Zach Sims
CEO & Co-Founder
Codecademy
Codecademy (founded August 2011) is a learning website dedicated towards teaching people how to program. It first started out as a place to learn JavaScript but has since expanded to include various platforms, languages, and skill sets. Codecademy has received $12.5 million in investor funding since 2011. There are approximately 25 million users of Codecademy from all over the world. Codecademy employs a game-based style of learning with points and badges to showcase user progress.
Zach Sims graduated from Columbia University in 2008 with a BA in Political Science. While in university, he met and became friends with Ryan Bubinski with whom he would found Codecademy. During their university years Ryan and Zach setup a group called the Application Development Initiative for students to learn aspects of programming. While it wasn’t their first focus as a startup venture, it would appear to be the inspiration that lead to Codecademy. Sims has had experience with other technology based companies with Drop.io, AOL Ventures, and GroupMe. Although none of them in an executive capacity. Sims appears to be the business side of the venture where Bubinski was the developer side. There is not much information on their advisors and board members but they do include the standard angel investors and venture capitalists.
I think the story and motivations behind the founding of Codecademy are really interesting. The fact that Sims and Bubinski had an actual problem with no good solution that lead them to create a useful resource for others is inspiring. Obviously they aren’t in the venture just for a big payout. They truly believe in the idea of helping people learn to become developers.
