Hadi PartoviVerified account

Our mission hasn't changed since our first year 2013. We launched in 2013, and even the very first #HourOfCode we focused on and celebrated diversity of participation. Even my planning docs before my first hire referenced broadening participation by underrep groups.

It's possible our messaging was refined or changed in a way that made it on your radar later.

Lastly, I don't think our funding is why we have scale, I think it's the other way around. We weren't the best-funded to start. 10M girls tried @codeorg the first #HourOfCode. We were 13 people, 1 year in, total lifetime spend of $3.2M.

Negative. Any founder (for profit or non-profit) will tell you that hyper growth/scale is a derivative of resources. You’re being disingenuous to claim otherwise. And I say this as a founder whose org has had more demand than we could meet since day one.

Our story may be an exception. Our launch video (which was personally funded by me and my brother on a shoestring budget) had 10M views, ~1M petition signatures, ~20,000 teacher signups, before we had a single employee or outside funding.

That said, I didn't contest we had resources - my own time/connections are resources. We started with that, built an audience, then got funding. It is a virtuous cycle. Teachers and students don't choose @codeorg because of our funding. We have to earn their support every day.

Teachers. You use educators as a shield to discussion of issues and that’s unfortunate Hadi. Every single founder and org doing this work has community. Yours are teachers. Mine? Legions of Black/brown and other techies who want a more diverse tech community.

And the parents (like myself btw) of Black/brown babies who “will” be future leaders and innovators in this space.