Neal Sales-Griffin and Mike McGee founded The Starter League, one of the first code bootcamps, with the goal of helping people solve problems through technology and code. Since The Starter League's launch in 2011, up until its acquisition by Fullstack Academy this March, over 1,500 students learned tech and entrepreneurship skills through their program.
Now the duo is bringing that philosophy to a new audience: middle school and high school students.
The Sales-Griffin and McGee are taking over CodeNow, a Y Combinator-backed nonprofit that hosts coding workshops for students from low-income backgrounds in six cities across the US. Sales-Griffin will be CEO (and will help Fullstack part-time with their Chicago operation) and McGee will be director of programs, joining a team of six full time and two part-time employees. Current CEO Ryan Seashore will join the board of directors.
They aim to retool the program to focus on software that solves problems and expand to new cities, including Chicago.
Currently CodeNow hosts weekend workshops in partnership with tech companies, but the events are largely one-off. Sales-Griffin and McGee will continue to teach coding basics, including Ruby on Rails and Apple's coding language Swift, but also expand curriculum to cover design thinking and product management. They also hope to make the commitment extend for several years, offering in-person and online resources to students leading into college.
"Students are going to walk away with even more than just a fundamental understanding of computer software," he said. "They’re also going to understand how to effectively build software, why they should build it and have experience understanding a particular domain where they could solve a problem with these skills."
Students are going to walk away with even more than just a fundamental understanding of computer software
Sales-Griffin declined to go into additional detail about the set up of the programs, but said the new format would roll out by January 2017, if not sooner. Over the next few months, their big focus is fundraising and building on their most robust programs in New York City and the Bay Area. Chicago is the next site for expansion, and that's where the two will stay based.
"Over the past five years, we have proven to the world that product development is an in-demand skill for adults," said McGee. "Our next mission is to build an organization that teaches product development, problem-solving and critical thinking skills to high school students. We couldn't be more excited."
The focus on diverse students from low-income backgrounds--76 percent of CodeNow students have free or reduced lunch and 47 percent of their alumni are women--hit home for Sales-Griffin.
"I couldn’t sleep at night thinking about the fact that [in] a lot of the kids… I see myself," he said. "These kids have the same background as me. I’m from the South Side of Chicago, I come from a low-income background, it wasn’t easy growing up."
"There was not a snowball’s chance in hell that I would be exposed to, or even become a successful software programmer, designer, any of that stuff. I didn’t know I could do that," he added.
However, through resources and mentors he overcame the odds, attended Northwestern University and founded The Starter League (then called Code Academy) with fellow student McGee in 2011. Around the same time, he met Seashore. During the first winter break from the Starter League, Sales-Griffin flew out to DC to help with one of the first CodeNow workshops.
Fast forward five years: Amidst The Starter League acquisition, Sales-Griffin got drinks with Seashore, who mentioned he was looking for someone to infuse new energy into their programs.
"This is personal for me and it is for Mike too," said Sales-Griffin. "We see ourselves when we participate in these workshops and we go into that room. We share our stories but also teach these skills and show what they can do with it. This is the most important thing in the world to me."
"The fact that we could reach these kids at the middle school and high school level and take everything we’ve done with the Starter League and now infuse it into this nonprofit that allows it to scale nationally as far as its impact, it was just like…there’s such a huge opportunity there," said Sales-Griffin.
"I’m excited to show you all that we have a lot more gas in the tank for what we can do for the city and beyond," he added.
