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🚀 This Week's Growth Hack: 4 Growth Hacks Behind A $525m Exit

I stumbled across Codeacedmy during college when I wanted to be Mark Zuckerberg. I actually met the Founder at a meetup even in NYC back in NYC before he launched the product. Since then they have reached 50,000,000 users, hit more than $40m in revenue, and was acquired for $525m in 2021.

Needless to say it’s a Growth Hacking masterclass that we all should study! So let’s start here…

Building a Platform for Beginners

In 2011, learning to code required navigating a labyrinth of tools and high technical knowledge. Setting up a development environment involved juggling text editors, version control systems, servers, and domain registrars. Codecademy's founders, Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinsky, saw this complexity as a barrier and envisioned a simpler solution: a single web application where users could write, compile, and deploy code directly within their browser.

This browser-based approach removed a significant hurdle for beginners trying to learn to code. Furthermore, Codecademy offered a free tier, removing the financial barrier to entry. These decisions proved crucial. While competitors like Udacity and Coursera focused on broader academic subjects or video-based learning (often with paywalls), Codecademy offered a free, interactive platform specifically designed for those new to coding.

Growth Hack 1: When everyone in your space charges a fortune and makes it hard to get started, find a way to deliver value for free and make it as easy as possible to get started! Your onboarding should be a slide, not a set of hurdles.

Capitalizing on the "Software is Eating the World" Trend

While the platform itself was innovative, Codecademy's early growth was also fueled by a strategic PR campaign. They capitalized on the prevailing tech narrative of "software is eating the world." Every industry seemed to be adopting software solutions, leading to a widespread belief that tech skills would be essential for everyone. Codecademy positioned itself at the forefront of this movement, offering a way for anyone to get started with coding basics.

This narrative resonated with journalists eager to write stories about the future of work. With founders like Zach Sims, a charismatic young entrepreneur with a "disruptive" image, Codecademy secured MASSIVE media coverage on shows like Good Morning America and garnered attention from tech VCs. This media blitz not only generated brand awareness but also provided valuable backlinks to the Codecademy website, boosting their search engine optimization (SEO). They even made all course content publicly viewable, ensuring their lessons appeared prominently in search results.

Growth Hack 2: Tap into culture trends with PR and make sure to secure backlinks on the outlet’s site to help boost SEO!

Making Learning Fun and Engaging

It’s one thing to get a bunch of users, it’s another to keep them! Codecademy beleived that traditional learning methods could be dry and uninspiring for this new group of soon-to-be tech programmers. To combat this, they embraced gamification techniques inside the web browser. Unlike competitors offering passive video lectures, Codecademy offered an interactive learning experience coupled with badges and rewards and levels. Users could write code directly in the browser, receive instant feedback on their progress, and feel a sense of accomplishment after the make progress via badges and status. This hands-on approach kept users engaged and motivated after the initial PR blitz.

They even implemented "hot streaks" to reward consistent progress, further incentivizing users to return and continue learning. These techniques, borrowed from the playbook of companies like Zynga, proved highly effective in keeping users engaged with the platform.

Growth Hack 3: Use gamification to keep users coming back.

From Free Users to Paying Customers

By 2017, Codecademy had amassed a massive user base of 50 million. However they still wondered how to convert these free users into paying customers? The answer came through a strategic shift from a freemium model to a free trial model.

Traditionally, Codecademy offered a "freemium" model, where users had access to all content for free with the option to upgrade for additional features. However, research from other freemium consumer apps like Evernote and Dropbox suggested that a free trial model could lead to a higher conversion rate.

A/B testing the two confirmed their hypothesis. When presented with a 14-day free trial with limited access after the trial period, users were four times more likely to convert to paid subscriptions compared to the freemium model. This transition was crucial for Codecademy's financial success.

Growth Hack 4: Don’t give away stuff free forever! The data showed that a 14 day free trial converted freebies into paying customers 4X higher than a “Free Forever” plan…

To Recap:

Growth Hack 1: When everyone in your space charges a fortune and makes it hard to get started, find a way to deliver value for free and make it as easy as possible to get started! Your onboarding should be a slide, not a set of hurdles.

Growth Hack 2: Tap into culture trends with PR and make sure to secure backlinks on the outlet’s site to help boost SEO!

Growth Hack 3: Use gamification to keep users coming back.

Growth Hack 4: Don’t give away stuff free forever! The data showed that a 14 day free trial converted freebies into paying customers 4X higher than a “Free Forever” plan…

Which one of these Growth Hacks will you tap into this week?

Main source: The Growth CMO

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