

37signals invests in The Starter League - wlll
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3241-37signals-invests-in-the-starter-league

======
brittohalloran
Working with 37S will easily be the best thing that ever happened to Starter
League. Perfect fit, the _creators_ of Rails, Chicago locals... etc. I'd love
to see Chicago become the anti-silicon valley. A place for more practical,
"get rich slowly" types of tech businesses. 37S is the perfect cornerstone. It
just feels right with Chicago's blue collar roots (I am biased -- a Chicago
native).

Separately, I love the fact that the name has been changed (CodeCademy
conflict was awful), but The Starter League doesn't have the same instant
semantic meaning as Code Academy did. Sounds almost like a startup incubator
at first.

~~~
nealsales
We definitely have an affinity towards our original Code Academy brand, but
unfortunately we had some confusing overlap with another awesome company -
Codecademy. Zach Sims and his team are great and he and I have been good
friends since we've discussed how to resolve our name confusion. I'm happy
that we'll be able to support each other going forward. We encourage our
students to use resources like theirs and Treehouse in order to prepare for
some of our in-person courses.

As far as the name change not having the same semantic meaning, I completely
agree, however "teaching people to code" was never our only purpose. We wanted
to provide a path for people who wanted to start change -- in their
industries, in their communities, in their lives. To us, being a Starter means
so much more than just being able to write code; it's about being driven to do
something meaningful with it. A Starter is an innovator, a disruptor; someone
who is burning to solve problems and is willing to bust their ass to learn
what they need in order to do so.

We are also not a place that you visit for three months to acquire a skill and
then leave. You don't just attend, graduate, and then disconnect. To be a
member of The Starter League means to have earned a permanent place in a team
of people dedicated to supporting one another in ongoing efforts to learn and
build, to solve meaningful problems for ourselves and others.

We are not simply an academy for coders. We are a League of Starters.

~~~
larrys
"Zach Sims and his team are great and he and I have been good friends since
we've discussed how to resolve our name confusion."

So I'm assuming by the above you mean you've become "good friends" after this:

<http://www.udrpsearch.com/wipo/d2012-0857>

Tl;dr

[http://domainnamewire.com/2012/06/21/codecademy-beats-
code-a...](http://domainnamewire.com/2012/06/21/codecademy-beats-code-academy-
in-domain-dispute/)

Was there an attempt to avoid the UDRP process before and if so why didn't it
work?

------
jasonfried
I'm here to if anyone has any questions about the partnership, the reasons
behind the investment, the vision, or anything else.

~~~
cs702
jasonfried: You write, "this isn’t a traditional investment. We’re not looking
to get out, we’re looking to stay in."

I have to disagree with your choice of words: the investment you guys just
made _is the truly traditional, old-fashioned kind_. Consider what John
Maynard Keynes wrote about the difference between the way in which
professional investors invest in a business, versus the way in which
entrepreneurs since time immemorial have committed capital to business
endeavors. Most professional investors, Keynes wrote:

    
    
      are, in fact, largely concerned, not with making superior long-term forecasts
      of the probable yield of an investment over its whole life, but with foreseeing
      changes in the conventional basis of valuation a short time ahead of the
      general public. They are concerned, not with what an investment is really worth
      to a man who buys it "for keeps," but with what the market will value it at,
      under the influence of mass psychology, three months or a year hence.[1]
    

Before the advent of financial markets, all investments were made "for keeps"
by people looking to "stay in."

Congratulations on making a _traditional_ investment.

\--

PS. FWIW, Keynes accumulated a fortune by investing his own capital during his
lifetime.

\--

[1] <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300071h/printall.html>

\--

Edits: added more context and clarified my key point.

~~~
jpdoctor
> PS. FWIW, Keynes accumulated a fortune by investing his own capital during
> his lifetime.

And FWIW: He also lost a fortune by investing in his own lifetime. (He was
nearly wiped out in the 1929 crash, which he failed to foresee.)

~~~
sausman
+1

The Super Myth of Keynes as a Great Stock Market Investor:
[http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/03/super-myth-
of-k...](http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/03/super-myth-of-keynes-as-
great-stock.html)

 _He was 83% long going into the downturn that resulted in the 1929 crash (p.
21)So how could Keynes be a great investor with such a bad performance?
Because Keynes, the evil bastard, along with Bernard Baruch, talked FDR into
confiscating the gold owned by all Americans. He then loaded up his portfolio
with gold mining stocks and then urged FDR to prop up the price of gold._

...

 _Bottom line, as far as I'm concerned, Keynes was a terrible investor, as
shown by his pre-gold mining stock losses. The only time he made real money in
the markets was when he traded on inside information about FDR's plan to drive
the gold price up, and loaded up on gold mining stocks. Got that? The man who
called gold a "barbarous relic" in his 1924 book, Monetary Reform, had 66% of
his portfolio in gold mining stocks in the 1930s._

------
startupstella
Congrats to all parties involved! I was part of the Spring Dev Class at Code
Academy and couldn't be happier for Neal, Mike, Jason and the rest of the
hardworking folks who made this possible.

Particularly, I applaud the emphasis on using the Starter League as a
springboard for starting a career and/or lifelong relationship with
development. Too many programs sell the idea of launching a startup from 3
months of beginner coding which is ridiculous. Even the rebrand "Starter
League" emphasizes the commitment...perfect. If anyone is interested in my
perspective on the class, here's a post I wrote soon after:
[http://entrepreneursunpluggd.com/blog/should-you-do-code-
aca...](http://entrepreneursunpluggd.com/blog/should-you-do-code-academy)

------
simonbarker87
I was confused at first given that 37 Signals are famed for avoiding growth
for growth's sake and a focus on not taking external VC style investment - I
thought "damn, these guys just undid years of sound advice" and then I saw the
key line

"This isn’t a traditional investment. We’re not looking to get out, we’re
looking to stay in."

Awesome, glad to see someone investing for reasons other than flipping a
company

~~~
leftnode
37signals themselves have taken $10 million in external non-traditional VC
[1].

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2006/07/20/37-signals-takes-jeff-
bezos...](http://techcrunch.com/2006/07/20/37-signals-takes-jeff-bezos-
investment/)

~~~
simonbarker87
Well I never, you learn something new every day. In my defence I hadn't even
heard the words Venture Capitalist in 2006... thanks for the link though

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tedmiston
I'd like to hear how Jason or others feel this approach compares to online
coursework which is arguably more dynamic and interactive than books (and
often free/cheap). For example, Udacity's CS253 Web App Engineering course [1]
taught by Steve Huffman which covers building a blog in App Engine.

I'll admit I had trouble staying focused in the coursework (and completed only
~25%) despite ASP.NET experience, and desire to improve my web dev skills.

1:
[http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs253/CourseRev/apr20...](http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs253/CourseRev/apr2012)

~~~
jasonfried
Different people learn in different ways. There are lots of people - me
included - who don't learn well from books or online tutorials. We need to be
immersed in the environment. We want to be able to ask questions and get human
responses. The Starter League is especially well suited people like this.

------
nemesisj
This is the other side of for-profit education, something that's been turned
into a bit of a dirty phrase (not without reason in a lot of cases). The fact
is non-traditional education that costs money and provides great results is
alive in a whole lot of industries, and it seems like the tech industry is
slowly starting to catch up a bit. That's great news. I think it's also great
news because some of the platforms that outfits like Treehouse or Code Academy
(the online JS school) are using are really really nice. A welcome breath of
fresh air.

------
mattm
While it's great to read about the success, this part gets me:

> They put up a simple web site and announced that they were accepting
> applications. And soon enough they had more applications than they had
> spots.

Methinks there is more that was done between step A and B rather than just
putting up a webpage and sitting back. Would you be able to give more
specifics on what they did between those two steps to get all those
applications?

~~~
tg3
I went to an IdeaMensch talk by Mike McGee (co-founder), and it was actually
surprisingly little. They knew what they wanted to build (a physical school,
great space, excellent teachers, etc) but one of their funding opportunities
fell through right as they were running out of money.

They decided to see if they could bootstrap it by getting 30 students who were
crazy enough to enroll when there wasn't any of the stuff promised in place
yet.

There were way more than 30, and had to reject a number of applicants. They
rented their first space (at Groupon I think) less than a week before classes
started, and bought the iMacs just days before it started.

Long story short, they shipped, and it worked.

~~~
morningwarrior
Pretty close @tg3! Glad I was making a little sense up there...

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kadavy
Great move by both of these companies. I had dinner with Mike McGee (one of
the co-founders) a couple of months ago, and could hardly believe my ears when
I heard his story of bootstrapping Code Academy. These guys generated serious
revenue with nothing more than a static website, then figured it out from
there.

------
qdpb
I am wondering, are there any studies with regard to how successful developers
who "couldn’t learn from books" are? Or who need encouragement to "make a
definitive commitment to learn"?

This is just so drastically different to what learning programming was for me.

------
brandnewlow
Congratulations Neal and Mike. You're helping people make their lives better
in a tangible way. I'm really impressed that you found a way to scale up and
grow the company within Chicago through a route I doubt many other
entrepreneurs there would have considered!

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raheemm
This is great! But it also sounds suspiciously like a 37 Signals incubator.
Nothing wrong with that. In fact, that would be awesome. There is room for
incubators that are not investing to "get out" but to "stay in" and help build
cash-flow profitable businesses.

~~~
jasonfried
This isn't an incubator. We're not making investments in the companies that
might come out of The Starter League. Also, starting a company isn't required
to attend The Starter League. You just have to want to learn how to build and
ship software. You could use these skills in your existing job, get a new job,
or, if you want, go out on your own. It's entirely up to you.

------
tonyrocks
A truly amazing turn of events. How to get into the tech business without
being techie. Neal's plight is not too dissimilar from many a tech
entrepreneur learning to code, create, work or monetize their endeavours. The
eureka moment for Neal is that he inadvertently realised he wasn't a coder,
and became an event marketer. People like the glamour of coding, but it's
anything but glamorous. There’s a level of intense curiosity that's required
to figure it all out, so if you're struggling to learn 'holed up' at home,
chances are it's not right for you, and that's fine. Neal found his skill,
that said, the skills he's selling might not be yours.

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tehwebguy
This is awesome!

One of my favorite things about programming with other people is when one of
us has one of those magical moments where something just "clicks".

Sometimes it's simple like when someone finally understood OR in MySQL (I
couldn't believe some of the things he had built without using it!).

I can still remember the time I first got the difference between server and
client side code, and the first time the DOM really made sense - that one blew
my mind, I felt like I could see the matrix!

You guys are helping people have those moments!

------
patrickryan
This is awesome. I spent the summer working from Excelerate Labs at 1871
Chicago, where Code Academy (now Starter League) teaches their classes. Neal
and Michael are doing things right, and the Chicago tech/startup community has
benefited greatly from it. Jason Fried was a mentor at Excelerate this summer
and it's great that he's giving back to the Chicago community. Chicago is
becoming a new hub for startups, and the Starter League has graduated many
talented developers that are now working on their own startup or for others.

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kremdela
It's interesting that the courses are on-site in contrast to 37S pro-remote
working stance.

I definitely agree with the point their are limitations to learning on your
own. (books vs. instructor)

But I'm a 100% remote worker and wonder how much better I could be learning
from / with my colleagues in person vs. online chat.

I know that being in a real-life tech community is a huge asset over not, but
personally I wonder how much better I could be if I were able to live in The
Valley, Chicago, Austin...

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logn
I'm glad to see these types of schools getting traction. I've never thought
that CS was necessary to be a good programmer. In fact, the only parts of CS
that legitimately helped me in my career were two courses: Data Structures and
Discrete Math (covering amongst other things, big O).

If there's anyone in Portland Oregon interested in starting something similar,
I'd be interested in talking with you.

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miles_matthias
Really happy to see this partnership. It's definitely a perfect match.

My favorite line: "They built something for themselves on the hunch that there
were plenty of people out there just like them. And they were right."

In a constant stream of articles about market research, fund raising, and
investing, this is refreshing to be reminded what should be at the heart of
all startups.

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martinshen
Was looking at The Starter League's class work and I really love their Rails
for Designers course outline. Does anyone know a meetup, online course or real
course like it?

ref: <http://starterleague.com/rfd>

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xfernandox
This is awesome! This truly is the way forward with technical education. I
feel exactly the same way as Neal did.

I'm enrolled at the debut semester of The Flatiron School, a similar program
based in New York, and I'm super excited to improve my coding skills.

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xbryanx
Does the Starter League plan to expand beyond the Ruby stack at any point?
Python...etc?

~~~
jasonfried
No plans right now.

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harper
I am very happy for Neal and his team and, of course, 37signals. This is a
great partnership and will lead to some great work.

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finkin1
Man, I love 37signals. Read all their books.

~~~
tnorthcutt
No offense intended, but this doesn't really add to the conversation (IMO).

~~~
redguava
I didn't know you could fit so much "passiveness" into one sentence.

