Lunch Academy Episode 010 - Coding is a Craft

Welcome everyone, to episode 10. We're now officially in double digits of Lunch Academy Launch Academy's offside banter to our everyday lives here. As always, my name is Sam and I'm your co host and I have with me always as star of the show, Ms. Sade Souk. She always does the gang sign.

No, I don't.

Which gang? This is like. Like mystery gang or something.

Yeah. Excited. Tenth episode. We said we're gonna do something big for our 10th episode.

We have a very big.

I'm pretty big for a 10th episode.

Yeah. It's like, this is a really. We got an important guest.

Yeah, well, we have. We have very important guests. We got a lot to talk about and we're not gonna do what the. Because we got so much to talk about. We just. All the folks are going to be in here, so we're going to focus on that. So I want to introduce Krumvirani, co founder, head of education at Lighthouse Lab. So welcome to our show.

Thanks. I'm really happy to be here.

That's awesome. So you've seen us like, monkeying around doing these shows and you're like, hey, I want to get in on that. So we're really lucky to have you here. And frankly, like, you've been around Launch Academy as long as you've been around with Lighthouse Labs too. So I mean, there's a ton of stories that we can go into.

Lots of history.

Yeah. But before. Before we do that, as always on this show, we talk about everything Vancouver's talking about. So we tricked you into coming to the show because of food. So that's fair.

That's perfect on the show.

The other thing we talk about is Vancouverites is how is the weather? You're gonna have to predict. So go for it. Yeah. Based on the official weather forecast, how's our weekend looking?

Like epic. It's gonna be super sunny, super hot, and we've got a good eight days in a row of that. So today is the last day of like, so today.

And how this episode is special is we're actually re recording on a rainy Tuesday after.

Oh, yeah. Okay. So we do have to clarify that we are gonna release this on Friday. Right now it's Tuesday.

So listeners, it is Friday for you. But we're.

We're going back in time and it's.

Gorgeous and I'm sweating right now, so that's what's happening.

I'm glad to hear the weather's gonna be good on the weekend. I'm gonna be at Gibson's Hopefully Gibson's is gonna be.

Oh, it's gonna be.

I'm gonna be in Squamish, hiking up this crazy river where you go and there's like waterfalls and then there's a lake. It's called Echo Lake. If anybody ever wants to do that hike, it's going to be awesome.

I'm going to be at home watching Netflix with two fans.

What about Kofi? Kofi's gotta go. Enjoy the show.

Kofi will also be Kofi. Kofi will also be watching Netflix.

I feel like there should be an episode focusing on Sade and her crazy nature adventures. I feel like she has a lot to talk about there as well.

Unfortunately.

I will report about that adventure on the next.

Her adventures are not as exciting as mine though. But mine are so exciting in a very stupid way. So that 10k that we've been talking about a couple episodes. So it turns out I got a stress fracture during the 10k.

Oh no.

It's not something I'm proud to talk about. So let's just move on.

Just more dramatic adventures.

Yes, just more dramatic, embarrassing adventures. But let's get back to you, Kram. So I mean like when did Life S Lab start? Now. It feels like forever, right?

Yeah, it does. It's definitely a lot of long days, weeks and years. We're approaching five years.

Five. You're like a grandpa in startup age, right? That's what it's like.

It's like almost in line with Launch Academy.

Yeah, I think Launch Academy been around for about a year or change.

Yeah. So we're under six, so it's like this good math. Yeah. So yeah, like you guys had four co founders. What was the beginning like? And how did all this come out? Like what? I guess more about like tell the audience what your background is for slogan and then how this animal shaped itself.

Yeah. So I guess I'll do a little bit of a quick intro. So my name is Karam Gharani. I'm presently co founder and head of education at Lattice Labs, which is the company we're just talking about and Lattice Labs, we'll get into it. But started out of Launch Academy in Launch Academy with the co founders that you mentioned moving from mostly actually moving all from Toronto to Vancouver, finding a space or looking for a space. Thankfully finding Launch Academy as the space to spawn in. And then it was, you know, that's.

When did you guys all come here just for Lighthouse? Or was it like you were gonna move here anyway?

A bit of A and a bit of B. I Knew that I was kind of looking for a change for Toronto and wanted to move to Vancouver. My wife thankfully, was very supportive in that decision. I strong armed convinced my existing co founders and other companies that this was a good idea. So why Vancouver?

Why the big push towards coming here to set it up? Why not set it up?

We're biased though, you know, I mean.

I'm so glad that was the decision. I love Toronto for very different reasons than I love Vancouver and that's a pretty deep topic. And there isn't really one reason why I was Vancouver. It was a combination of personal reasons that I definitely saw myself drawn to a city that I never visited, by the way. So people made fun of me for like just basically deciding to move to Vancouver, including my partners were like, wait, why aren't we doing more competitor analysis in other cities like Montreal and Toronto instead of just saying vancouver, that's it, let's do it. So there was definitely emotion and not just rationality in that decision. Like many startups, it's not just about making a rational choice. And we can talk about that a little bit. Yeah, at least that's my opinion. And there's a lot of sort of. We did do a little bit of market analysis and realized that the opportunities in Vancouver were really good at the time. It was definitely and still is quite small compared to the other larger cities in Canada and North America.

So you were looking for, growing.

I was looking for, yeah, I think, you know, you want to be riding the wave and more and obviously having influence in the wave as opposed to, oh, this is already a hot scene.

Let me go in there.

At least that's my, was my approach and my mindset with this.

Yeah, you want, you want to be not so, so early that you're irrelevant, but not so late that you're just kind of, you know, just picking up crumbs. Right.

Timing is a really, really big, obviously very important part of startups.

Right. So kind of, kind of just to paint more of this picture. So you guys came here, moved here, found launchcoming, like, what, why did you guys come here? Did you begin with just a website? Was it like web courses? Like, when did it become in person courses? And why launch camping? It's kind of like a. At least on paper it wasn't. It probably isn't the exact fit. I don't see too many labs or coding camps that start out of like incubator specifically, especially with expansion in space and all this stuff. So it's like, how did you guys come to here and I guess you met Ray and Alex and all those other guys and what did that, how did it come out of that?

Yeah, I think, you know, at the time and even today, I think Launch Academy was the perfect fit and I think for the mutually beneficial perfect fit for Launch Academy. The story in terms of like when it started in 2013 of October, when I, when we started our first cohort, so I guess a month before that when I moved to Vancouver, is that we were looking for spaces and we weren't necessarily saying that we want a community space that already exists, that we're gonna tap into and jump into, but rather we just needed a space that had the right startup energy and tech energy. And we looked at a bunch of different office spaces, most of which, except for Launch Academy, were like our own. You know, we'd have to create the culture and the environment from scratch. Yeah, and that's fine. That was something that we did in Toronto. We'll talk about that in the future. But when I walked into Launch Academy actually, which had already been toured by the other founders who had arrived to Vancouver first, they had talked with Ray, Ray had actually said, sorry, I don't think I have space for you guys. And when I came back with them to see Launch Academy, I was like, as soon as I walked in Launch Academy, I was like, this is the space for us. Just the energy in the space, the people, the startup kind of hustle that was happening every day, seeing people in late hours, seeing people in on the weekend. Honestly, things like the lighting, things like the Brick and Bean, things like just a diversity of people was huge for me. It made me very nervous to not only move to a new city, start a new startup, but then also have to do the culture and space settings. Not to mention that you're, you know, none of us were tapped into the Vancouver community. So a big undertaking for us. And many startups are in that situation. Right? Startups coming through, let's say startup Visa program or even they're non technical people. Maybe they weren't tapped into the tech community and they're now trying to do that as part of their tech startup. Yeah, I personally feel that, and I say this to everybody that I tour at Launch Academy or that I just talk about Launch Academy, that it is one of my favorite tech hubs in North America and it continues to be, it was five years ago and it continues to be now. I think the energy here is phenomenal and it's something that's benefited Lighthouse beyond words. And I think this, you know, and I hope the same is true for Launch Academy in terms of benefits that Lighthouse brought to you.

For sure, for sure. And I guess now is where I clarify that we are not paying Karam to say this.

We are not.

But thank you for the kind words.

You know, we have demo days every month and our students graduate in our program. We'll talk more about that as well, hopefully. But every time we start, start demo day in Vancouver, we give a big, big round of applause and thanks to Launch Academy before we start the day.

Definitely we appreciate that. And then having you guys in the space, I mean, I can see the value that it's brought, at least for me just being here for, I've been here for a year and this is just what I've seen so far. And it's already pretty incredible that a lot of our startups have hired from Lighthouse Labs. And that's so cool to see that we just like have that like demand and supply in the same place. Help each other out.

Yeah, let me take a step back there. Like, like, I think it's easy to, you know, people listening, they're gonna be googling Lighthouse Labs, seeing like what, what you guys do and it's easy to just say, oh, you're a coding boot camp or, or if I'm using more old school word, you're a coding school. You're school and you teach coding. But you know, from my interaction, you know, we do this day in, day out, we work very closely with each other. Like, we know there's a lot more that goes on to that. So what, what you know from, from the founders, what's your, what's your mentality? Like, what are you trying to build here?

That's a really, really good question. So you're absolutely right. The way Lighthouse Lab started was just like any startup where you are not necessarily thinking necessarily the biggest possible picture. And as the startup progresses and as opportunities come to you and as you start seeing the solutions manifesting this and as your culture and staff grow, you start to define a bigger vision and a bigger mission. Right. We're five years in. So yes, we're a startup, but we're also a company that's matured quite a bit and has more defined processes and things of that nature. Our vision has been better defined more recently. So yes, you're right. We're a big part of our programming. A big part of what we do is part of our education is the coding bootcamp, which is a very immersive, intense 10 week program. Two programs actually. One is web and one is iOS, our biggest in our web program, where students who are essentially novice, very early developers may not even touch code, who are curious about this stuff and have found an interest can actually enter into the career of being a software developer, whether it be web or iOS, instead of going through a 2, 3, 4, 5 year long undergraduate program or something of that nature. So it's very much an accelerated process, but they have to give up a lot of other things in their life in order to take on this challenge. Because it's not A, it's not for necessarily everyone and B, it definitely takes a certain commitment in terms of the focus.

Right.

We're talking about a boot camp here. And what that word entails is essentially like 60 hour weeks for 10 weeks straight.

I think bootcamp has been like mismarketed since we threw it on computers. Yeah, like you think. And now it's exuberant boot camper, you know what I mean? But boot camp, back in the day, we're talking military, like that was some serious stuff. Exactly.

We try, of course, to have the ethos of the bootcamp, but no extreme is good. It's my personal philosophy. So too relaxed of an education model is not good. And too intense of an education model can have its pitfalls. We can get into that. Coming back to our mission, though, our larger vision and our larger mission that we're executing on and have been executing on for a while is to help people enter and continue developing as software developers in their communities. So while we started off with just the entering part, hey, you know, this is the vehicle to become a software developer. We're now also focusing on not just that, but also continuing education, which I think is the one of the biggest gaps in not only technology, but generally our society when it comes to lifelong learning and continuing education. That's where our society hasn't really defined proper education and proper degree.

Here you go.

Yeah, it's very much like front loaded, right. There's a lot of upfront investment and then good luck. And you know, and you could argue the same thing for boot camps.

Right?

Like when we started, it was, you know, that eight week program at the time. And we obviously have a lot of things on the career services side to help kind of people into their first jobs as a software developer. But we provide a lot of support for alumni. But I think there's a lot more we could be doing and we are striving to do.

I think what you guys are doing already is pretty amazing, like harnessing your years of experience in the industry. So obviously you've probably built a circle of connections, networks that know the kind of quality students that you have, the graduates that you have. And therefore you're able to help students find jobs and then also help the market find quality graduates. So it's really cool how you guys took both sides and were able to support both and now you've got five years of that build up and there's like, that's.

What's the developer count approximately?

Well, in terms of our graduates. Yeah, yeah. So I think we run and of course the number keeps changing but we've run approximately 75 boot camp cohorts. We have part time courses that are.

Not coming in and you guys ridiculously high percentage of hires.

Yeah, we're at approximately 96% of success.

I think the world should know that. 97. That's pretty amazing.

Yeah, yeah. In terms of, you know, success as getting a technical position, a developer position after graduating.

Are you guys hands on with every student or is that something that you provide if it's kind of requested from a student?

No, it's a huge part of our education. So taking a step back once again, we don't believe that boot camp is a 10 week or 12 week or short journey of that nature to becoming a junior developer. One of our core principles that we talk about a lot is that boot camp is actually a 6 to 12 month journey to becoming a junior developer. So our graduates, yes they are junior developers, but they are junior developers in training, let's be honest, they're taking a 10 week program and they may have not coded at all for. So we're very much not a like magic bullet and we don't, we're very careful in our admissions process to not let people in who think that that is the case.

Yeah.

Yeah. There's at least a 6 to 12 month journey before you can comfortably call yourself a junior developer. So the boot camp, the part that you pay us for as a student is the structured part, the part that we've kind of curated in terms of the classroom environment, trying to make it as real world as possible. And then there's the career services part and the employment, your job where you know, you continue to learn on the job first with an internship, usually that's a paid full time internship but with the hope and expectation that you're learning quite a bit for those three to four months that you after you graduate followed with a more of the full time salary that you'd expect in the market. So there's a little bit of a transition and actually we were the ones that, dare I say, and I haven't fact checked this, but pioneered the idea of no, no, after you graduate, don't request a, just a junior level salary, go through an intermediate process of an apprenticeship essentially where you're actually taking on less salary. So that your expectation with the employer that you are expecting more mentorship where possible. That's not always possible with every startup when you join and we have workarounds for that. But again, it's a six to 12 month journey for good, whether it's an iOS bootcamp or web boot camp.

Yeah, I think from my standpoint, just looking from the launchpad, you said one big success factor. I think, I think we can go into numbers all day long. But to me one of the indicators of success was your own staff started taking the program.

Yeah, that's happened quite a bit.

And your programs keep stealing your staff, which is an interesting problem. But it's also proving that, that your product works. Right. Because it's not just life changing for people you're marketing to, selling to, it's people who actually believe in this so much that they're going to quit working with you so they can learn how to code, which is a very interesting problem.

Has that happened before?

Oh, multiple times.

That's hilarious.

It's definitely a double edged sword where we do believe in our staff that we are, this is a, it's all about learning.

Right.

It's all about stepping stones. And so we don't take ourselves too seriously when it comes to. Okay, we understand that after a year or two years with us, you're looking at potentially how am I growing within the company or elsewhere. And of course being exposed to the success of our students here in the program are, we've had community managers and actually now our education manager just recently announced to the students that she'll be, you know, reading us and will speak. But the whole room went wild and she was like, yeah, I'm taking bootcamp. And they were super, they were making fun of her. They were also like super supportive at the same time because she's actually the perfect personality for her as well. And so it's happened I think about, I think about four or five times already.

Wow.

Yeah, that's amazing.

And I think that's, that's the key thing about startups too. I think that is under talked about especially when you know you're first starting out. In your case you had four guys, so that was already quite a bit in the founding team. But smaller startups, they're very careful and intricate with their first hires. And those people, dare I say, they'll usually wear multiple hats. They're not just like, I'm a peer salesman or I'm a peer coder. That's it. I don't care about the product or whatever. But the underlying issue with that is as that company grows and that person finds success, there's a definitely. I don't know the numbers either. There's a higher percentage of those people getting that itch and going, I'm gonna go do my own thing. You know that too. And that's actually very healthy for starts, in my opinion, because that's just the normal progression. You want to hire hustlers, you want to hire go getters. Eventually they're gonna wake up one day and be like, it's cool that I hustled for you, but now it's my turn, right? I've seen that happen time and time again. And. And frankly, those people that work as your first employee or whatever, and they go and start their own thing, their success track record is they're just much more reasonable and realistic with their expectations. They know it's a crime. They've seen the work, they've done the work, and they decided to do it anyway. And so I think having that mentality for your staff is really good, actually, because it's very realistic.