After six years in operation, homegrown Durham code school Momentum Learning is shutting its doors permanently.
“I am incredibly grateful to everyone who has helped make Momentum a reality… more to come, and for today, simply sharing the news with you all,” CEO Jessica Mitsch Homes wrote on LinkedIn Wednesday.
In an interview, Homes said it came down to the rise of generative AI and its impact on entry-level technology roles, which happened “faster than we ever could have imagined.”
Throughout its history, the firm has tried to “look around the corners” and stay ahead of technology, changing its curriculum to accommodate the demand. But last year it became clear that the rate at which companies were adapting and using AI technologies instead of software programmers was fast – so fast that it was tough to keep up.
“We were able to fill demand really, really quickly,” she said. “The demand just dried up.”
According to the company’s LinkedIn post, having fully delivered its remaining March classes, “the Momentum team will begin to wind down operations.”
The company said it had helped more than 400 people transition into careers in the technology industry “with incredible success.”
“Our trained technologists have filled critical jobs at over 120 companies,” the post reads.
Momentum founded out of the ashes of another code school, the Iron Yard, which shut down in 2017.
At the time, Iron Yard, which had campuses in Raleigh and Durham as well as places like Columbia, South Carolina, Minneapolis and Salt Lake City, said that it came down to the “challenge of a nascent market, as well as the demands facing all institutions in the higher education marketplace.”
Homes was Iron Yard’s Triangle-based executive director of growth and strategic partnerships.
Four months after Iron Yard’s closure, she became CEO of a new company, Momentum Learning, to operate in the same Capitol Broadcasting-owned Durham space as Iron Yard.
At the time, it was billed as “immersive code education courses,” three-month classes to help people transform their tech careers. Homes said then that Momentum could succeed where Iron Yard had failed “by focusing local.” The community would dictate what the school taught, she said at the time.
And it had local support, as Capitol Broadcasting-owned American Underground lead its first outside financing, a $375,000 round in 2017. Its partners included companies like Clarkston Technology Solutions, Spoonflower and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina.
The company announced a $3.6 million fundraising series, led by the investment arm of Clarkston Consulting, in 2019.
As for Homes, she said the next few weeks will be focused on winding down the operation. She has taken on a new professional role that she'll start soon.
"We’re really proud of it," she said of Momentum. "We made it to six years, we got to profitability, there’s a lot of good."