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Two ways to answer this question. The practical answer is: $5MM isn't a lot of money to a VC firm. They have hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to inve

by hooande 14y ago

Two ways to answer this question. The practical answer is: $5MM isn't a lot of money to a VC firm. They have hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to invest. Ryan Carson has a strong reputation in the tech community and he's an accomplished guy. $5MM is nothing compared to the potential rewards from a working relationship with him. Treehouse is a good product and it definitely has value, but the potential that he could somehow lead them to the next facebook is also very appealing. Part of being a VC is knowing how to use money to open doors. To answer your queston about the mechanics of fundraising: They aren't just throwing their money away. They've bought themselves a share of the intellectual property and technical team that Treehouse builds. Carson could change his mind and decide to sell to an acquirer, or grow the business over decades into a public company. Even though he's blogging about not wanting an exit now, a lot can happen. Unfortunately, VCs won't extend this kind of a deal to just anyone. The rules are different for founders who are already well known. Everyone else had better have a sharp business plan.

hkmurakami 14y ago
Github is a prominent example of a company that changed course on the funding / no-funding and exit / no-exit strategy. I'm sure history is littered with examples of such a change of course. Further, there's the possibility of Treehouse raising more money in the future (let's say we have another crash in the market, or because they start facing really tough competition), and Ryan Carson is left with less than 50% of the voting rights. In that case, the founding CEO can just be pushed out so that the investors can pursue a strategy that maximizes their returns.
- marcamillion 14y ago
  You guys are missing the point. Github did not raise money BEFORE they figured out how investors would generate a return. They are likely to have an IPO. That's a decision you make before you decide to raise money. It is also a decision you discuss with the investors. If you take the money from them, without aiming to some sort of exit - or rather, under the pretense that there will be some exit and then "change your mind", that could easily be classified as fraud. Now...please don't be mistaken. I am not saying that Ryan Carson has committed fraud....but this is a big big deal - assuming that his investors were under the impression that they would have some sort of exit.
mnicole 14y ago
> Treehouse is a good product From what I can deduce (after paying for an account for the better part of a year) is that they've spent more in marketing than they have in developing something on par with the interactive experience you get from CodeSchool, Codecademy, etc. and hiring people that can create legitimate lesson plans and are good at teaching those lessons. None of these educational sites have hit the nail on the head, but Treehouse's lessons were less-than-engaging on top of making it entirely too easy for me to skip through their them to fake my [badge] credentials if I wanted to.
- rpm4321 14y ago
  I'm not knocking Treehouse - apparently they have a good reputation, and I haven't personally tried their product - but I was astounded at the number of employees on their About Us page: http://teamtreehouse.com/about http://teamtreehouse.com/about compared to the amount of content they have: http://teamtreehouse.com/library http://teamtreehouse.com/library I guess we know where the 5M went.
  - mnicole 14y ago
    From my experience, the courses look extensive, but they only go so in-depth. In taking the Intro to JS, the entire thing was like sitting through a student presentation. There didn't seem to be a transcript or a purpose and myself and the person I was going through it with became frustrated with the lack of QA and quit with the hope that they'd fix it later. The CSS courses seemed more about highlighting CSS3 features rather than teaching how to do it right and what to avoid. Color Theory can't be taught with radio button quizzes. There's a lot to bite off, and they seem to try to fit every lesson into a similar structure, but I don't think that's the best way of going about it. Will be interesting to see if getting the team all in one location makes the service better, but I'm surprised with the current offerings given, like you said, the amount of people on staff and on the big names on the advisory board. Ryan Carson might have a famous name that can attract these people to begin with, but I can't say that in the paths I went down that it made a difference.

by hooande 14y ago

hkmurakami 14y ago

Github is a prominent example of a company that changed course on the funding / no-funding and exit / no-exit strategy. I'm sure history is littered with examples of such a change of course. Further, there's the possibility of Treehouse raising more money in the future (let's say we have another crash in the market, or because they start facing really tough competition), and Ryan Carson is left with less than 50% of the voting rights. In that case, the founding CEO can just be pushed out so that the investors can pursue a strategy that maximizes their returns.

marcamillion 14y ago
You guys are missing the point. Github did not raise money BEFORE they figured out how investors would generate a return. They are likely to have an IPO. That's a decision you make before you decide to raise money. It is also a decision you discuss with the investors. If you take the money from them, without aiming to some sort of exit - or rather, under the pretense that there will be some exit and then "change your mind", that could easily be classified as fraud. Now...please don't be mistaken. I am not saying that Ryan Carson has committed fraud....but this is a big big deal - assuming that his investors were under the impression that they would have some sort of exit.

mnicole 14y ago

> Treehouse is a good product From what I can deduce (after paying for an account for the better part of a year) is that they've spent more in marketing than they have in developing something on par with the interactive experience you get from CodeSchool, Codecademy, etc. and hiring people that can create legitimate lesson plans and are good at teaching those lessons. None of these educational sites have hit the nail on the head, but Treehouse's lessons were less-than-engaging on top of making it entirely too easy for me to skip through their them to fake my [badge] credentials if I wanted to.

rpm4321 14y ago
I'm not knocking Treehouse - apparently they have a good reputation, and I haven't personally tried their product - but I was astounded at the number of employees on their About Us page: http://teamtreehouse.com/about http://teamtreehouse.com/about compared to the amount of content they have: http://teamtreehouse.com/library http://teamtreehouse.com/library I guess we know where the 5M went.
- mnicole 14y ago
  From my experience, the courses look extensive, but they only go so in-depth. In taking the Intro to JS, the entire thing was like sitting through a student presentation. There didn't seem to be a transcript or a purpose and myself and the person I was going through it with became frustrated with the lack of QA and quit with the hope that they'd fix it later. The CSS courses seemed more about highlighting CSS3 features rather than teaching how to do it right and what to avoid. Color Theory can't be taught with radio button quizzes. There's a lot to bite off, and they seem to try to fit every lesson into a similar structure, but I don't think that's the best way of going about it. Will be interesting to see if getting the team all in one location makes the service better, but I'm surprised with the current offerings given, like you said, the amount of people on staff and on the big names on the advisory board. Ryan Carson might have a famous name that can attract these people to begin with, but I can't say that in the paths I went down that it made a difference.