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Codefund – Crowdfunding for Aspiring Coders

44 points by dalibrandi 12y ago

dalibrandi 12y ago
Hi Hacker News, I want to introduce Codefund, a crowdfunding platform for aspiring coders. We have built a platform that enables users to crowdfund their tuition after being accepted into a programming bootcamp. Our first campaign is now live, and we're fundraising for Rose Afriyie, who has been accepted into the Starter League (http://www.starterleague.com/ http://www.starterleague.com/) in Chicago. She's hoping to learn web development in order to continue building mRelief, a social services app she is developing in partnership with the City of Chicago. Check out her campaign here: https://www.codefund.io/campaign/rose https://www.codefund.io/campaign/rose twitter: @codefunding ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Codefund is the bootstrapped project of Adrian Moses and Dana Alibrandi. Adrian is a software engineer with a keen mind for good products, and I'm a product manager filling in the gaps. We're aware that there are holes in our product, but we feel like this platform is something that should exist in the world. Maybe its current iteration isn't the ideal, but if you agree that we should find a way to help diversify and bolster the tech industry, then we'd love to hear your feedback on how to improve. And most importantly, donate if you believe in the campaign and want to see Codefund grow :)
- sgibat 12y ago
  Funny, I had this idea as well. What about abstracting the app academy model and vying for investors instead of donators? That is, people could donate money in exchange for x% of the applicant's first year of income after coding school.
  - dalibrandi 12y ago
    Definitely something we've thought about, and it's similar to what Upstart offers bootcamp applicants. Our only hesitation was that it's a debt-based solution, which is something that we want to avoid at all costs. Contributing to the growing student debt amount doesn't seem like the right move. Taking the step to change your life through empowering yourself with skills should be easier, and we want to reduce roadblocks as much as possible.
    - sgibat 12y ago
      True, it's a debt-based solution, but the most innocuous of debt-based solutions. But, I like your sentiment/mission statement.
- johnny_utah 12y ago
  On https://www.codefund.io/discover https://www.codefund.io/discover, why are you logging an object that contains all the information on the page? Open the chrome console to reproduce. Cool idea though! How do your terms compare to something like gofundme?
  - dalibrandi 12y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out, we're working on fixing it. As compared to gofundme, our terms are similar in that there are no penalties for missed deadlines and the fundraiser gets to keep any amount they raise. It didn't seem right to reject donations just because the goal wasn't met. If a fundraiser can raise any amount, then it makes their future debt much more manageable. We've been tossing around the idea of removing the deadline, but because of the gap of time between acceptance and your first tuition payment, we inserted a deadline to focus donations in our limited timeframe. In the future, we can encourage applicants to create campaigns as quickly as possible, in order to maximize the amount of time before the first tuition payment. In theory, fundraisers can continue their campaigns until their full tuition is covered, where a portion of the total is sent directly to the school in order to cover that particular payment period. At the very least, it will buy fundraisers more time to cover the total cost of their needs.
sbilstein 12y ago
I like this idea but it turns financial aid into a contest. Why not distribute pooled funds after aspiring programmers apply using a FAFSA or something similar?
- dalibrandi 12y ago
  FAFSA isn't an option for bootcamp applicants. Most (if not all) of these schools aren't accredited, therefore, the options for financial aid are extremely limited. We're played around with the idea of targeting larger scale donors who would donate amounts that we could spread evenly across all applicants. Definitely agree with you though, there is a gamey element to it that I would like to do away with. However, I will gladly entertain that solution for now considering that the potential social benefit far outweighs the cons of it being a contest.
  - sbilstein 12y ago
    I guess my thinking is, rather than collect small donations for individuals...use their individual stories to collect funds for the pool. I don't think any of these schools are accredited given their is no accreditation for software engineer out there.
    - dalibrandi 12y ago
      I like this a lot too; it's similar to an idea we tossed around at one point, where Codefund becomes a non-profit scholarship fund and we recruit donors at a higher level, i.e. larger average donations. Still in the cards, so we'll see after Adrian and I get a chance to go through and discuss all of this awesome feedback.
tonysuper 12y ago
As a young (18 in a month) programmer myself, I enjoy this idea. I'm not certain about distributing aid in this manner, however. A lot of kids who would deserve this might not necessarily be the best at presentation or marketing. Still, it is nice to see people taking an interest in young coders. There's a lot of support for teaching kids programming, but I sometimes I feel like those supporters don't know what to do once we actually learn.
- dalibrandi 12y ago
  First off, congrats and good luck on the journey. I also have some misgivings about this particular form of aid distribution. It's very possible that some extremely deserving candidates miss out on aid because they aren't the best at marketing. In that regard, we offer some basic marketing suggestions and efforts around their campaign, and it's something we hope to improve upon in the future. I don't necessarily think Codefund is THE solution, but I think that it's A solution, and it's one that we can keep iterating on together.
josephschmoe 12y ago
The problem with crowdfunding education is that most people with wealthy connections can already afford college.
- dalibrandi 12y ago
  Very true, especially if the donations are mostly coming from friends and family. Codefund will require users to demonstrate need, in order for us to fulfill our mission of providing aid to those individuals who truly need it. If we're going to bolster and diversify the tech industry, then we need to address the problem of bootcamp tuition funding, which currently, is very expensive for the average individual with no programming experience looking to make a dramatic career change.
jtheory 12y ago
I find I'm uncomfortable with many of the new ways crowdfunding is being applied; this isn't the worst, but it's not great either. Crowd-funding works psychologically pretty cleanly for funding new product development, or artistic work. If it's a thing you want to exist and you think the would-be creator can do it, you fund it, the creator's idea is validated, the thing is (hopefully) made, and you get to enjoy it. If you don't fund it, it sort of says "I don't feel a strong need for you (creator) to built that (thing) -- but doesn't pass a strong judgement on the creator, even if you know them. With "crowd-fund your medical expenses", for example, I'm much less comfortable. Reading a plea, then choosing not to fund someone's treatment for a serious illness feels like saying "I don't care if you die", when that's not at all what I'm feeling. I'm also uncomfortably, acutely aware of what people who post a crowd-funding effort to save my life or save my home etc. must feel like when the effort fails -- like the world at large, but even worse, the people who know and seemingly care for them, don't care enough to save them. These projects have noble goals -- people need help with medical expenses; help them reach out to others for help! -- but it forces people to put a price on things we'd rather not, but with weird twists ("I really want to help you, but I'm pretty sure this alternative treatment you're trying to pay for is snake oil..."). Codefund isn't as bad, on this spectrum, but it still feels a bit dark to me. Negative feelings a campaign can invoke: - you start a campaign, convinced your super-supportive friends and family will carry the day. It fails. Does this mean they don't care as much as you thought? Or that they don't think you can succeed? - You are 6 months out of university, and stressing over how fast your salary disappears, halfway through each month. A not-yet-close friend who you have been trying to impress sends you a link: they're crowdfunding hacker school! How much do you have to contribute (with a credit card, gritting your teeth), to avoid alienating them? If you think of crowdfund efforts as direct conversations (rather than "interactions enabled by the internet"), it becomes more obvious which ones are really uncomfortable. The level of discomfort is partly cultural -- maybe there are subsets of Americans who feel it's basically "okay" to ask for something you maybe shouldn't, and be told "no" (and be okay with that), but for many, many people this is not okay, people will feel obliged to say "yes" but resent you horribly, and so on. A crowdfunding platform that basically enables painfully-uncomfortable conversations at internet scale isn't an unalloyed good -- I think there must be better solutions to these problems out there. Sorry for the ramble; I'm not totally clear on where I stand, but curious to hear what other people think about it. [Edit: minor tweaks to what I was saying about Americans vs. the world... didn't seem accurate.]
RadioactiveMan 12y ago
When I first visited http://codefund.io http://codefund.io, I received nginx's default page. After visiting https://codefund.io https://codefund.io, subsequent attempts to reach http://codefund.io http://codefund.io do redirect to https.
- dalibrandi 12y ago
  I noticed that as well, strange issue. We'll look into it.

44 points by dalibrandi 12y ago

Hi Hacker News, I want to introduce Codefund, a crowdfunding platform for aspiring coders. We have built a platform that enables users to crowdfund their tuition after being accepted into a programming bootcamp. Our first campaign is now live, and we're fundraising for Rose Afriyie, who has been accepted into the Starter League (http://www.starterleague.com/ http://www.starterleague.com/) in Chicago. She's hoping to learn web development in order to continue building mRelief, a social services app she is developing in partnership with the City of Chicago. Check out her campaign here: https://www.codefund.io/campaign/rose https://www.codefund.io/campaign/rose twitter: @codefunding ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Codefund is the bootstrapped project of Adrian Moses and Dana Alibrandi. Adrian is a software engineer with a keen mind for good products, and I'm a product manager filling in the gaps. We're aware that there are holes in our product, but we feel like this platform is something that should exist in the world. Maybe its current iteration isn't the ideal, but if you agree that we should find a way to help diversify and bolster the tech industry, then we'd love to hear your feedback on how to improve. And most importantly, donate if you believe in the campaign and want to see Codefund grow :)

sgibat 12y ago
Funny, I had this idea as well. What about abstracting the app academy model and vying for investors instead of donators? That is, people could donate money in exchange for x% of the applicant's first year of income after coding school.
- dalibrandi 12y ago
  Definitely something we've thought about, and it's similar to what Upstart offers bootcamp applicants. Our only hesitation was that it's a debt-based solution, which is something that we want to avoid at all costs. Contributing to the growing student debt amount doesn't seem like the right move. Taking the step to change your life through empowering yourself with skills should be easier, and we want to reduce roadblocks as much as possible.
  - sgibat 12y ago
    True, it's a debt-based solution, but the most innocuous of debt-based solutions. But, I like your sentiment/mission statement.
johnny_utah 12y ago
On https://www.codefund.io/discover https://www.codefund.io/discover, why are you logging an object that contains all the information on the page? Open the chrome console to reproduce. Cool idea though! How do your terms compare to something like gofundme?
- dalibrandi 12y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out, we're working on fixing it. As compared to gofundme, our terms are similar in that there are no penalties for missed deadlines and the fundraiser gets to keep any amount they raise. It didn't seem right to reject donations just because the goal wasn't met. If a fundraiser can raise any amount, then it makes their future debt much more manageable. We've been tossing around the idea of removing the deadline, but because of the gap of time between acceptance and your first tuition payment, we inserted a deadline to focus donations in our limited timeframe. In the future, we can encourage applicants to create campaigns as quickly as possible, in order to maximize the amount of time before the first tuition payment. In theory, fundraisers can continue their campaigns until their full tuition is covered, where a portion of the total is sent directly to the school in order to cover that particular payment period. At the very least, it will buy fundraisers more time to cover the total cost of their needs.

sbilstein 12y ago

I like this idea but it turns financial aid into a contest. Why not distribute pooled funds after aspiring programmers apply using a FAFSA or something similar?

dalibrandi 12y ago
FAFSA isn't an option for bootcamp applicants. Most (if not all) of these schools aren't accredited, therefore, the options for financial aid are extremely limited. We're played around with the idea of targeting larger scale donors who would donate amounts that we could spread evenly across all applicants. Definitely agree with you though, there is a gamey element to it that I would like to do away with. However, I will gladly entertain that solution for now considering that the potential social benefit far outweighs the cons of it being a contest.
- sbilstein 12y ago
  I guess my thinking is, rather than collect small donations for individuals...use their individual stories to collect funds for the pool. I don't think any of these schools are accredited given their is no accreditation for software engineer out there.
  - dalibrandi 12y ago
    I like this a lot too; it's similar to an idea we tossed around at one point, where Codefund becomes a non-profit scholarship fund and we recruit donors at a higher level, i.e. larger average donations. Still in the cards, so we'll see after Adrian and I get a chance to go through and discuss all of this awesome feedback.

tonysuper 12y ago

As a young (18 in a month) programmer myself, I enjoy this idea. I'm not certain about distributing aid in this manner, however. A lot of kids who would deserve this might not necessarily be the best at presentation or marketing. Still, it is nice to see people taking an interest in young coders. There's a lot of support for teaching kids programming, but I sometimes I feel like those supporters don't know what to do once we actually learn.

dalibrandi 12y ago
First off, congrats and good luck on the journey. I also have some misgivings about this particular form of aid distribution. It's very possible that some extremely deserving candidates miss out on aid because they aren't the best at marketing. In that regard, we offer some basic marketing suggestions and efforts around their campaign, and it's something we hope to improve upon in the future. I don't necessarily think Codefund is THE solution, but I think that it's A solution, and it's one that we can keep iterating on together.

josephschmoe 12y ago

The problem with crowdfunding education is that most people with wealthy connections can already afford college.

dalibrandi 12y ago
Very true, especially if the donations are mostly coming from friends and family. Codefund will require users to demonstrate need, in order for us to fulfill our mission of providing aid to those individuals who truly need it. If we're going to bolster and diversify the tech industry, then we need to address the problem of bootcamp tuition funding, which currently, is very expensive for the average individual with no programming experience looking to make a dramatic career change.

jtheory 12y ago

I find I'm uncomfortable with many of the new ways crowdfunding is being applied; this isn't the worst, but it's not great either. Crowd-funding works psychologically pretty cleanly for funding new product development, or artistic work. If it's a thing you want to exist and you think the would-be creator can do it, you fund it, the creator's idea is validated, the thing is (hopefully) made, and you get to enjoy it. If you don't fund it, it sort of says "I don't feel a strong need for you (creator) to built that (thing) -- but doesn't pass a strong judgement on the creator, even if you know them. With "crowd-fund your medical expenses", for example, I'm much less comfortable. Reading a plea, then choosing not to fund someone's treatment for a serious illness feels like saying "I don't care if you die", when that's not at all what I'm feeling. I'm also uncomfortably, acutely aware of what people who post a crowd-funding effort to save my life or save my home etc. must feel like when the effort fails -- like the world at large, but even worse, the people who know and seemingly care for them, don't care enough to save them. These projects have noble goals -- people need help with medical expenses; help them reach out to others for help! -- but it forces people to put a price on things we'd rather not, but with weird twists ("I really want to help you, but I'm pretty sure this alternative treatment you're trying to pay for is snake oil..."). Codefund isn't as bad, on this spectrum, but it still feels a bit dark to me. Negative feelings a campaign can invoke: - you start a campaign, convinced your super-supportive friends and family will carry the day. It fails. Does this mean they don't care as much as you thought? Or that they don't think you can succeed? - You are 6 months out of university, and stressing over how fast your salary disappears, halfway through each month. A not-yet-close friend who you have been trying to impress sends you a link: they're crowdfunding hacker school! How much do you have to contribute (with a credit card, gritting your teeth), to avoid alienating them? If you think of crowdfund efforts as direct conversations (rather than "interactions enabled by the internet"), it becomes more obvious which ones are really uncomfortable. The level of discomfort is partly cultural -- maybe there are subsets of Americans who feel it's basically "okay" to ask for something you maybe shouldn't, and be told "no" (and be okay with that), but for many, many people this is not okay, people will feel obliged to say "yes" but resent you horribly, and so on. A crowdfunding platform that basically enables painfully-uncomfortable conversations at internet scale isn't an unalloyed good -- I think there must be better solutions to these problems out there. Sorry for the ramble; I'm not totally clear on where I stand, but curious to hear what other people think about it. [Edit: minor tweaks to what I was saying about Americans vs. the world... didn't seem accurate.]

RadioactiveMan 12y ago

When I first visited http://codefund.io http://codefund.io, I received nginx's default page. After visiting https://codefund.io https://codefund.io, subsequent attempts to reach http://codefund.io http://codefund.io do redirect to https.

dalibrandi 12y ago
I noticed that as well, strange issue. We'll look into it.