Zach Sims at Startup School NY 2014

TL;DR

Zach Sims recounts the founding story of Codecademy, from a failed idea for a job-matching platform to building a programming-teaching product three weeks before YC Demo Day that became the fastest-growing company in that batch.

Key insights

• The internet is a great equalizer: age, location, and lack of formal training do not prevent someone from learning and building.
• Building a product for yourself (the founder’s own need) is far easier and more motivating than building for a perceived market.
• Early feedback from peers, mentors, and even YC partners can be wrong; in Codecademy’s case, they were told there was no market for teaching programming and that they should not demo at Demo Day.