A pair of Penn State alums are opening the first Philadelphia location of Code Ninjas – the Austin, Texas-based franchise that provides coding programs for children – on April 16.
David Ballinger, 27, and Jordan Smith, 26, will debut the location at 777 S. Broad Street next week. There, young Philadelphians will have a space to learn coding and receive a STEM education that is rooted in building video games. Code Ninjas, which has hundreds of locations across the country, including in Horsham, Malvern, Downingtown and Cherry Hill, New Jersey, is open to those ages 5-14 and uses a video game-centered curriculum to teach block-based programming, JavaScript and C# coding.
Families can enroll their children with a one-month subscription for $250, a three-month subscription for $240 per month, a six-month subscription for $230 per month, or a year-long subscription at a rate of $200 each month. The passes allow students to stop by for up to two hours of open coding per week. The Philadelphia outpost will also offer camps throughout the summer that start at $230 per week.
Ballinger and Smith said Code Ninjas is an alternative to after-school activities like sports and provides a space where "kids are having fun, not even realizing they're learning." They also hope it helps to feed into a pipeline of young STEM talent in Philadelphia.
"Coding is the future," Smith said. "Whether someone is working at Meta or they are an accountant, coding is the way all of the industries are moving towards. In order to stay ahead of the curve, kids will need to learn this stuff, but at the same time kids are already in the digital age."
Ballinger previously worked at Amazon.com Inc. as a regional training manager, but left to open Code Ninjas. Smith is a former Goldman Sachs strategist on Wall Street and current manager at Accenture.
The pair, who became friends while attending Penn State, have already hosted open houses and short preview sessions in advance of the location's debut. Ballinger and Smith said that they are nearing the company limit of 50 families that can enroll prior to the site's opening.
Their goal for their first year in business is to break even and other Code Ninjas franchisees have reported doing so within months of opening, they said. They will also look to add gadgets like drones, a three-dimensional printer and electric circuitry to give kids more options to explore technology in the space.
The franchise fee for Code Ninjas was $15,000. Ballinger and Smith did not disclose the total buildout cost on South Broad St., saying itis still fluid based on fluctuating construction costs.
Ballinger and Smith are looking at filling out a team of about six instructors to start, before likely adding more once summer camps get under way. To do that, they will look to draw from pools of computer science students at local universities where there is ample talent. Drexel University, for example, ranked among the top schools in the country for coding last year.
Code Ninjas is not the only local company in the coding education space. Philadelphia startup Coded By Kids has raked in over $1 million in funding as it strives to cut down racial and gender disparities in the tech industry by educating young children. Drexel and the University of Pennsylvania also host their own coding bootcamps.
While they have many goals, Ballinger and Smith, who both call Philadelphia home, said their first priority is the city's young people.
"The primary goal is to have an impact on the community, because if we can impact [them] positively, the rest will fall into place," Smith said.
