On Tuesday, the company said it had raised $7 million in a Series B round led by Kaplan Ventures and including the Social+Capital Partnership. The new cash brings the company’s total amount raised to $12.35 million.

Like competitors Codecademy, LearnStreet, lynda.com, Udemy and others, Treehouse offers online videos and lessons on web development, programming and other technical skills. With the new funding, CEO and founder Ryan Carson said the company plans to focus on product development and increase its headcount. Treehouse currently employs 55 people, 60 percent of which are involved in course development. While some rivals, including Codecademy and Udemy, build their libraries by letting anyone create lessons, Carson said a big differentiator is Treehouse’s emphasis on having in-house experts create curriculum and teach online.

Another benefit of the new round, said Carson, is the involvement of Kaplan Ventures, the early-stage investing arm of education company Kaplan Venture (which is a subsidiary of the Washington Post Company). He declined to elaborate on what their involvement could mean for Treehouse’s future, saying only that it will help with “key strategic developments.” But given that a big new focus for the company is reaching high school students, one could imagine that Kaplan’s network would come in handy.

“One of the key things we’re trying to do is to get people job-ready right out of high school,” Carson said.

Since January, the company has piloted a program with high school students at schools in three cities and is aiming to roll out to other schools this fall.  In the school where students have progressed the most, Carson estimates that 50 percent of students will be ready for technology jobs paying $30,000 to $40,000 by the end of the program.

The six-month program, which will cost schools $9 per month per student  (discounted from the $25/month it charges customers who come directly to its site), is intended to give schools a way to teach computer science even if they don’t have teachers skilled in that area. Students can watch the videos at home and then work on projects and ask questions in class.  Teachers only need to stay one lesson ahead, Carson said.

To date, the company said it has attracted 26,000 paying customers, most of which are individual customers, not enterprise customers – a key consumer segment for lynda.com and a likely target for other similar startups. But Treehouse is smart to focus on high schools, which are facing increased calls for enhanced computer science education. Startups Codecademy and CodeHS also offer (free) learn-to-code tools for schools, but there’s plenty of room for more. As non-profit Code.org points out, less than 2 percent of students study computer programming and despite the fact that programming jobs are growing at double the pace of other jobs, programming is not offered at 90 percent of U.S. schools.

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Sure, Silicon Valley luminaries share the stories of their humble beginnings (Gates says his first program was for tic-tac-toe). But NBA all-star Chris Bosh talks about coding in college before joining the Miami Heat and the Black-Eyed Peas’ Will.i.am says “great coders are today’s rockstars.”

The message of the film – just like the over-arching theme of the nonprofit: the country needs more coders and, really, it’s not as hard as you think.

Code.org, which launched last month, was founded by brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi to bring more attention to the need for more coders and increase computer programming education opportunities at schools around the country. As evidence of the problem, it says:

• Less than two percent of students study computer programming – tripling that could close the gap between students and jobs
• In 41 states, computer science doesn’t count toward high school graduation requirements
• Programming jobs are growing at double the pace of other jobs but programming is not offered at 90 percent of U.S. schools

Code.org’s site offers learn-to-code tools supplied by Khan Academy, Codecademy and Scratch. And it’s enlisted big-name supporters from different industries to help with its campaign. Other tech leaders include Marc Andreesen, Ron Conway and Sheryl Sandberg, but it’s also recruited politicians Al Gore and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the presidents or deans of Stanford and Harvard, celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Bono and top scientists and doctors.

The short film, which was directed by Lesley Chilcott (producer of An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman), will be distributed to teachers and classrooms across the country. And, according to The Seattle Times, Microsoft is paying to have the movie shown as a trailer in select theaters.

In the past year or so, we’ve seen several startups — including Codecademy, Udacity, LearnStreet and others – rush in to fill the skills gap between what our digital economy needs and what students are learning. (Earlier today we covered the Peter Thiel-backed Thinkful, one of the newer startups in the learn-to-code space.) We’ve also seen the rise of technology high schools — like Brooklyn’s Pathways in Technology Early College High School recently endorsed by President Obama — that put programming and STEM skills at the center of the curriculum. But by featuring voices from industry, pop culture and politics Code.org stands to bring awareness to a wider group of people.

Below, check out the video:

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But despite the plethora of options — or, rather, because of it — New York-based Thinkful believes it can still make a splash with its three-month-old online learning startup.

Launched by Darrell Silver and Dan Friedman, one of the first recipients of the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowships, the startup combines education content already available online with one-on-one tutoring and mentorship. It opened its doors at the end of 2012 and on Tuesday said that it had raised $1 million in seed funding from Peter Thiel’s FF Angel, RRE Ventures, Quotidian Ventures and others. Thinkful also said it’s the first startup founded by a Thiel Fellow to receive funding from Peter Thiel.

“We launched Thinkful because we saw that the skill sets we need to be productive workers are changing so quickly,” said Friedman. “I saw this in my peers — as they discovered what work they love, there’s this huge gap in the skills that they need to get these jobs and there aren’t great ways to fill those gaps.”

For $750 for three months (or $250 a month, in case students want to move at a faster or slower pace), students on Thinkful get online access to instructional videos and other content, a cohort of students with similar goals and a personal mentor. To start, students complete a skills assessment, which helps Thinkful create a custom curriculum. Then, throughout the course, they meet with their mentor weekly, communicate with their peers and have the option to attend daily office hours, all online.

Content is a commodity; the experience makes the difference

But, interestingly, unlike most other online education companies, the startup doesn’t produce its own content. It pulls in mostly free content from across the web, from sources like Codecademy and others, but it is open to paying as well. For example, it has a partnership with CodeSchool to access the startup’s paid lessons. Instead of competing with other providers of instructional content, Friedman said his company is complementary.

“There’s just a limitation to something that’s primarily about learning in the browser and watching videos,” he said. “We have a much more deep educational experience and we consider them potentially partners.”

To Thinkful, he added, quality online content is a commodity and it’s more like the “textbook” for the course. Any given student will spend just 20 percent interacting with content (online videos, browser-based lessons or text) and the other 80 percent completing projects guided by trained Thinkful mentors, who are domain experts with field experience and, ideally, teaching or tutoring experience.

I agree that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel if good content exists and that one-on-one instruction will likely lead to better course completion and engagement rates. But I wonder how the providers of the free content will react as the startup grows. For now, Thinkful is small and new — just 30 students have enrolled, with five completing a course so far. But as the startup adds users and increases profits, its relationship with companies that create the content could be tested.

On one hand, Thinkful could say that given all the possible free content — from places like Khan Academy, Codecademy, LearnStreet and others — it is giving content providers exposure to new users. On the other hand, over time, content providers might feel entitled to a piece of the profit made from the use of their content (or something in-kind).  Friedman said they don’t know how the relationships will play out long-term but emphasized that it wouldn’t change their business. And he added that the CodeSchool partnership shows that they’re willing to pay for high-quality content. Even though Thinkful only focuses on web development for now, Friedman says it has plans to expand into other subjects.

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With the new lessons, a student could access historical tweets or tweet from her website with Twitter’s API; explore her heritage and health risk with 23andme; or build apps for scouring the latest designs on Gilt. The full list of new partners includes WePay, Twitter, Box, Evernote, Microsoft Skydrive, 23andMe, Mashape, Gilt Groupe, Ordr.in, Firebase, Easypost, Github, Mandrill (mailchimp), and Dwolla.

“We really wanted to have a diverse set of partners that were real consumer brands – brands that people use in their everyday lives – so that we could show them that programming isn’t just abstract,” said Zach Sims, Codecademy’s co-founder and CEO.

For students on Codecademy — whether they’re first-time programmers or more experienced developers — the lessons provide ways to create tools they can actually use and are connected to media sites, productivity apps and other consumer sites they frequent. As we’ve said before, that project-based approach is wise given all the options for learning how to code online (although others also focus lessons around specific projects). For the partners, it’s a way to get more exposure among a big and growing group of developers. The lessons are provided by the partners and Codecademy has said there is no financial relationship between the companies at this point.

Codecademy declined to share specifics but said “many thousands” of users have taken its API classes to date.

Image by spaxiax via Shutterstock. 

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On Thursday, LearnStreet, a learn-to-code startup incubated at Khosla Ventures, announced that Toney has been named the startup’s new CEO.

The company, which launched in November with $1 million from the venture firm, has been CEO-less until now. In a statement, Vinod Khosla said he expects Toney’s experience with consumer brands, as well as his familiarity with startups, to help LearnStreet grow.

In October, Toney left Zynga, where he had been for a few years, first as the general manager for Poker and then in a similar role in mobile. Prior to that, he worked at Cake Financial (which was acquired by ETrade), Nike and eBay. He’s also served on the advisory boards of several startups and has been an angel investor.

He said he was drawn to LearnStreet because of his interest in education, as well as a recognition that the digital economy is changing the skills people need to participate.

“I think the opportunity is massive and transformative and anyone can see the direction that all economic indicators are leading toward,” he said.

In the last few years, the learn-to-code landscape has become increasingly crowded with companies like LearnStreet, Codecademy, Treehouse, Coursera and others – all interested in some way in helping people hone programming skills online.

When it launched, LearnStreet said its goal wasn’t to be a place for people want knowledge, but a hub for those who want to actually build something. Through its “Code Garage,” for example, students can choose from a range of kits that help them learn by creating games, calculators and other digital tools.

Toney said LearnStreet will continue to focus on a project-based approach and, while it will expand horizontally into other languages, its real opportunity will be in expanding vertically to accommodate learners at different levels.  He also said the company plans to do more behind-the-scenes building to use its data to personalize each student’s online learning experience.

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On Monday, Codecademy launched a DIY program that lets anyone code their own holiday card in a drag and drop environment that also enables them to see the HTML and CSS behind them. To create the “CodeCards,” you select from a variety of backgrounds (like a snowy landscape or a row of Christmas stockings), objects (ornaments, snowmen, etc.) text options and effects (falling snow or music). For each component of the card, Codecademy provides the code, which you can then copy and paste (and manipulate if necessary) into the coding environment.

Once they’re created, you can share the cards with friends, as well as see the most popular cards and others recently created by users.

“We think project-based learning is super important and this is an awesome way for people to apply the skills they’ve learned with Codecademy, or elsewhere, and make something cool to share with their families and friends,” said Zach Sims, CEO and co-founder of the New York-based online learning startup.

On its site, users have long been able to choose from a range of courses that help students learn  the basics of coding languages, such as Python and Ruby, as well as how to build specific features and tools, such as a tip calculator or a recipe card.

But earlier this month, the startup launched Codecademy Projects – a new set of courses that help students build concrete applications, such as a CSS-styled button or a web form — to take things to a higher level, Sims said. The CodeCards launch is another example of the company’s larger focus on project-based learning. There are more online options than ever before for learning how to code — and, as we’ve written about previously, Codecademy has been masterful in encouraging a growing learn-to-code movement. But I think the company’s bigger emphasis on projects and kits (an approach also embraced by new rival LearnStreet) is a smart way to give people coding lessons around the things that they’re interested in and then, ideally, get them interested in some of the platform’s other classes.

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In the 14 months since its launch, Codecademy has attracted more than a million aspiring hackers with its online courses on programming and web development.  But more than that, he and his cofounder Ryan Bubinksi have become the faces of an emerging learn-to-code movement, winning kudos from the White House and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Much of that attention is due to the early popularity of the site, the caliber of its investors and exceptional timing — in an age of smartphones and other connected devices, technology has never been more accessible, and the people skilled in its languages never more in demand. Rockstar startup CEOs, from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley to Tumblr’s David Karp, built their startups (or at least the first iterations of them) with coding chops. But even those who don’t aspire to that kind of success believe that, as the economy goes digital and the Internet touches every part of our lives, understanding computer code, even at a basic level, is the key to keeping up and remaining employable.

Codecademy may not have been the first to ignite an interest in coding, but Sims has played an active role in fanning it.  When he talks about Codecademy, it isn’t just in terms of the Ruby, Python and JavaScript courses that they offer. He puts algorithms right up there with reading, writing and math as measures of basic literacy (even if people don’t learn to write algorithms, he believes they should still understand how they can be used). Codecademy, to hear it from Sims, isn’t just a platform for getting coding lessons — it’s a way to stay relevant in a changing world. And programmers aren’t just another class of skilled workers; they’re the drivers of the future economy.

“We’re building what I think is 21st-century education. It’s interactive, it’s community-driven, and it’s fun. … It’s not about bringing what’s offline online, it’s about creating a new learning experience for more people on the Web,” said Sims. “Not only do we want to create more programmers, we want to create people that are just conscious of what they’re doing.”

But while Sims has been expansive on the grander vision, he has been less vocal about Codecademy’s business model. The company has yet to report that it’s earned any revenue, and Sims’ challenge now is to build a money-making business amid increasing competition and ongoing debates over how much programming most of us really need to learn.

“[It] concerns me – this concept that coding is as fundamental as reading and writing. …For the subset of people who say I love computers and I want to learn to do this stuff, I’m in no way interfering. But don’t tell people that programming is a core skill in life,” said programmer Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Exchange who blogs at CodingHorror.com. “They’re scaring people [by implying that] if you don’t know this you’re going to fall behind.”

Right place, right time

Sims, who grew up in Greenwich, Conn., said he was drawn to the Internet and entrepreneurship early on. As a 7th grader, he convinced manufacturers in China to sell him iPod cases in bulk, which he then resold on eBay. And in high school, he wrote and managed writers for Rev2.org, an early blog on tech startups and trends.

Soon after arriving at Columbia University in 2008, he joined the Columbia Venture Community. Even though he decided to major in political science, he immersed himself in New York’s tech world, quickly learning how to parlay introductions with local startup founders into internships. In addition to a stint at Drop.io — which he scored after attending a talk founder Sam Lessin gave on-campus — he interned at AOL Ventures and GroupMe. Often, he said, he logged long 40-hour workweeks on top of his schoolwork.

Andy Weissman, partner at Union Square Ventures, one of Codecademy’s earliest investors, said that when he first met Sims he was so “omnipresent” that it didn’t even register that he was still a student. “He’s someone who seems to have a good ability to be in a lot of the right places at the right time,” said Weissman.

Codecademy founders Zach Sims (left) and Ryan Bubinksi (right)

One of those right places was the office of The Columbia Daily Spectator, Columbia’s student newspaper, where he met Bubinski. In addition to sharing Sims’ interest in journalism, Bubinski started a campus programming community, the Application Development Initiative, which ultimately influenced some of the pair’s side projects and later their startup.

Even then, Sims was notorious for packing his days — and even nights — with activities. “[In college] it would somehow come out that he was sleeping four hours a night because he was taking two more classes than he was supposed to, working part-time for [a startup], reading two books and fully up on everyday news,” said Hope Weissler, a longtime friend who has known Sims since elementary school. And way before he had a startup to pitch, she said, he had a knack for getting the people around him interested in whatever it is that draws his attention, from the serious (politics and technology trends) to the “silly” (like the fancy pens and custom notebooks he favors). Weiss, as well as others who know him, say Sims is deeply curious and has a sponge-like ability to absorb information — if he’s not devouring a book on his Kindle or reading articles online, he seems to be grilling the experts in his life to learn as much as he can.

The pivot

When Sims and Bubinski decided to apply to startup accelerator Y Combinator in the summer of 2011, their business idea was a new way to evaluate programmers through quizzes and challenges. But as with so many startups, it was a pivot that got them to where they are now. While building out their initial idea, Sims struggled to keep up with Bubinksi, who was the better programmer. So barely a couple of of weeks before demo day, they switched gears from their original idea and turned their problem into their business, launching Codecademy as a browser-based, interactive way to learn to code online.

In a matter of days, the site became a viral hit. In its first 72 hours, Codecademy attracted 200,000 users and by October 2011, it had raised $2.5 million from top VCs, including Union Square Ventures, SV Angel and Founder Collective. Before what would have been his senior year at Columbia, Sims dropped out to focus full-time on Codecademy and, since then, it’s raised another $10 million.

The startup also got a big boost from its learn-to-code Code Year initiative, which it launched last December, just in time for resolution season. In the first 48 hours, it spurred 100,000 sign-ups and won a Twitter endorsement from Mayor Bloomberg. Meanwhile, the White House this summer announced a program with Codecademy to train low-income youth. It is also beginning to make some headway with public schools, thousands of which are using curricula and flyers from Codecademy to support after-school computer science clubs.

Lots of options for wannabe developers

But Codeacademy was hardly the first company to offer online programming instruction. Lynda.com, O’Reilly, CodeSchool, Think Vitamin (which later became Treehouse) and others provided wannabe developers with some form of online courses, ebooks, video instruction and tutorials, some of which used interactive, in-browser tools similar to Codecademy’s.

But Sims and Bubinksi recognized that many of the other sites were missing an opportunity to reach a bigger audience. They either relied on one-directional instruction (such as video and text), targeted those who already had some coding experience, or made it daunting for new students to get started. Instead, Codecademy presented a clean, unintimidating interface that promised users “the easiest way to learn to code” – for free.  And, to get started, Codeacademy users didn’t have to click through multiple pages of directions; all they had to do was type their first name into a big box on the homepage.

In pitching the startup to the public and press, Sims has positioned the company as more of a leader of cause, than a company, with aspirations to expand around the world. “His abilities as a marketer, to explain in really emotional and simple terms what he’s trying to do… is amazing for someone of his age,” said Weissman.  “He has an innate ability to describe and articulate what they’re doing in ways that matter to lots and lots of people.”

Can Codecademy be more than a ‘gateway drug’ to coding?

But Codecademy has had its criticisms, too — from aspiring hackers, more seasoned programmers and education technology observers. A key part of the company, as well as a key reason investors are so enamored with it, is Codecademy’s reliance on the network effects of its users, who each add to the overall value of the program. Indeed, more than 25,000 course creators have contributed lessons to the platform. But the quality varies and many say the courses assume too much knowledge on the part of the student. Codecademy chooses which courses to feature and provides some structure so that students can get a tracked experience. But while it launched with courses created in-house, it now mostly takes the courses submitted by users and retrofits them into a quasi curriculum instead of creating a curriculum from scratch based a thesis of how people should learn how to code.

“I think it’s a smaller gateway drug into programming, where people can try it and learn about it. But I think they seriously overstate their actual effectiveness,” said Zed Shaw, an experienced software developer and author of several programming books, including “Learn Python The Hard Way.” “It’s a complicated topic to teach … and there’s not a lot of research in how to teach computer science. The idea that you’re going to get a bunch of random programmers, who are notoriously bad at explaining programming, to teach — it just doesn’t fly.”

A little bit of coding certainly can’t hurt anyone, but is the market for user-generated coding classes really big enough to build a business model around?

Codeacademy has been enormously successful in drawing in users, yet it’s not clear they’re able to get them to stay. Of the 400,000 people who eagerly signed up for Code Year, Sims said only that “a lot” continued. But one could imagine that, as with most New Year’s resolutions, many people gave it up after realizing the real commitment learning to code requires. Speaking broadly about the site, Fred Wilson, a Union Square Ventures partner and Codecademy investor, recently acknowledged that just a very small percentage of the people who land on Codecademy actually end up making it through the process and able to write software at the end.

Initiatives like its after-school clubs and meetups, which bring an offline component to its online lessons, certainly help the company expand its overall pool of users. But for Codecademy to become a revenue-generating business, it’s still going to have to start giving users, even those that don’t want to become full-on programmers, a tangible reason to stick around. Which could become even harder as more startups like Udacity, Coursera, Khan Academy, and others give it some tough competition.

To his credit, Sims has not shied away such questions and criticisms. He says the company – just like its co-founder and CEO – is still evolving. “It’s all a work in progress,” he says. “I feel like everything is that way.”

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Launched in public beta Wednesday, the Palo Alto-based startup was incubated at Khosla Ventures and has received $1 million in seed funding from the venture capital firm. In addition to being its lead investor, Vinod Khosla is a member of the company’s board.

Recognizing the rise of the digital economy and perhaps inspired by high-profile startup success stories, more people are looking for lessons in Python, Ruby and other languages of the Web.  And, plenty of startups, including Codecademy, Khan Academy, Coursera, Udacity and Treehouse, are meeting that demand.

Sanjay Desai, one of LearnStreet’s founding members and EVP of products and marketing, is well aware that the company is entering a crowded space. But he said that, LearnStreet’s goal isn’t to be a place for those who want knowledge, but a hub for those who want to build something.  In a sense, he added, LearnStreet wants to do for coding what Instagram did for photography.

“We think about LearnStreet as equipping people with coding as a different tool to express themselves,” he said. “We think of this in terms of the Maker Movement – helping you hone a craft and let you express that craft.”

Getting started is very simple – similar to Codecademy, users can start learning to program without signing in. But Desai said they made an extra effort to support newbie coders with live chat and Twitter capabilities. On other platforms, he said, users drop off because learning to code is challenging and they can’t get quick assistance when they have questions. But LearnStreet instructors are available nearly 24-7, he said, to answer questions via email and Twitter. So far, the site offers about 30 lessons on JavaScript, Python and Ruby, which were all created in-house.

In addition to the courses, Desai said, LearnStreet provides a “Code Garage” that offers a range of kit-like projects (40 so far) that let students learn by doing and create their own games, calculators and other tools. Just like the Maker Movement has inspired people to manufacture their own tangible goods with 3-D printers, for example, he said LearnStreet hopes to enable them to make digital ones.

Considering the number of competitors it has in the learn-to-code space, LearnStreet certainly has its work cut out for it. But its Maker Movement-like messaging could certainly help attract new users who might not want to learn coding for professional reasons but are still interested in digital projects. And, the extra support it provides beginners – with Twitter and chat assistance – is definitely another selling point. But, as with other startups teaching programming online, success comes down to the quality of its classes and whether it can show that students are actually learning.

“The thinking here is that it’s trying to get you to a place where you can build something and get that sense of achievement that will inspire you to do more,” Desai said.

Image by graja via Shutterstock.

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