For @Codecademy's first 4yrs, we were in the 📰 every wk. Those weeks, we made $0. The past 4 years, we've been out of the headlines. Now, we've raised $40m, our first raise in ~4yrs.

How'd we go from the center of the hype cycle to the brink of bankruptcy and back? Read on...

We started @Codecademy in 2011. With software eating the world and few ways to learn to create it, we saw a huge opportunity. In YC, we built Codecademy as "the easiest way to learn to code." We posted it to HN as a Hail Mary before Demo Day and got 200,000 signups in 3 days.

We were off: the press loved it, we were on every 30 Under 30 list, won awards, and more. As a founder, all of this felt great...until we had to raise 💵 to stay alive. All the press clippings didn't add up to enough $ to demonstrate we'd built something people would pay for.

With a few months of cash left in 2015, we scrambled to build Codecademy Pro, our first paid product, with new courses and new features for learners.

Going from the center of attention to the brink of bankruptcy was a rude awakening.

We struggled, but hit $1m ARR in ~6 months to raise a successful Series C to keep the company alive.

On the way, we learned an important lesson: hype doesn't pay the bills.