Zach Sims (born 1990) is an American entrepreneur who co-founded

Codecademy Codecademy is an American online interactive platform that offers free coding classes in 13 different programming languages including Python, Java, Go, JavaScript, Ruby, SQL, C++, C#, Lua, and Swift, as well as markup languages HTML ...

, an online platform offering interactive coding lessons and tutorials. Sims served as the CEO of Codecademy, overseeing the platform's growth and development into one of the leading online resources for learning to code.

Biography

When Sims was 13, he started to email manufacturers with the idea to build a waterproof

iPod The iPod is a series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices that were designed and marketed by Apple Inc. from 2001 to 2022. The iPod Classic#1st generation, first version was released on November 10, 2001, about mon ...

case, showing his ambition for tech at a young age. Sims later entered

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

with the class of 2012, as a political science major. During his junior year, he realized that most of the students did not have the skill set relevant to their job search. He also worked for GroupMe, founded by his college friend Jared Hecht, after seeing him demo the application at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2010. However, he was frustrated with the lack of effective programming courses. As a result, he decided to teach himself coding with the help of his friend Ryan Bubinski, whom he met while working for the ''

Columbia Daily Spectator The ''Columbia Daily Spectator'' (known colloquially as ''Spec'') is the student newspaper of Columbia University. Founded in 1877, it is the second-oldest continuously operating college news daily in the nation after '' The Harvard Crimson'', a ...

''. The two built the first version of Codecademy to teach Sims how to program. In 2011, Sims and Bubinski were accepted into

Y Combinator Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 5,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, Californi ...

's summer program. That summer, Sims launched

with Bubinski and dropped out of college, a year before graduation. In 2011, the startup was the runner-up of

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American global online newspaper focusing on topics regarding high tech, high-tech and Startup company, startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. I ...

's Best New Startup awards, losing to

Pinterest Pinterest is an American social media service for publishing and discovery of information in the form of digital Bulletin board, pinboards. This includes recipes, home, style, motivation, and inspiration on the Internet using image sharing. Pint ...

. During the first weekend of the launch, it attracted more than 200,000 users and had 1 million users by the end of 2011. As of 2021,

has a user base of 45 million users. In 2013, Sims was named one of the finalists of the

Time 100 ''Time'' 100 is a list of the top 100 most influential people, assembled by the American news magazine ''Time''. First published in 1999 as the result of a debate among American academics, politicians, and journalists, the list is now a highly ...

. In 2015, Sims attended the

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental organization, international advocacy non-governmental organization and think tank, based in Cologny, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German ...

. Zach has been named to Inc. Magazine’s 30 Under 30 list

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sims, Zach Living people Y Combinator people American information technology businesspeople American chief executives Columbia College (New York) alumni American company founders 1990 births