Codeacademy, an online classroom for the aspiring programmer, has netted $2.5 million in venture funds. The company announced yesterday that it had completed its first round of financing, led by Union Square Ventures and other firms. The company was launched this past summer, and claims that more than 500,000 people have used the site since then.
“Our main goal is to hire people to help manage content and add new features,” Codeacademy co-founder Zach Sims told reporters. “Right now there are still only two of us working on the company.” Sims and co-founder Ryan Bubinski were classmates at Columbia University.
The two say they want to give the average person a shot at learning programming skills. “We’re pushing out more JavaScript courses and getting close to releasing more languages, like Ruby and Python,” Sims said. “As soon as we have more content, this site becomes a very deep experience and way to make basic coding knowledge available to people for free.”
Read more at The New York Times.
