Teaching the world how to code with Zach Sims Co-Founder & CEO Codecademy

We think of our mission as connecting millions of people around the world to economic opportunity, and doing that in several ways. I think, you know, number one, by helping consumers learn the skills they need to upgrade their careers. Number two, by helping companies learn the skills they need to stay relevant. And number three, eventually by connecting those consumers and companies to facilitate labor mobility.

Welcome everybody. I'm Mark Peter Davis, managing partner of Interplay Ventures. I'm the host of this podcast, Innovation with Mark Peter Davis, where I chat with industry-leading founders, CEOs, and executives about the businesses they've built and invested in. Today's guest is Zach Sims, co-founder and CEO of Codecademy. If you're not already familiar with Codecademy, they are upending the education space empowering people to transform their personal and professional lives by helping them learn programming skills. They've helped 45 million users in 179 countries learn new skills to gain a competitive advantage in our rapidly changing world. Zach Sims and I talk about how he built Codecademy to what it is today, his thoughts on how education will evolve in the future, and what he's learned along the way when it comes to managing a company. Hope you enjoy. This episode is brought to you by FoundersShield. FoundersShield is a tech-enabled commercial and health insurance brokerage that focuses on servicing high-growth companies. They service thousands of VC-backed and public companies, including many of the brand names you probably know. If you're interested in learning more, visit foundersshield.com. Zach, thanks for being on the show. Great to have you here.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Mark.

So I wanna— before we get into Codecademy, which I think people are going to be really interested to hear about, uh, I would love to start with a little bit of your background and bring people kind of up to speed on who you are. So if we could just start at the beginning. First off, where are you from?

Yeah, I grew up, uh, a little bit outside of New York in Connecticut, and, uh Yeah. Been there forever, basically in the area.

What town?

Uh, in Old Greenwich.

So you're in Old Greenwich, uh, and then stayed in the tri-state area for school and beyond. Have you ever lived outside the city for material part of your life?

Uh, I, when we started Codecademy, I was in, uh, in California or that's not true, actually. We were in, uh, school and we started the business and then we did Y Combinator. And so we moved out west, uh, to do that. And so I was probably in California for 6, 6 or 8 months when we first started the company.

Very cool, very cool. I'm going to take a little twist here. This is something I usually don't ask people, but I think it would be interesting insight. Uh, if I was to bump into one of your friends from high school, because I think you're a particularly interesting person, which we're going to get into, how would they have described Zach Sims?

Wow, good question. Um, it's a difficult one. I mean, I think there were kind of some some classic things that I did that might have kind of belied where life has gone. Like, I was the president of my class. I, you know, like, curious maybe would be something they would say. Busy.

So like the hardworking guy, not the class clown.

Not the class clown. Hopefully they would say I was good to spend time with, but, you know, I definitely don't think I was the class clown. No. And I like, I did sports as well, but I don't think I was the jock. I was definitely not the captain of any teams that I was playing on.

Got it. All right. And then, uh, you started working during college. Now for folks listening, you went to Columbia undergrad, uh, and you started working right out the gate. I mean, I remember I got my first internship my junior year of college. Uh, and I think you were kind of ahead of the game.

Yeah.

Uh, can you tell us what you were thinking as a student? What was going through your head?

Yeah, I think so. This summer before I went to Columbia, I worked for a law firm in New York, Skadden Arps, and I thought, you know, when I got to Columbia, I would end up studying political science and becoming a lawyer. Decided pretty quickly, like, maybe that was one path, but I wanted to look into, you know, potentially another as well. And I remember seeing that, you know, the founder of this company called Drop.io was giving a talk at Columbia my freshman year. Uh, and I thought there were going to be, you know, scores and scores of people, uh, that were going to show up at this talk. And I showed up and I think there were like 2 or 3 people there. Uh, and I thought—

this is Sam Lessin.

Yeah, it was Sam, exactly.

Um, Sam's brilliant.

And I thought—

sure, that was one of the first people I'd ever met.

Still think that. Uh, and, um, you know, I went to this talk. I was just super impressed with someone who at the time— Sam must have been like 24, 25. He'd started the company. Um, I think you were probably— you were an investor in the company, if I'm not wrong, right? When you were at DFJ?

Yeah, you're not wrong. I was I was a board observer. It was my first time sitting in a boardroom.

Yeah.

Uh, watching Sam.

We both have Drop.io ties. Yeah. So I saw, I saw Sam talk, uh, and was like, super smart person. Uh, I want to like do anything I can to go work at a place where someone who's like 24 or 25 can run a company and, you know, uh, kind of change the world and have big ambitious ideas. Uh, and so I kind of set about going to work for Drop.io for that summer. Um, and it was less like, I want to work at a startup. And it was more like, wow, I'm really impressed by like what's going on with this company and, um, you know, the founder and like, let's see if I can find a way to make it work. And so I spent, that was how I got my first college internship was, you know, meeting Sam on campus, uh, and then just begging and pleading for several months, um, to, you know, end up working for him.

So you stayed working there after the summer?

No, I, I mean, I maybe did a little bit of consulting, um, afterwards, you know, I, uh, I worked a couple hours a week and kind of continued that for a little while. I spent the next summer working at AOL doing venture capital and briefly thought that that's what I wanted to do was go be a VC. And then through AOL and through a friend of mine, I'd met the founders of this company called GroupMe that were starting a group text messaging app the summer of, I guess that would've been 2010., and I, uh, you know, was, was super fascinated by what they were building, thought the founders were amazing. So started spending some time hanging out with them. And at the time they were, you know, working out of Steve's apartment. Um, and then like briefly got some space at Betaworks for, you know, 3 people, a conference room for like an hour or 2 a day. Um, I was just really impressed by what they were building and said I'd like do anything to join them and, and go work with them. Um, and so that kind of turned into the second experience, which was working, or the third experience, I guess, which was working with them. And I did pretty much everything you do at an early-stage startup from like business development to like working on product flows, interviewing users, a whole bunch of different things except for writing code, obviously. And doing that as a combination of full-time over the course of the summer, and then eventually that kind of transitioned into a day, 2, 3 days a week while I was in school.

Got it. So it became busy. You have managed to compress most people's first 5 to 8 years of their career into your first 2 years of college, right? You had the— you had internships in startups and VC, picked a path which most people don't do until their 30s at least, right? It's pretty phenomenal. But I'm interested by the fact that you were thinking you were going to be a lawyer. Do you come from a family of lawyers? What was the rationale for that? Because it's, it's so divergent from the path you've chosen.

Yeah, I mean, I think I was, I was always interested in politics, uh, and business, and I, I thought being a lawyer, I didn't want to go work at a big law firm. I thought working in government could be interesting. And law, I think, is essentially like a framework for managing people. What's the best startup America, basically? We've spent hundreds of years perfecting a way for 300+ million people to interact on a regular basis. And how you think about large groups of people are governed is super interesting. So I think that was kind of what was most interesting to me. And as a humanities major, at Columbia, it was like, oh, do we go work in investment banking or consulting or become a lawyer? And as I'm sure it was for you, at least the pressure felt very— was on like the minute I set foot on campus. It was very— the Goldman Sachs information session is like October 1st, and you've only been on campus for 2 weeks, and they're very eager to convince you that banking, consulting are what you should do. Um, so I think like that got me. And then, you know, the other thing was I'm a political science major, like I have no idea what I'm going to do when I get older. So maybe like everyone else seems to become a lawyer, um, it seems vaguely interesting. So I understand.

Okay, now, uh, you made a big decision, right? Uh, and you decided to drop out of college to, to pursue your career. Um, can you tell us, take us through the logic? And this is around the time frame that this was becoming almost a meme, right? Peter Thiel was supporting this, uh, that there was revolutionary thinking about the role of college, particularly in the entrepreneurship world. Um, what was going through your head? How'd you make that decision?

Yeah, um, I, I think the first thing that happened was, uh, I got to experience kind of the roller coaster of a startup while, while working at GroupMe. So I think, you know, if I look back, that was probably a pretty big catalyst, was, you know, looking back and realizing like, oh, this company went from zero essentially to, uh, you know, an $80 million exit. And at the time, but right before dropping, this was kind of before they had exited, but it was very clear the company was on a very exciting trajectory. And I kind of been there and seen that, um, and I realized that most of the people around me, like, they didn't necessarily go to Ivy League schools, some of them didn't even graduate from college it just seemed like not completely interesting to graduate, uh, not completely required for success, um, and expensive, right? $50,000, $60,000 a year in order to do it. Um, so I think that, that was kind of one thing that, um, you know, that, that was critical, uh, and interesting in, in kind of considering whether or not to drop out. Um, I think the other was, you know, we had started Codecademy probably January or started work. My co-founder Ryan and I, we'd met at Columbia and we started working on ideas in January 2011. Um, you know, we ended up applying to Y Combinator. We got into Y Combinator, and I think kind of as soon as we took other people's money, uh, it, it felt like we had a duty to at least like try, uh, working on something and building something and kind of making what we were working on real. Uh, and so I think it didn't necessarily start out as like, we're— I'm dropping out of college, like this is the end of things forever, but more like, you know, fortunately for most schools, um, you can take leave of absence and you can come back. Uh, and, and that's why I think it's, it's almost always great to start a business when you're in college because like worst case you stop working on the business and you go back to school and you graduate.

Um, and you kind of have the ability to start over in the career path.

Exactly, exactly. And so when I, you know, I took a leave of absence and that was the beginning of it and now obviously I've dropped out, but, um, you know, it started small.

So you're, uh, you made the move to drop out of college, which in the tech community Uh, is one of the, it's one of the merit badges of some of the most successful entrepreneurs. You got notoriously Zuckerberg, Gates, a lot of other folks. What is the reaction to you at this point? Why don't you think about it? Is it something you wish you had finished or is it now a merit badge, a badge of honor kind of that you didn't have to finish because it wasn't necessary?

Yeah, I think, I think in particular for what we are working on at Codecademy, uh, somewhat of a merit badge. I think, you know, we realized that. That college is in most cases, you know, waste is maybe a little bit aggressive, but it's very expensive. Doesn't necessarily deliver appropriate amounts of value to people and kind of unnecessary depending on what you want to do. And I think kind of part of the problem in the US now is we see it as a requirement for any sort of professional job and opportunity. Like you must go to college, you must have graduated and everyone needs to go to college. When actually there are many jobs that like you don't need to go to college for, uh, and we're, you know, putting people in $200,000, $250,000 worth of debt for, for no reason. I agree.

So it's a big thing. Um, so do you think that Columbia was an important factor in your evolution or your journey here to become an entrepreneur, or was it just you were, you know, based in New York and you were meeting the entrepreneurs and you were kind of getting the experience which you needed? Outside?

I mean, the university itself have an impact, I think, to like a small degree. Like, I think there's a community of folks, obviously, and you were part of this community, you know, Columbia Venture Community, etc. There's a small group of people that were interested in startups that I think, you know, it was nice to know there were other people around at the time. You know, I think that community obviously was very small when we were around in 2010, 2011, and it's gotten, you know, much larger since then. And there's a bunch of Columbia alums that have started companies, successful investors, et cetera, et cetera. Um, but I think a lot of it just had to do with being in New York, like with the, and the community was really small, right? Everyone was very eager to like get together and meet each other and, you know, go to meetups and stuff like that. The kind of stuff that I think just doesn't happen as much anymore in New York because there's so many people, you know, you run into tech people everywhere. Um, and so I found that just being in New York was in and of itself like a great way of getting involved in the industry. Um, and, uh, and I think that was probably a bigger contributor than the school itself.

Yeah, that's, that's an interesting thing you're saying about New York. When I started in the business in '06, I felt like New York was— the New York tech ecosystem was kind of like a large college campus. Kind of knew everybody or of everybody. If you went to the event, you'd see most of the same people after a few, you know, a few events. 6 months in, you know most of the folks.

Yeah.

And now it's, it's an institution, right? And there's, with that, I think we have a, we have a bigger machine, but it's a little less personal than it used to be, which I think is a downside. Um, let's shift over. Uh, tell us about Codecademy. Um, mind just starting kind of giving a full overview for folks who aren't familiar? I assume everyone listening is familiar at this point, but we can fill in the blanks.

Uh, yeah, we, so I started Codecademy in, um, in 2011. Uh, it grew out of a personal challenge at the time. As we discussed, I was an undergrad at Columbia, you know, studying political science, and I'd kind of experienced this, um, just massive gap between education and employment that existed, you know, and in particular in hard skills like programming and data science. Uh, and so I, as a non-technical person, wanted to learn, uh, and I just felt pretty stymied by the university course I took, which is a classic leader course. And there was really no other way to learn these important digital skills. And so my co-founder Ryan and I started the business under this belief that like we should, you know, be the easiest way to learn to code. Coding is 21st century literacy. And, you know, we should teach people in a way that was accessible, so low cost or free, engaging, so interactive, kind of easy to use online, giving you points and badges, and flexible, so you can learn it anywhere at any time. And that's kind of been the animating thing we've been focusing on for the life of the business. And I think it's become a little bit broader since the beginning of the business where now we think of our mission as connecting millions of people around the world to economic opportunity and doing that in several ways. I think number one, by helping consumers learn the skills they need to upgrade their careers. Number two, by helping companies learn the skills they need to stay relevant. And number 3, eventually by connecting those consumers and companies to facilitate labor mobility. And I think that, you know, just by way— by the numbers, in businesses touch more than 45 million learners around the world. You know, we've worked to work with governments like the US, the Obama administration's White House, the UK, Brazil, Argentina, a bunch of others to kind of help build these nationwide computer science education programs. We've worked with companies like Facebook to teach people how to use their technologies. And we now train large companies like IBM on how to become more tech-centric and help their employees be ready for digital transformation. And in the process of doing that, have built, I think, a business that hopefully does well by doing good, teaching tens of millions of people, like I mentioned, but also building a large sustainable business. We hopefully will eventually, you know, stay large and sustainable for a long time.

Love it. So which of the business lines you mentioned are the largest for you? Is it mainly the consumer-facing?

Yeah, the consumer-facing.

Business training?

Yeah, consumer-facing is the largest at this point. Um, you know, we have more than 100,000 paying subscribers to that product. The product's $40 a month. Um, Codecademy Pro teaches people, uh, you know, super basic skills, uh, all the way from super basic to super advanced., things like data science, uh, game development, mobile development, web development. Um, and it teaches you the skills with kind of an unlimited content library, uh, the ability to interact with a community of, of your peers, and then also certificates that you can get to show employers and kind of demonstrate the work that you're able to do.

So ironically, you, uh, avoided the college degree, but now you issue them more or less.

Certificates, not degrees. And I think, uh, for the— we believe the ROI for what we do, is significantly higher, obviously $40 a month versus, you know, $60,000 a year.

I believe it.

So you choose your subscription.

Yeah. Have you thought about, uh, making an official degree?

Yeah, we're, we're a part of a number of kind of universities, uh, programs today that, that do offer degree programs, um, kind of built around, uh, a Codecademy education. Um, less, uh, issuing formal degrees ourselves. Um, I think the hope for us is, you know, a lot of these formal accreditation processes require, you know, 6 months notice, a copy of a syllabus, you know, and an auditor to kind of sit in the class and make sure that, you know, that people are getting X, Y, and Z. And I think what we believe is that especially in technical education, things just move much faster than that. You know, there's a new framework that's released, you need to release a new course in that framework, you want to be the first to market. So you want to do that in weeks, but you can't, You know, an accredited degree in weeks, it takes, you know, months and then years to become, you know, a degree-granting institution.

That makes sense. Now look, uh, for, for folks who are less familiar with the company or your traction, you guys have raised about $50 million, if I'm not wrong.

Yep.

And you've secured that capital from some of the best investors in the country, if not the world. Uh, I know you were backed by USP Index. Um, you've done incredible things on the fundraising side. What has made your fundraising a success for the folks who are listening, who are entrepreneurs running their company, or people who want to be entrepreneurs in the future? What was the secret sauce for you?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if there's ever really been, uh, you know, secret sauce, quote unquote. I think, uh, you know, really the biggest thing is just always building a good business, if that makes any sense. Uh, like, I think we we're fortunate enough to focus less on like, what are the fundraising tactics we're going to use? And, you know, how do we get this round closed as fast as possible? And more on like, let's just build a business that actually attracts inbound interest. And I think that has kind of happened every financing round that we've done has been, we built something great, we kept our heads down, we weren't talking to investors all the time. And then, you know, next thing you know, we're getting tons of inbound emails from people that say like, wow, what a big business you've built. You know, we'd love to be a part of it., and we've answered those emails and then, you know, work with, with certain groups of folks, um, that, you know, believe in the vision and the future of what we are working on. So I think that is the most important thing. Like, I always find fundraising tips to be somewhat amusing because oftentimes, like, if you're building a great business, uh, you know, that is the most important thing. And eventually you had mentioned you didn't—

you had a dream situation. All the VCs were inbounding to you. That's what every entrepreneurship is— entrepreneur is hoping for.

Yep.

Were there things that you did that made them aware of the business? Was there a PR campaign? Were there activities that you think are just B2C in general that drive awareness? Why did this happen for you and not others who also have strong performance?

Yeah, I think, I think in general, uh, definitely being vocal about your success helps. Um, it's funny. I think we, we did a lot of this in the early days and I think significantly less of this now. Where, you know, I think, I think, uh, you know, we've been somewhat quiet about the business over the last several years. Uh, and, and so I think early on there's definitely a way to kind of build that drumbeat, especially if you're raising capital. Look, like it's clear that being in TechCrunch, you know, uh, places like that, you know, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, um, is super beneficial to your company. Uh, and, you know, releasing news often, being in, you know, in the conversation, um, is important. And I think, you know, when we have raised our most successful rounds of financing, you know, we did so kind of following, you know, some drumbeat of news from the company.

Did you hire an outside PR firm or was that a skill that someone on your team had?

We've always had the most success when we've done it internally. Okay.

And so in the early days, was that you or your partner or how was that done?

It was me. I think like a bit of a passion for journalism and, you know, and the media. And I think, you know, it was something that was important to me to get right early on, owning the story, telling the right narrative. And I think reading enough about great— reading what great journalists are writing and then finding out how your story fits into that, I think oftentimes is a lot more than most agencies are willing to do. They just want to send a press release out on the wire and spam 1,000 journalists about it. And so I think we tried to do something a little bit different.

So just taking a step back here from day-to-day operations, when I look at Codecademy, I see a great business and you guys have had tremendous success, but I also see it being part of a more of a macro trend, right? A transition in how the education market works and is evolving. You've alluded to part of that during this conversation already. How do you think the education market, the college level or otherwise, is going to evolve in the coming decade or so?

Yeah. Um, look, I think the, um, the biggest things that will happen in education are, you know, maybe number one, uh, I think that, uh, a lot of colleges and universities unfortunately will suffer and go out of business over the next couple of years. I think we saw this with the pandemic. It was really hard for many of them to reopen. It was really hard for many of them to shift And then I think in addition to the kind of the budgetary hurdles that are caused by all the things I just mentioned, I think a lot of them are facing folks that today are asking the question, why am I paying $80,000 a year, $60,000 a year, however much it is depending on your school, for essentially like a Zoom class that I can learn from home? And I think that shows you just how much of education has been taken out of college, for instance, like that really, you know, what you're paying for when you pay for a college degree for the most part is the sports teams, the dorms, you know, the student life, uh, and not actually the education. And so I think our hope is that these things get, you know, to use the tech term, quote unquote unbundled, right? And then basically you end up with a situation where, you know, people that are focused on education just do that. And as a result can provide really high quality, you know, sets of classes and whatnot to people with higher ROI. And that, that changes the game from a world where like you pay for college and you get this whole bundle of things that you might not necessarily need.

Now, the contrarian point here is that, look, the college experience is phenomenal, right? I met my wife during it. I had a lot of fun. A lot of people look back on that window of their lifetime very fondly. Do you think there's a scenario where campuses are maybe disaggregated or atomized from the actual educational content? Or is that too far-fetched?

No, I think that's definitely possible. Um, I think that that is the, yeah, the unbundling, if you will. I can, by the way, I don't mean to suggest in many cases that college is bad because I don't think that college is like uniformly bad. I just think in the current structure of college in this country oftentimes means that, you know, you have to go into incredible amounts of debt when like what you might be looking for is a high return on investment education. And instead you're getting a high return on investment education, the ability to watch football games, the ability to do intramural sports, you know, live in a nice dorm, all these other things. Um, and I think that that's kind of the thing that will, that will start to change.

Have you seen the documentary Ivory Tower?

I have not.

Oh, so you, one, you should definitely watch it, but anyone listening, Ivory Tower, I'm a little bit of a documentary nerd. Uh, goes, uh, does a deep dive into the evolution of the university dynamic, how they've been spending money, why there's student debt, and whether it all makes sense. And it's a phenomenal pattern that we're seeing unfold. And, um, I think like many things, uh, they get too heavy and too weighty, uh, they eventually break with the help of entrepreneurs or without them. So I think there's going to be some change here. That's a very fascinating documentary. We'll put that in the show notes.

Yeah.

Do you think, you know, when I look at the university market in particular, you know, there's some universities where there's a pretty clear argument for ROI, even though it might not be easy to calculate, right? You went to Columbia. Columbia is going to create value for you in, you know, in intangible ways for your entire life, right? Or at least your entire career. There are other universities that maybe don't have as much brand cachet, but might cost just as much. Um, do you think that, you know, if you had to put some target on this, is it going to be 10% of these are going to go away? 30? How does this evolve beyond the atomization of the university? Um, it feels like there's just so much bloat of people getting— I don't want to say suckered, but almost suckered into a costly education at this point.

Yeah. Um, and you're saying, how does it evolve from an ROI perspective, or how does Yeah.

Do you, or what do you think will happen with the actual landscape of universities? You're mentioning they might shut, some might shut down with COVID COVID's a little bit of an extreme situation. And I think it has highlighted the gap in the experience or the lack of necessity of being physically present.

Yeah.

But yeah. Is there going to be a contraction in the market of universities overall longer term?

Absolutely. I think so. Um, you know, again, I think there's this kind of fragmentation. You're going to have these awesome prestigious institutions, the Ivy League, many good state schools, et cetera. And then you're going to have kind of the middle that gets hollowed out. And then you're going to have hopefully, if the government keeps funding them, great community colleges and schools that actually deliver meaningful skills to folks and ROI-based institutions. Where I think you're going to struggle is if you're not a top 50 private college, And then the degree doesn't mean the paper it's printed on for the most part. Right. And so like, that's where we're going to start to see all that hollowing out is people saying, why am I paying for a degree where like I apply to go work at a company and they don't know the name of the school. And so it doesn't really confer very much credibility on me. And those are the schools that I think start to go away. And again, my hope is that that means that more people get access to— it's not about to me access to college. It's about access to skills and the way that they get access to those skills can be through a platform like Codecademy. Can be through, you know, a vocational school, can be through community college. Um, I think that's what we need to be thinking about. And for so long, the narrative in this country has been like, we need to send more high schoolers to college, because that was like the easiest, you know, metric of achievement. It's like, what percentage of our population goes to college? But no one has stopped to ask the question, like, is college the right place for them to go in the first place? Um, and, and why is it one size fits all? Many other countries, you know, Germany has an apprenticeship model, for instance. Many other countries have very solid vocational school education, and we have never focused on that here.

Are there other companies that are doing a similarly good job to displace and transform the education market? Are there folks you pay attention to and think, "Hey, these guys are helping with this movement"?

Yeah, I think there are plenty. I think there are a lot of companies these days that are, again, working on democratizing skills and knowledge and making them more accessible. And so I think obviously companies like Udemy are teaching anything and everything to people around the world and making it easy to pick up skills. There are a lot of good new, uh, you know, kind of class or cohort-based products that are starting to launch now. Um, you know, I think of it, some of the massively open online course platforms like Coursera, you know, are kind of still the structure of courses tends to be somewhat similar, you know, university-bound, et cetera, but I think are doing a good job kind of lowering the barrier to get access to courses like that over time.

So one of the things that's come up recently in the political landscape, and as we're talking about the companies that are really helping people adapt and change, is the change in the needs of the workforce. We had Jeff Wald on the show before this recording. Jeff Wald is a successful entrepreneur who is focused on work as a whole. The whole, you know, the future of work is probably the slogan everyone uses. And he said that what used to take 40 years for a skill to be displaced is now 4 to 6, something to that effect. Now, on the other side, you've got Andrew Yang, who's talked about universal basic income. And one of the motivations for UBI is it gives people a baseline income as they're attempting to retool or retrain as jobs are displaced through innovation. But he made the point that that has historically failed. The government's never done that well. So what skills are sustainable today, and how do we change the cultural paradigm, the expectations of employers, to enable the population to evolve and adapt to a more rapidly changing need of work and society?

Yeah, look, I think mindset oftentimes is like one of the biggest things. Um, I, I will say, I think, you know, technology skills, um, you know, understanding computational thinking, etc., super important, and that's a lot of what to teach. But I think the mindset of understanding that every 4 to 6 years, you know, or much faster than that, you know, your skills will be obsolete and you will need to focus on lifelong learning, to me, is the most important thing, right? I think a world where you like went to school, you got a certificate or a degree, and you did the same thing for 40 or 50 years in your career, those days are over. Um, and instead you need this kind of persistent, um, learning experience that, that you should expect over the course of your career. Um, and of course we think that the predominant of those skills will be technology skills that will be kind of the last to be outmoded. Um, and you will need to keep learning different types of technology skills, but, uh, you know, the concept of, of staying focused on those over time is relevant.

Yeah. I think we're going to, I would imagine this will ripple through to the recruiters, right? Right now they're looking, okay, where did you go to college 20 years ago? It might be, that might adapt to, hey, you haven't done a certificate in the last 5 years, you know, or you haven't gone and taken an online course. The, the concept of lifelong learning is a phrase that's thrown around. But it's not a requirement in the employment practices in our country yet. It's not an expectation. And that's almost bizarre given the rate of change of the demands of the workforce or business in general. Are there coding languages that you think will be more durable as you're teaching people? If people are signing up for Codecademy, are there languages that you think, hey, learn these because these are the ones that will last more than 6 years?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, I think JavaScript is the language of the web, has been for a while, will continue to be for a while. And so I think that's a pretty good assumption. I think Python has been a critical language for a while and now is critical in underpinning things like a lot of common data science that happens as well. And so I think those are probably the two that I would say are probably going to be around and durable for a while, the two biggest things that I advocate for people to learn.

That's super helpful. Okay, we've got a lot of people listening here who are would-be entrepreneurs. You are very close to this market and the transformation that's happening in education. Is there advice or direction you would give folks who are thinking about starting a company where they can add the most value? What does the industry need? What do we need to get solved as someone on the inside?

Yeah, I mean, I think the industry needs more people. There's a reason I do what I do, right? I think the industry needs more people that build things. We need more software developers, we need more designers, we need more product managers. I think that seems to be one of the biggest holdbacks to this industry doing, to being even bigger, is talent. And so obviously, I think, self-interested, but the first thing I would encourage most people to do is to learn the skills they need to have an impact in the industry. And oftentimes those are software skills. And I say this as someone who was non-technical and today I think rarely writes code, but Understanding and appreciating how the technology that's transforming everyday life works, I think, is kind of the most important skill that someone can bring into a tech company and, you know, help it grow faster and help, you know, technology transform our economy even more.

Right. So, but outside of the skill, uh, the tech industry and the skills you're delivering, are there other skill sets or educational areas that you think are gaps in the market that it would be great for entrepreneurs to pick up and solve to move the country forward?

The world forward in education specifically, you're saying?

Yeah. Are there other gaps in education right now that you think people need to jump on?

Yeah, I mean, I would say yes, but honestly, I think one of the biggest things that's happened over the course of the past 12 months is just an incredible explosion of education technology businesses for the most part because of the pandemic. And so I think you're seeing a lot of people— I would've said, why are we still learning on Zoom? Why do most schools not use technology? And for better or for worse, over the course of the past 12 months, I think obviously for society it's been not great, but I think there's been so much innovation in education that is kind of starting to be jammed into the school systems because we have no other choice. It's the only way people can learn these days is online. Got it.

So this is another byproduct, positive byproduct of the pandemic. Um, Just looking forward, you've done a lot of incredible things. I mean, you compressed someone's normal beginning career before they're an entrepreneur into your first 2 years of college. Where do you see yourself in 10 years? What is Zach Sims going to be doing for the world?

Good question. I'll ask afterwards if I got the job. Um, you know what, I, I think, um, I've always wanted to make an impact, and I think, you know, I've spent the past 10 years building this business, and I think it, you know, is a is a company that can have tremendous impact in the world, um, and be a huge business at the same time. And so my hope is that I get to kind of continue doing that, uh, you know, whether it is through this company or, uh, through investing or through building another company, um, that I'm able to, you know, have an impact on tens of millions of people, uh, and, and build a big business at the same time and a great place to work. Um, and I think, you know, near future, it's definitely still this company. I think Codecademy is kind of the rare combination of all those things, that opportunity to make an impact, the opportunity to learn a lot, and, you know, and also build a big business.

Yeah, you've had a good run. Uh, one of the questions I like to ask people at the end of this, uh, conversation is what thing they learned is the most important or helpful bit of advice they could share with other entrepreneurs. There's a lot of people listening that are carving a new path. Um, what's something that you wish someone would have told you that's maybe not in one of the cliché phrases out there today?

Yeah. I mean, I think, I think for me, the first couple of years of the business, I felt like I had to kind of persistently push my team, others, et cetera, to understand that, like, I knew what I was doing all the time. It was, you know, I was 21, but like, you could come work for us because I was really smart and I would teach you a lot. And I realize now it's actually like your job as a CEO or the entrepreneur to generally be like the dumbest person in the room, um, and, and to hire a team of folks that are just significantly smarter than you in every area. And your job to like stitch that group of people together and get them to work well together and provide strategic insight, etc. Um, but I think that kind of mindset shift of like, actually it's okay to not know something and to be the first person to raise your hand and say like, I don't know this. I— it's the only position in a company where when you don't know something, you can go hire someone who does. Um, and as a result, I think that like self-awareness of Figuring out what you don't know very quickly, um, not pretending to know it, uh, not being kind of inauthentic, uh, you know, saying I don't know and then finding out how to solve it. Um, you know, it was just a major turning point for me in kind of the first couple years of the business.

Humility is welcome in the CEO role.

Yeah.

Wonderful. Hey, thank you for being on. This was super insightful. I think a lot of people are gonna get a ton of value out of this. Thanks for sharing.

Of course. Thank you for having me.

Special thanks to Zach for joining me today. Codecademy is providing an important service and his journey has been absolutely incredible. If you like what you heard, please hook us up with a like or a 5-star review and feel free to share with a friend. You can find me on Twitter @MPD. To hear more of my conversations with innovators, subscribe on YouTube, Facebook, or any other major podcast platform. Just search for Innovation with Mark Peter Davis.