Teaching Millions of People to Code with Zach Sims, Co-Founder & CEO of Codecademy

Zach, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.

Yeah, thanks for coming on. And I actually used Codecademy, and I was looking back at like when I, a long time ago when I was learning code for, uh, some products I was working on in like 2013, and I have like 9 badges and 53 points on Codecademy. I just realized. So that was a long time ago, but I do know I went through a few of your videos and everything. Heard about you guys a long time ago, so it's coming full circle now. For people who aren't familiar though with Codecademy, what are you guys doing today, Zach?

I was gonna say there's, there's still time, you know, you can finish your Codecademy career. So what are we doing today? At Codecademy, we connect millions of people around the world to economic opportunity by teaching them modern skills. So on the site, you can learn anything from, you know, data science to web development to mobile development and so on and so forth. All in a way that's super engaging. So it's interactive. You learn by doing. Uh, in a way that's flexible so you can learn anywhere at any time and a way that's accessible so you can start learning for free. And then if you upgrade to Codecademy Pro, it's only $40 a month.

We're gonna get into all of that and more details on the actual education side, how you decided that in a bit. But I, I'm always curious at the beginning cuz it's obviously been around since 2011 or so, like at that time, how did this get started in the first place, Zach?

Yeah, so I, I was an undergrad at the time, uh, learning political science at Columbia. Uh, and I think One of the things that I consistently realized, I was working at a couple of tech startups in New York, a company called Drop.io and a company called GroupMe, and it was impossible for us to hire technical folks at those companies. And so I went back to school and I tried to teach myself computer science and to learn a lot of skills. And I was kind of persistently discouraged from doing so. Like, this is gonna be the hardest class you ever take. It's so hard. You know, it's not meant for people like you, you know, that don't come from a math and science background. And that just seemed really wrong to me. My co-founder and I saw that, you know, technology very clearly was the future. And why were we actively discouraging people from studying technology? And in addition to that, we kind of persistently kept seeing like, you know, 50% of undergrads in the US were unemployed or underemployed a year after graduating from college. And so again, we were kind of like, wait a second, college isn't working. Why are we sitting here saying that that everyone should do that instead of learning important technical skills. So we started Codecademy for us, basically, if we could try to find a way to teach people around the world the most important skills of the 21st century. And I was basically our first student. I learned JavaScript to write the first JavaScript course on the site as well.

At that time then, what led to the early growth of this thing? Obviously, it's gone huge now. It's like $50 million in revenue, I think you mentioned. It's done a ton. In the early days of getting traction, getting customers, what were you guys doing in those early days?

Yeah, I mean, I think for us, what were we doing in the early days? We got, I hesitate to say we got lucky. I think, you know, at the end of the day for us, we built a product for ourselves, which I think is a pretty, you know, classic kind of set of Y Combinator advice. And I think what we learned was, you know, if we built something that was easy to use, it would speak for itself. And I think again, this isn't necessarily a strategy that works for everyone, but we built the first version of Codecademy. We built a whole bunch of viral loops into the product. And so, you know, you'd start learning. We made it dead simple to get started. We actually put a terminal on the homepage so you could start coding, you know, immediately help people feel like that was magic. And then as soon as they started learning, they would have a conversation with the terminal. And, you know, after giving it your name and your email and some other information and messing around, you'd get your first badge and you'd be encouraged to share your badge. And that's kind of what really led to that early explosive growth for us was like so easy to get started, really simple value proposition, easiest way to learn to code, and a very quick sharing and viral loop at the beginning of the learning experience. And I think that led us to register more than 200,000 learners in the first 3 days. And I think helped us kind of get off to the races.

How'd you think about that side of things with the viral loops, as you mentioned, as time went on, as you think about the evolution of this product and really making it something that is so shareable, people can use again and again? Like, how have you thought about viral loops specifically moving forward?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's something that, you know, we still spend some time on. Honestly, we should probably be spending more time on. I think we, you know, focus a lot on the learning, how we can build the best learning experience, how we can build the best products. And I think, you know, we still have other loops in the product. So, you know, you get a certificate, you could share that certificate on LinkedIn and elsewhere. You still get points and badges, you can share that elsewhere. You can share the projects you're working on with other people as well. So there are lots of different ways that we kind of encourage people to share what they're doing with friends. It's a little bit delicate from a learning perspective because sometimes people don't want to talk about what they're learning. You know, they're focused on learning for them, maybe not learning, you know, to demonstrate to others that they're picking up this new skill. So we try to be careful about how we frame that. Yeah.

And then with this product as well then, so I know you posted about on, on Twitter when you guys recently raised another round of funding, but historically, I mean, you haven't always had to raise capital at a consistent interval as people have typically kind of done with startups. Take me through that mindset around that, around raising capital versus going off of revenue. I mean, I'm curious of how you've thought about that in the last decade of the company because there are a lot of different opinions on this. People have different, obviously, thoughts on what's better, what's not. But for you guys in, in your journey with Codecademy, How have you thought about that, raising capital versus going off of revenue?

Yeah, so I mean, I think for us, the first like 4 years of the business, um, we were almost completely free. So, uh, sorry, we were completely free. Uh, so we, you know, raised a Series A from the folks at Union Square Ventures, um, Thrive Capital, a couple others, and Y Combinator. Um, you know, we raised a Series B from the folks at Index Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. Um, and, you know, we, we lived off that $12.5 million for probably the first 4 years of business. Um, we were completely free under this belief that what we were doing was creating a movement just as much as it was about building a product. And we needed to convince as many people as possible around the world that learning to program was something they needed to do. And so we were free during that period of time. We kept the team relatively small. We didn't want to burn through a ton of cash. And then in late 2015, we launched the first version of Codecademy Pro. LingQ Pro, which is our paid product. It's $40 a month and it's for learners that are looking to either upgrade their career or switch to a new career entirely. And what we did when we launched that was we kind of very quickly raised a Series C afterwards under the belief that LingQ Pro was working and we wanted to double down on it. And then we used that money and basically very quickly got to cash flow positive and spent the past couple of years at cash flow positive. And I think it's really nice to control your own destiny. We'd have these board meetings like, what's the cash-out date? Never. And so I think that generally tends to feel pretty good. And we wanted to make sure that we built something that was sustainable. I think all too often you see lots of folks throwing money at a sales or marketing machine where the numbers don't really add up under the hope that like, we'll figure it out super quickly. I think for us, we really wanted to figure it out first and then scale it later. And that's what I think we've done. So we built a product that to your point got to $50+ million run rate and that really had the ability to take additional capital and investments and scale further. And so that's kind of what happened when we raised money last year was we said, you know, there's a lot more we think we could be doing here. And we think the opportunity is really limitless for what we're building. Let's invest further and grow. And so that's why we raised that extra round of capital even though we still had the majority of our Series C still in the bank.

And then going back to that with the Codecademy Pro, as you mentioned there, with that, you said 4 years of, obviously it's a free product, but then you got to a point where, okay, this is the time we're gonna launch Codecademy Pro, build this thing. Take me through the timing on that. And, you know, could have been 3 years and 2 years and whatever. Like, take me through the timing of where you guys were at and why you decided to launch that when you did. Because again, you had a number of years without having that paid product. I would love to hear more about the timing, how you thought through that side of things.

Yeah, I mean, I, I think, you know, for us, I wish there was, there was clear math on that. I, I think we, we launched Codecademy Pro CodePro. We did, because I think we realized, like, great, we'd reached, you know, tens of millions of learners over time. I think we kind of helped to create this movement of people around the world learning to program and realizing just how important this was as a 21st century skill. And so we, you know, in late 2015, also, we're kind of looking at, great, how do we make this sustainable? How do we build a business that, you know, one day can go public or can be substantial and large? While at the same time, you know, doing good and helping millions of people around the world grow their careers. And so I think that's what led us to launch Pro. You know, we looked at the long-term vision of the business, which is, you know, connect millions of people to economic opportunity in 3 parts. You know, 1, by teaching consumers the skills they need to upgrade their careers. 2, by teaching companies the skills they need to stay relevant. And then 3, kind of by unifying those 2 things and helping those consumers find opportunities with those companies. And so for, for us, I think it was obvious that, you know, in order to monetize and continue to achieve that vision, um, we needed to, to help our consumers even more. And that's why we launched Pro, is give them a lot more curriculum, help them get further in their career journey.

And then just, you know, kind of diving a little bit deeper, again going back off of that tweetstorm, which I thought was really good and why I reached out in the first place, you know, you mentioned one of those parts of it just about going from the center of attention to the brink of bankruptcy was a rude awakening. He mentioned that. He said all this press early on, obviously you're raising from top VCs and everything, but In that time when you obviously have the attention but the business, you're losing cash, how was your mindset at that time and how did you end up getting through that? Because I mean, there's always going to be struggles as an entrepreneur, but for you guys, how'd you get through that? Zach?

Great question. Yeah, I think realizing that I feel like these businesses operate in these 3 to 6 month peaks and troughs. You have something great happen, uh, and you realize it can't be great forever. Uh, and, you know, the same happens when you have, you know, a bad thing happen in your business, and it's like, okay, well, we're going to get through this. And I think that, at least over the, the past decade building this business, for me has definitely been what it is. Like, the bad times don't persist forever, the good times don't persist forever. The most important thing is to, like, kind of grit your teeth and get through it, um, and, and try to, you know, minimize the, uh, lows and, and kind of prolong the highs. But I think that attitude has really been one of the biggest things that's carried me through those times when it's been dangerous, we're running out of money, there's no hype, it doesn't seem completely clear that the business will be around. I think at this point, when I have those moments, I try to do all the millennial things, meditate, take a deep breath, write in a journal, whatever. But I think at the same time, there's also a certain sense of like, We've been through this before and we're lucky that there have been a lot of down moments in the history of the company and we've always kind of managed to come together as a team, as a group of learners that are on the product and carry through and build something bigger. And so I think kind of that zooming out of like, you know, this moment right now seems really, really bad, but we've been through a lot of really, really bad moments before where it's felt like everything's going to end and it hasn't. And the most important thing is to like push through. And so that persistence, it's in fact, it's a company value. We persevere because I think, you know, we— the line towards success is obviously never direct. And so I think as a company, we try to build in this idea of like, look, you know, you're going to have bad days, bad months, bad weeks, bad years maybe. But on the macro, like, we're doing something that matters. We're helping millions of learners around the world that, you know, almost 100 million learners around the world. And, you know, that's what matters most.

Yeah, and building that resilience over time, as you said, going through more and more of those struggles, you say, yeah, you're gonna have those, just inevitable as you go through that. And I think from talking to a couple hundred entrepreneurs at this point, I mean, every single one of them has had that, whether it be early on, whether it be at a previous company, now they're at their second or third company, they all go through that. And just a matter of like, you understand that it's not gonna last forever. And one of my favorite like quotes you're saying is always, if you're If you're going through hell, keep going. It's my favorite one. And we haven't talked a lot about the actual product in terms of the content and all of that side of things. And I wanted to dive into that. Any education company, you know, there's this whole thing of obviously you have the content that you're educating with in some capacity. How have you thought through that versus, you know, thinking about internally creating everything yourself, user-generated or outsourcing? Because that, I mean, with the costs that go into that and everything, how'd you think through that side of things, Zach?

Yeah, how long do you have? This is one of those things that we spend just an inordinate amount of time thinking about internally.

Yeah.

We started the company and we had a lot of folks that were creating content. And I think one of the biggest things that we learned over the course of that process was that having anybody have the ability to create content on the site created a poor educational experience. And so I think for us, we really, really focused now. On creating as high-quality curriculum as we possibly can. We do that with a team in-house. We have about 30 folks that are full-time creating curriculum. Many of them are also editors, so we also do work with third parties to create curriculum, but oftentimes we are the kind of final arbiter of quality and all of that. And so, you know, I think we're always trying to strike the right balance because it's really difficult to figure out like what we should create, you know, what one of our, you know, one of our course, third-party course creators should create as well. So I think that's, you know, a very challenging thing over time. And like you've alluded to, there's all kinds of different models here, you know, marketplace models like Udemy, partner platform models like Coursera, you know, third-party kind of subscription economic model places like Pluralsight. And so I think we might look on our face like a publisher, but I think the model is like somewhere between a publisher and Pluralsight. And because of the economics of a subscription business, like we own and operate all the content and that helps, we're not paying a percentage of royalties out at this point to a large distributed base of content creators means that the economics tend to be better and you can build a higher margin business.

And then with that too, with the content, how are you thinking through the upskilling side of things versus people career switching? I know you mentioned that a little bit earlier, but I mean thinking through how you allocate content or resources towards that. Versus, you know, what's driving more revenue for your business or what's helping people more, you know, because there are different things between upskilling and kind of career switching. How do you think through that side of things?

Great question. Another thing that we're kind of persistently always balancing, um, we tend to look at a lot of business inputs in that one. So, you know, how many users are signing up to take each given path? So like, what's the acquisition look like on each of those paths? What does the retention completion look like on each of those paths? And we generally try to create curriculum for certain personas. So to your point, like, are we creating for the upskiller? Are we creating for the career switcher? Who's more likely to take a given piece of content. And we have a model internally for curriculum ROI, basically says, you know, for a dollar invested in a course, like, what do we expect to make? You know, of course, amortized over the entirety of the user base, etc. We're not Netflix, so we don't have that much data science around it, but I think we do actually a reasonably good job today of, you know, determining our investments in content and where we should make them. And cuz content is one of the, the biggest, uh, areas of spend for us.

Yeah. And I, I'm that too, cuz I'm, I'm really curious about that lead and obviously the content marketing for, for Vitalize at a, at a venture firm. I'm thinking through how we wanna educate people on that. And also we're be going to get into more of the angel investing side of things in terms of like educating people on angel investing, just with our experience over time. Take me through then how you look at like long-form bite-sized content, like what the, what type of content you're actually creating, what is the most engaging, what kind of formats and stuff like that with, with Codecademy.

Yeah, I mean, so for us, we have a whole bunch of different curriculum formats that we create. I'd say that the vast majority of them are interactive courses. And so we have an interactive development environment in the browser. You are building software in order to demonstrate that you can do so. And so courses is one variant where, you know, you're learning by doing. We have quizzes we create, we have projects that are like freeform courses. We also have a new format called interactive articles that are regular kind of text-formatted articles with actually the ability to play with pieces of code inline in the interactive article. For us, that interactivity is really key. That's why people come to Codecademy in the first place. And so our cost of content creation is higher than it might be for someone else. But we think that the types of content that we create today, just far and away better than Um, the, you know, boring videos that you might find on a lot of other platforms, um, and justifies like the expense as a result of that.

Yeah. And it's worth it, you know, to have premium content and have the best. There's always a place in the market for that type of thing as well. And one of the aspects of, of Codecademy, looking at the site and like kind of feeling around with everything is community. And I'd love to hear how you think about community in terms of how that plays a part in the business and different aspects of the, of Codecademy as well.

Yeah, so community for us is super, super important. You know, I think we think a lot about, great, we have a user base of, you know, tens of millions of learners. How can we use that to set us apart from our competitors? And what can we do that will, you know, put distance between us and create a better learning experience for the people on the platform with each additional learner that joins? And so I think as a result of that, you know, we try to create a lot of community experiences for our learners. We try to meet them where they are. So, you know, we have a Discord, we have a Facebook group, we have onsite forums, we have community chapters all around the world where people can meet up in real life. And we want to be there to support them, you know, whether they're learning or not. And that's a really, really big thing for us. And we also have, you know, plenty of studies that show that our learners are more likely to continue learning when they know others that are learning. And so we try to really focus on like immersing and getting people involved in the community as early as possible in that learning experience to differentiate us.

What does that look like in terms of getting them involved, in terms of kind of facilitating that to ensure, I mean, you said it is like a moat in some ways to have a really engaged community. What does it look like though, in terms of like that process of getting them, whether it be onboarded through community or whether it be engage more, I mean, letting them know you have these different options and different offerings. Like what does that look like for Codecademy?

Yeah, I mean, we look at the onboarding to the Codecademy experience and how quickly we can kind of push them gently into the world of community. So I think, you know, it went from like for a while community was on a subdomain and now it's like part of that onboarding checklist. You sign up for Codecademy and we're like, ah, you know, you should join us on Facebook, Discourse, you know, Discord, wherever you are, join us and, you know, chronicle your learning history and get better with us. And I think that that, you know, has led to significantly higher community engagement and is, you know, something that I think we will continue to do a lot more of in the future. Like, I think if anything, we, you know, I think we do invest substantially in community. I would like for us to invest even more. So I think we're kind of just scratching the surface on all of that.

What would that look like in terms of investing more into community for you guys?

I think more integrated across the site is the answer to that. I think, you know, today we have, you know, we do a reasonably good job of integrating community into the site, but it's still on a lot of third-party platforms. And so I think it's like bringing it together on-site so the experience feels much more holistic.

Yeah. I mean, to have more integrated experience for, for everyone and finding that as well. And that's again, something we're kind of thinking about at Vitalize in terms of how we do that. And one of the things I was really curious to ask you about, as I look through obviously what you've done the last decade and have this model of learning and education, what are your thoughts more broadly on like bootcamps versus MOOCs versus something like On Deck and these different options for, for learning now that are available out there?

Yeah, great question. You know, I tend to be skeptical of most bootcamps. I think the learning promise, and the promise has changed over the years, so I think you go from like, oh, you know, bootcamps when they started were 3 months, new job, $20,000. Now, I mean, you've entered a world where there's a lot of income sharing agreements, you know, we're only successful when you're successful, the program takes 9 months. And I think there's people that are really trying to innovate out there. So I think like Lambda School is doing a good job of kind of trying to really break up the format, create a program that's long enough, create new payment methodologies. So I wanna give props to them. I think there's a lot of traditional bootcamps, however, that are probably close to a scam, you know, 3 months and paying $20,000 is like a very hard value proposition to justify. And that's why we focus on helping anyone and everyone with an accessible experience and a flexible experience. It's much harder to, it's much easier to get like great ROI with a $240 annual subscription to Codecademy than to spend $20,000. Like the expected value and outcome has to be like really tremendous if you're going to a real bootcamp. So I think there's a lot of kind of snake oil out there in that sense. And again, there are great players as well, but I think it's a pretty, you know, there's a tightrope to balance on. I'm forgetting the second part of the question.

No, I mean, just curious. So I'm just curious on what you thought on these different platforms. So with that though, as you're mentioning that with these bootcamps and everything as well, I had talked to, so Ruben Harris from Career Karma, they help people get into different coding bootcamps and obviously they can, depends on what people want from them. But to your, to that point, you mentioning, you know, some have income share agreements, different varying prices and everything. Lambda School is a very good one. I think they, their incentives are very aligned at Lambda School. It seems like just in terms of like, they, they're not going to make money unless you actually make money. But to that point then, I mean, what are some bootcamps or anything out there that you think that besides Lambda School or even diving deeper, you think are doing a good job and what's the difference between that and then Codecademy in terms of like the promise, the guarantee, what you're getting out of that. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I mean, I, I think we target a different student. I think there is like, there is the person who says, I'm going to quit my job and spend 9 months learning to become a software developer. So those are like career switchers. That's one demographic. And for career switcher, I think there's generally like two tracks you can pursue. One is the full-time learning option, in which case, like, great, you should probably go to a bootcamp. Yeah. In many cases, if you're going to a bootcamp, I also think you should be a Codecademy subscriber because we learn all the time that people, you know, that reinforce their knowledge on Codecademy while they're going to a bootcamp, they're more successful in their bootcamp. I think the part-time learners. That's another area where, you know, I think we can be very helpful because if you're learning over, you know, 9 months, 18 months, 24 months, and you have, you know, 10 hours a week to spend, we are really good for that use case. And you want to switch your career, we get a lot of those learner stories all the time of people that, you know, that they're learning part-time and they eventually make that career transition. And then I think you have the career upgrader, who's the person that, you know, is looking to use technology to get ahead in their current career. So, you know, whether that's a financial analyst, a designer, you know, an engineer who's up leveling from mid to senior, you know, someone, a product manager, and those people, you know, can get higher ROI sooner. So I think we, you know, we see a lot of that use case too. But again, I think the really critical thing, and it's good that you asked the question, like we do not compete with bootcamps. Our value, our promise is not like we will not do for $240 a year what a bootcamp will do for $20,000 in 3 months. But I think that the, percentage of people that can take 9 months off to completely pivot their career is a small percentage of people. And so I think what we do is much more, you know, targeted at the mass market. We want to help everyone in the world get access to economic opportunity.

Yeah, I mean, this is obviously, it is very different. Like, there's this very different thing when you look at the difference between those two. And one of the things that we haven't discussed yet, and you kind of alluded to some of it a little bit earlier as well, is looking at like Codecademy for Business. I know that launched in a beta before, a couple hundred paying customers. How do you think on that side of things? And I know One thing in this quote I saw was that it said something about like half those customers are non-technology companies like banks, consulting firms, small businesses that want to train employees in data literacy and tech-specific programming. Where is that going in the future? What does that look like for you guys as well at this point?

Yeah, I mean, so look, I think Codecademy for Business at this point is the fastest growing part of our business. I think it will continue to be the fastest growing part of our business for a while. And so I think, you know, for us, it is the opportunity for any business to keep their employees on the cutting edge. And so, you know, what is it that is required to build every business? If every business is a technology business, then all of your employees need to be technologists. Yeah, I think we can really, really help with that, um, you know, for, for almost all companies around the world. And I think that's kind of the general theory is, you know, we have tens of millions of, um, you know, consumer users. Uh, how do we leverage that into, um, you know, as many enterprise users as we possibly can and help as many companies grow as fast as we can.

With that, when you're looking at that side of the business, I mean, are you targeting specifically certain areas, certain industries, certain companies? Obviously, there's these non-tech companies versus tech companies. There's a lot of different industries, a lot of different sectors. Like, how are you looking at that from a strategic standpoint of Codecademy? Like, okay, we can help obviously a lot of people with our abilities and our content, but how do you prioritize that then?

Yeah, I mean, I think we look at like impact, kind of like you're saying, you know, what are the largest types of companies and where can we solve the biggest problems for them? And I think that's obviously going to turn into the biggest set of customers for us, the same way it's going to turn into the biggest impact that we can possibly have on those companies. So, you know, it's usually size of deployment and magnitude of impact on the number of employees.

And then just looking back, just taking a step back here with the last decade of you running Codecademy and gone through a lot of different things in the past year, how do you kind of stay sane? How do you kind of stay at your top every day? I mean, there's ups and downs as we mentioned, but As someone running this company, how do you make sure you're performing at your best?

Yeah, I mean, I think I've gotten into all the same nerdy self-optimization things that everyone else in Silicon Valley has. And I would say a lot of those things I thought when I was younger were foolish. I think when I was 20 and 21, when we were first starting the company, I was like, oh, wow, you go watch The Social Network and you think that you basically have to live in a house with everyone you work with and work 120 hours a week. And like anyone who doesn't do that is not going to be successful. I think that's wrong in retrospect. And it took us a while to realize that. I think for me, at least now, you know, all the classic things like you got to sleep 8 hours a night. And I don't know, something happened to me, I think when I turned 27 or 28, where like sleep started mattering a lot more and I couldn't get away with like, you know, when we first started the company, I was sleeping 4 to 6 hours a night and I can't do that now. If I do that for like one night, I fall apart the next day. So. I mean, you know, 8 hours of sleep, eating healthy, you know, exercising. I need to do that every single day. And then, you know, I think to deal with the stress and the ups and downs, you know, meditating, kind of writing a lot about the experience and kind of using that to try to maintain as even keel as possible. I think also having, you know, being surrounded by a group of other people that, you know, do what you do, that you can relate to, right? So whether I find that most of my friends at this point are founders and CEOs, which makes it easy. At the end of the day, if you have a rough day, you can sit and talk to someone else about what's been happening and get their advice. And I also find it always doesn't see it— when you speak to someone else, they always have another experience. It's like, wow, I went through this exact same crazy thing. And by the way, it's solvable. Don't worry. And I think that's always really reassuring to realize. As well.

Do you have— I mean, this is obviously still getting out of COVID here, but did you have even pre-COVID, like a set schedule weekly that you'd have that in terms of that kind of getting together with founders or just more of like, these are just your friends now, like any other friends you have? Like, I'm just curious on how that went for you.

Yeah, I think, I think kind of all of the above. Like, actually, this morning, I have a monthly CEO group with a couple of our— that one of our investor— we all share kind of a common set up a couple of investors, and it's really helpful to do that. It's, you know, an hour and a half every month. So that's one thing, uh, you know, I have two of my closest friends are venture investors and former founders in San Francisco. We have a weekly catch-up every, you know, every week for half an hour each. Um, and so I think those are kind of the only regularly scheduled things, but there's also like a lot of ad hoc, um, you know, I'm Zooming with or seeing in person a close friend that runs a company. You know, I was living, I was in Florida for the past couple of months living with a couple of other friends that are founders and investors. So I think just kind of being surrounded by that energy at all times, again, I find it very helpful to realize like, oh my gosh, I'm having a problem today with my VP of Y, and I go talk to a friend like, how do I solve this? And they're like, oh, I dealt with this, you know, 3 months ago and here's what I did, and like, don't worry, you're gonna get through it. I think it's always like really, really helpful.

Did you think that— I know you were an entrepreneur early on, uh, started your first business like 13 years old or something. Have you just always thought that you'd be an entrepreneur? What is it about entrepreneurship that has that draw for you?

You know, I, I grew up with, um, like truly wonderful parents that have been supportive of everything I've ever done. Um, and I think they, uh, early on, you know, their careers— like my dad was a real estate broker in New York, commercial real estate broker. My mom worked in retail. And I think their original perspective was like, you know, it takes 10, 15, 20 years to like build a career. And then, you know, at that point in your career, you get to become the person in charge who has impact, who makes a lot of money, etc. I just like didn't want to wait in line, to be honest. And I think I wanted to have an impact earlier on. And I saw, you know, when I was 13 or 14, that like no one needed to know how old you were on the internet. You know, as the expression goes, like no one knows you're a dog. And I think that that was really impactful for me. Like, wow, I as a 13, 14-year-old can start a business and no one needs to know how old I am. And I can have an impact on millions of people around the world. This is crazy. And I think that I still feel that way today. I have no business running my business. I'm 30 years old. We have a product that tens of millions of people around the world use to get new jobs and careers and hopefully live better lives. And I wake up every every morning pretty grateful to have that experience because, you know, under any like standard career ladder, you know, I'd be like a senior manager of innovation somewhere. Um, and I, and I think it's, you know, pretty fortunate that I'm not doing that job.

Yeah, it is interesting hearing that from different founders, like were they always going to be founders and how they think about it. And like, not always, but when you figure that out though and you realize that you can— there's no rules, right? I mean, in theory, like you can just do things and create things and build things because of how we have the internet now. Um, a lot of things possible, it just weren't possible. I mean, look at like your, my parents and stuff too. Same thing. It's like the careers that we have now weren't even a thing. Like, oh, YouTuber, there's no YouTube, there's no internet. Like, you know, it's just all these different opportunities now that we have. And especially when we look at learning and education and how this is changing things, it's really exciting. And one of the last questions I have for you is just in thinking about education and learning in the future, obviously you have these higher ed and universities that things are going to get disrupted. Where do you see that going in terms of how that changes or any evolution of kind of your traditional educational institutions?

Yeah, you know what, I think a lot of those colleges, for better or for worse, will go away. And so I think that's really hard. You know, I think as we look at what's happened with COVID you know, you have millions of students whose learning was interrupted last year, learning moved online for many people. And then I think a lot of people started to like shake their head and say, well, wait a second, Why am I paying $200,000 for, you know, a college education when like actually it's a bunch of Zoom classes and like I'm not getting anything else out of this experience? And so I think that will cause a lot of people to like rightfully question the college experience and hopefully lead to like a much more ROI-driven system of education. And that's what we always focus on is like, what is the return on investment? And with us, you know, again, that investment is low. It's $240 a year. Or, you know, if you're a college though, and it's hundreds of thousands of dollars over 4 years, like you better deliver, you know, meaningful results for your students. And many of these colleges don't. And so I hope that last year has created a real movement towards ROI-driven education, because I think that's really, really critical to our future. And hopefully, obviously, that benefits us as well. But I think for me, much more important is that people around the world are learning with the right types of educational experiences for them.

Yeah, and the cool thing now is with Codecademy, with other institutions in different ways that are online and teaching people things, there's really no limit to what you can do in terms of learning. And as you mentioned with ROI, $240 versus 3 more zeros on the end of it, and a college education is much different in terms of expectations and potential ROI. And I love what you guys are doing at Codecademy. I appreciate you coming on the show, Zach Sims. Thanks for taking the time.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.