Treehouse Lands $7M From Kaplan, Social+Capital To Help You Learn To Code

Treehouse launched in late 2011 on an ambitious mission: To help anyone learn to code and design for iOS, Android and the Web, regardless of their technical know-how. By combining the video-based approach of Lynda.com and learn-to-code platforms like Codecademy, Treehouse aimed to create an educational platform that leverages video, quizzes, a splash of gamification and project-based learning to help aspiring app developers and engineers learn the trade. By charging students between $29 and $49 for access to its content, Treehouse was quick to profitability and by September, more than 12,000 people (ages 7 to 50) were paying for its platform. Since then, its user base has grown to over 25,000 active students in its system, and, based on this traction, Treehouse is announcing today that it has raised $7 million in Series B financing from Kaplan Ventures, with participation from existing investor, The Social+Capital Partnership. The round follows the $600K in seed financing it raised in October 2011 from Kevin Rose, Reid Hoffman, David Sze and Mark Suster, among others, followed by its $4.75 million Series A in April of last year, bringing its total capital raised to over $12 million. In conjunction with its new capital, the startup is also announcing today that it is in the progress of launching its first high school pilot program, which aims to train high school seniors to be job-ready for engineering positions without needing a university degree. The program will run for six months and the total cost of the program will be $9/month. Treehouse’s move into high school follows its recent college scholarship program, in which it offered 2,500 free of its “Gold” accounts to college students in the U.S. for a full two years. Because Gold plans are $50/month, this worked out to $3 million-worth of free Treehouse — the equivalent of what students would have had to pay out of pocket. Treehouse Founder and CEO Ryan Carson told us at the time that the reasons for its move into high school and college are a response to the absurd cost of higher education, which is only expected to continue to rise. Treehouse wants to offer students of all ages a comparable quality of education that doesn?t involve student loans. Even though one might believe that a university degree is required for success in the job market, the founder has told us that he thinks that smart, interactive education

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