Zach Sims of Codecademy: 'Coding is 21st century literacy'
Remember when everyone’s New Year’s resolution was to learn how to code in 2012?Suddenly, #codeyear was everywhere. (Apparently, even New York City mayor Michael Bloombergis HTML-deficient.)
Well, Codecademy co-founder Zach Sims says his company’s success was truly a viral phenomenon — his team did no marketing behind it.
“We were lucky enough that our users got the word out for us,” he told Mediabistro. “They were the ones that put it on Facebook and Twitter; they were the ones who shared it with other people. We never did any advertising or anything; it was all user-driven.
And, thanks to that Twitter push, he hopes that coding will be just as easy as surfing the Web. “I think coding is 21st century literacy. Traditionally, there are the 3 R’s of literacy: It was just reading, writing and arithmetic. And we think the fourth should be algorithms.”
To find out how Sims got funding for his startup, read Hey, How’d You Get Everyone Buzzing About #codeyear, Zach Simms? [subscription required]
