Codecademy received their initial upswing in users (200K) once they announced their product and funding after going through YC. The initial HN post received around 700 upvotes because the use of the repl.it project was somewhat of a novel approach to teaching a person Javascript. They later gained the 100K users when announcing CodeYear. AFAIK, nearly all of their growth has been driven by the press. Crunchfund is an investor (TechCrunch has written about them 12 times in the past 5 months) and Fred Wilson is a prominent blogger who mentions them since USV is an investor.
It's partially their investors, partially the ease of starting with Javascript, partially the game mechanics and point system to incentivize engagement, and the focus on conversions by putting the editor on the home page for example. While the JS lessons are simple enough for almost anyone to start off with, it's questionable how far a user can go off those alone.
It's partially their investors, partially the ease of starting with Javascript, partially the game mechanics and point system to incentivize engagement, and the focus on conversions by putting the editor on the home page for example. While the JS lessons are simple enough for almost anyone to start off with, it's questionable how far a user can go off those alone.