Codecademy, the New York startup that wants to teach the world to code, has capitalized on widespread interest by raising a second venture round of $10 million from top investors — Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Union Square Ventures and Yuri Milner — and serial entrepreneur Richard Branson.
It’s been at the right place at the right time. Thousands of people now want to start their own tech companies, but haven’t learned the necessary technical skills. Millions more are finding code useful for their other jobs, anything from setting up form emails to crunching data in spreadsheets.
The startup has evidence that this trend is global. It has racked up around 100 million code submissions already, cofounder Zach Sims tells me, with half its users coming from outside the US. In addition to more hires and other scaling needs, some of the new funding is going towards internationalization. Versions of the site are coming in five of the most popular languages to date, including Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and German. You’ll be able to find them at URLs like codecademy.com/ru (which is already live).