The EduPreneurs #04: Zack Galant, CodeHS

Zach Galant has been teaching programming since he was 14, when he started Tera Byte Video Game Creation Camp, a summer camp that teaches kids to make their own video games. At Stanford, he majored in computer science and was a Computer Science section leader and TA. The experience gave Zack and his partner Jeremy Keeshin important insights into teaching coding–and the conviction that every high school student should at least gain some exposure to coding.

They thought a for-profit venture was the best way to attack the opportunity. The duo co-founded CodeHS and launched as part of the third ImagineK12 cohort.

Hiring has been the biggest challenge–Zach wishes they had started earlier. Closing their first sale was also an important hurdle for the edupreneurs.

As a result of a viral Code.org video and winning the Education Nation innovation challenge, they gained massive exposure and now thousands of high schools use CodeHS to provide early exposure or full length courses.

December 9-15 is Computer Science Week.  You can find lots of ways to get kids involved at CodeHS.com/HourofCode.

The CodeHS team is also hosting  a Teaching and Learning Hackathon on December 14th at Facebook from 11am to 4pm. The space is limited for the event at 100 people, so fill out this RSVP form if you want to come.

Find out why Ed Lazowska, CS dean at UW, thinks “CodeHS has been looking pretty good to us for an intro course.”

For more, see Experts Weigh in on K-12 Coding & CS Resources

 
CodeHS is a portfolio company of Learn Capital where Tom is a partner.