGT7iB
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After building
@Codecademy
from product to company, I’m off to think about what’s next, starting with recharging btw a stack of books and a code editor after 12 yrs of grinding. I'll be angel investing and keeping my eyes peeled for the next thing.
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millenials, already trained to believe careers are built overnight, now think wealth is too (thanks, bitcoin!).
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we live in a wild world where $120m in incentive pay is not enough to keep you from stealing and starting a NewCo
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this move towards more vocationally-oriented education is a good one for everyone:
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what if bezos just bought whole foods because he couldn’t find enough protein powder to satisfy his appetite any other way?
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martin shkreli arrested. now, it's the government's responsibility to seize his assets and share the wu tang album.
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shout out to
@Schwarzenegger
for terminating a silly tweet with total class
Please study this quote from Lincoln's inaugural,
@realDonaldTrump
. It inspired me every day I was Governor, and I hope it inspires you.
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In 2021,
@Skillsoft
saw our potential and the team we’d built and bought Codecademy for $525m. Raising less money and managing to profitability made it a home run for our team and our investors, taking our 3 wk project and turning it into a real business
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the WSJ finds there is no correlation between a college degree and coding ability —
http://t.co/FA1MHI9l6R
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5/ We’re thinking of all of our learners and hope that you’re all safe, healthy, and doing whatever you can to get through this. For more info check out this blog post:
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Getting profitable gave us freedom. We saw competitors raise $100m+ at high valuations. We wondered if we were silly for building a *business* that made more than it spent and for raising less $ than we could have.
Many of those companies are out of business or struggling today
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next time someone says programming isn't useful to pretty much everyone, here's a
@MLB
pitcher using
@Codecademy
to analyze his pitching.
Release points of my sinkers that sank the most and the ones that sank the least, 2018-2019. (Red is good).
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it says a lot about
@brettberson
that he hasn't tweeted anything about becoming a
@firstround
partner, so i'll tweet it for him. congrats!
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startup idea: 1) start company, 2) pocket $3m in sale of your stock, 3) buy a ferrari, 4) become "incubator."
http://t.co/BB0xRdM6Ga
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I wrote a piece for
@qz
-- "don't learn to code; learn to keep learning."
http://t.co/uA9Gg9ZJuG
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.
@Codecademy
has been blown away by the response we’ve gotten from our Student Scholarship Program. Our curriculum team wrote up this blog post for teachers, students, and parents to help them use Codecademy to match up to their curriculum.
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very excited to launch
#reskillUSA
to help close the gap between education and employment. read about what we're up:
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4/ If you’re a teacher or student, you can go to to sign up now. If you know more students who would benefit, please spread the word.
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puddlef**cked: a sensation unique to NYC where you look at a curb, think it's stable, step in it, and find your feet overwhelmed by slush.
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i wrote about the america we should strive for: one of opportunity, optimism, and upward mobility.
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.
@codecademy
and i are proud to support gavin grimm and the fight for transgender rights at the supreme court
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Most of all, thanks to our amazing learners for trusting us with your future. It's been the honor of a lifetime to help many of you go from nothing to living your dream career. If you have a great
@codecademy
story, let me know!
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you can always trust a draft dodger when he tells you he would have been a hero
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we launched
@codecademy
pro today and some of the stories from our learners are amazing
Introducing the all-new Codecademy Pro: learn the skills your résumé needs, faster.
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i’ll ping you. it’s on my calendar to ping you this morning but I am on a conference call so may not get to pinging you until this afternoon. but I’m going to ping you. i hope I can ping you today but if not, rest assured that a ping is nigh.
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china is building a 1000 bed hospital in 6 days. in the US, we'd probably still be filling out the permitting paperwork.
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there is a special place in design hell for whoever implemented the NYT election spinner
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3/ We’ve spent years building a way for millions of students to learn digital skills remotely, and we want to help. Codecademy has thousands of hours of courses in data science, web development, mobile development, and more. Our students learn by doing with a community of peers
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After nailing product and people, we had to get profitable. We’d thought lots of users would help us raise money.
We were wrong. As dozens of investors rejected our pitch, we learned that getting profitable was the most important skill of all
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app-jectify: to use a friend like you would use an app. ex: "what is the best restaurant in new york?"
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I stand with Israel in the fight against terrorism and the slaughter of innocent civilians. Hamas’ terrible terrorist attack on innocent civilians is despicable and gut wrenching.
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one of the best parts of building
@Codecademy
for 10+ years is watching our learners go from starting to learn to finding their first job to having a huge impact on the world and the companies they work at.
Did my first lesson on
@Codecademy
over a decade ago. I'm a Senior Engineer at an awesome startup now (check out
@letsloopin
🚀) but I wish I could go back and reassure myself that giving up evenings & weekends to learn to code would work out. Keep at it, you got this! 🧑💻
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this year, france will start teaching programming to elementary school students, joining the UK, estonia, and finland
http://t.co/7BSreR5o8V
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business school: where the great uniter is everyone's desire to find a technical cofounder
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2/ With schools closing rapidly, more students and teachers are thrown into an uncertain situation with no experience with remote learning.
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Thanks to our incredible team
@Codecademy
and
@Skillsoft
for getting us this far and taking us into the future, and to our investors
@usv
@Prosus_Ventures
@OwlVC
@bloombergbeta
@fcollective
@IndexVentures
@kleinerperkins
@svangel
@ycombinator
@ThriveCapital
@flybridge
@slow
...
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Check out
@foxandfriends
on
@foxnews
from this morning to learn about how
@Codecademy
is giving away 10,000 scholarships to students and teachers affected by COVID-19.
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if anything, what should come out of the
@snapchat
leak is that
@evanspiegel
has built an incredible company and culture. bravo.
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today i am proud to announce that
@codecademy
has acquired comcast and therefore time warner cable as well
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@triketora
perhaps you can help this recruiter with grammar in those 5-10 minutes by explaining what an appositive is
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startup: an environment in which you realize you forgot dinner, forage for gummy bears, and settle. ah, the life.
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startup CEOs: don't despair if you fail at management. your glassdoor probably *still* outranks the white house's.
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.
@Codecademy
's new Learn the Command Line course is on
@ProductHunt
! check it out —
http://t.co/CwWahgE7GX
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spend an hour learning to code today on your iPhone with the new
@codecademy
app!
http://t.co/j6TQfHs1iU
#hourofcode
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watching
@ycombinator
demo day last week was pretty special: a
@Codecademy
alum and one of our first team members, both with awesome companies!
Five years ago, Patrick Stapleton had never written a line of code. Last week, his company launched at
@ycombinator
's Demo Day. We asked him how he got there:
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the wsj really planting the seeds of resentment with this article about millenials and their plant nites
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new trend in wellness: claiming to make something "accessible" when all it is is repurposing something that's centuries-old, using red antler to brand it, and then putting it in a well-designed studio and charging 4x. accessibility for all!
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people ask why everyone hates silicon valley. headlines like this are why.
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.
@firstround
consistently publishes some of the best content on startups. this is no different.
This is a very big year for
@firstround
State of Startups. After five years of running it, for the first time ever, we've surveyed both startup founders and employees. The results are fascinating.
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.
@codecademy
is looking for an awesome community manager to help 25m+ learners change their lives. join us —
http://t.co/98w3fZuja9
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super proud of the
@codecademy
team - we just hit
#1
education app in the
@AppStore
! cc
@goodsammiches
@ryanbubinski
http://t.co/HtJPnZhAM7
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this immigrant ban is unamerican and unacceptable. stand up for what's right, americans.
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very exciting news: dropbox has filed for its ICO!
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a massive thanks as well a few folks who were believers in me and
@Codecademy
even before day one —
@sama
,
@alexisohanian
,
@garrytan
,
@yurimilner_
,
@jaredhecht
, and
@smart
. thank you!
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