1. Continue expanding. Lambda School didn’t exist 18 months ago and we’re already one of the largest code schools in the world.
2. Build out a robust hiring network and platform.
We win when Lambda School students are hired.
In the next six months in addition to building out an incredible career services arm and curriculum, we’ll be hiring a full team whose responsibility it will be to make sure hiring managers everywhere are hiring Lambda grads.
Big announcement (that came out in The Sunday Times this morning):
Lambda School is expanding to the UK in 2019.
We’re working with regulators around how/to what extent a risk-free (for students) and deferred payment tuition model can be accomplished there. More to come soon.
A question I hear a lot: “Why don’t other code bootcamps just teach more computer science fundamentals?”
Not enough time. It’s the business model. People will only pay so much out of pocket, and you need to rotate through a lot of those in one building.
Why don’t they just adopt Lambda School’s business model?
Because it’s really freaking hard to do, requires financing, cannibalizes most upfront revenue, and you have to own the full stack: financing, the school, and outcomes.
Most educators don’t want to deal with/think about financing, cashflow, and risk management.
Finance people certainly don’t want to start a school.
And to do it really well you have to be willing to handle the full stack - admissions, the school, placement, and finance
Silicon Valley expects you to start a company by finding a problem you have yourself, solving it, and it being a problem for others.
But Amazon’s story was basically, “I did the math on this new thing’s growth, then systematically found the ideal product to play into it.”
I have a hunch a lot of founders actually have a Bezos-like story, then make up some apocryphal story that fits the narrative everyone expects to hear
Lambda School is kind of that way.
Of course I have endless stories about incredibly smart friends with crappy jobs, but honestly it was seeing a very broken but huge market I thought we could wedge our way into and win that made me take the leap.