How One Startup Got 100,000 Users In 2 Days

At the beginning of this year, Codecademy came up with a smart idea to improve the size of their database. The folks at the online service that teaches people to program, released an offer that will send a lesson to people each week of 2012 to help them learn to code. The team seemed to tap into a feeling out there that programming is becoming a must-have skill for everyone in the workforce because over one hundred thousand people signed up for the Code Year service in a couple of days.

Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist who has an investment in Codecademy, gave some more insights on his blog about why he thought the campaign worked so well:

1) an awesome idea. “give me your email address, we’ll send you interactive coding lessons weekly” is a damn good idea.

2) well timed – launching as a “new year’s resolution” is genius. but also launching in a “dead news period” was equally genius. jan 1st and jan 2nd of this year were slow news days.

3) the landing page is clean, simple, and well designed. the call to action is simple. here’s a blog post from the designer explaining how that page was designed.

4) the use of twitter and facebook to spread the word is simple and powerful. after you give your email address, you are given the option of tweeting out or posting to your wall.

5) a small ask. they didn’t ask for money, the service is free. they simply asked for an email address, something everyone has and most are willing to share in return for real value.

Useful tips for any modern marketer!

At time of writing, over 150,000 people have subscribed to the service.

Code Year