In general, press for early stage startups is something you get because you work hard at it, have an effective strategy to get it, and (sometimes) have the reso

In general, press for early stage startups is something you get because you work hard at it, have an effective strategy to get it, and (sometimes) have the resources to hire help to get it. In this way it is not unlike achieving success in other parts of building a startup. Very little of it is the press looking at all of the companies in the space and blessing the ones they deem best. PG wrote an essay on this topic that's somewhat old but still on-point: http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html Edit: That said, I'd add that I disagree that there is nothing new or special about the Codecademy product vs. it's competitors. I'm not sure I really understand why it's better myself, but I have certainly seen it inspire and click well with more new coders than other such sites, so there's probably something I'm missing specifically because I'm not a beginner.