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Zach Sims - Co-Founder and CEO of Codecademy

Jun 28, 201356:25Watch on YouTube

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http://codecademy.com

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0:02:30 What's a Venture Fellow?

0:02:30 How old are you?

0:02:45 When did you start working in startups?

0:03:00 When was the first one?

0:03:15 How did you stumble upon the first business?

0:03:30 How many cases did you source?

0:04:30 Did you meet a lot of similar teenagers?

0:05:15 How long did you last at Columbia?

0:06:00 What was your parents' response?

0:06:45 What was the moment you realized Codecademy needed to exist?

0:07:30 What is Codecademy?

0:09:45 How hard was it to build?

0:10:30 So great to have New Relic as a sponsor!

0:13:30 How many people have used the product? How hard was it to scale after that?

0:15:00 How important is the fun factor?

0:15:30 Can anyone learn to code?

0:15:45 How far can the average American go?

0:16:30 What does it take to become a good versus a great programmer?

0:17:00 When do most people give up?

0:17:45 How will this impact higher education & the work force?

0:19:00 What does it cost? How do you make money?

0:19:30 Is it as simple as charging for courses?

0:21:00 Is the proctored exam an important part of this process?

0:21:45 When people hire coders, how often to they look at their code?

0:23:00 Do you work on the developer culture?

0:23:30 What about adding apprenticeship to the offering?

0:24:45 What is an example of people building communities on the site?

0:26:00 Have your VCs given you a timeline for revenue?

0:27:00 What do you think the company will look like in 5 years?

0:28:00 What are the companies doing in the system?

0:28:30 Are companies like Google looking at programmers in your system?

0:30:00 Do you think Codecademy will have meetups?

0:31:15 Thanks to GoToMeeting for supporting this show

0:34:30 What percentage of people are international?

0:35:00 What is the biggest country outside the US?

0:36:00 Are the governments contacting you to localize?

0:36:15 How do users translate the site?

0:36:45 How do you verify the translations?

0:37:45 How important are tools for teachers?

0:38:30 What do universities think of Codecedmy?

0:39:15 What do you think of the "flip the classroom" model?

0:40:15 What is the value of the classroom?

0:41:00 Does starter league use Codecademy?

0:41:45 Will you have in-person classes?

0:42:00 Have far is the skill level? Can you teach higher levels?

0:43:15 What's the biggest challenge?

0:43:45 Why do you think hiring is hard?

0:44:30 Do hackers love education & teaching?

0:45:30 Is it harder or easier to operate in NYC?

0:47:15 What are you planning to do with mobile?

0:47:45 What would the mobile experience be like?

0:48:30 What business models have you eliminated?

0:49:45 Has LinkedIn ever asked to buy?

0:51:00 What's next?

0:51:30 How do you do user assessment?

0:52:30 Do you do user testing?

0:53:30 Follow Zach at @zsims

Follow on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/jason

http://twitter.com/kirinkalia

LAUNCH:

Launch Ticker: http://launch.co

Launch Education & Kids Festival: http://launchedu.co

Launch Festival: http://festival.launch.co

Launch Hackathon: http://launchhackathon.com/

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