Help children jump into coding

‣ Company: Hopscotch Technologies
‣ Founders: Samantha John and Jocelyn Leavitt
‣ Mission: To teach children coding through games and art
‣ App launched: 2013
‣ Team size: < 10
‣ Go-to emoji: 🙏

For Samantha John, coding is a way to create something that isn’t possible in the real world.

“Try to imagine a physical version of Candy Crush,” says the co-founder of coding education app Hopscotch. “It would be amazing – but also impossible or extremely expensive. With coding, anyone can make explosions and chain reactions.”

Hopscotch helps children aged 8 to 16 learn to code by creating shareable games and art. John came up with the idea in 2011, when she got her first iPad. She found it easier to use than a computer and wished she could use it to write code. She and a friend started working on a kids’ coding app at night and over the weekends; it launched in 2013. Eight years later, she brought it to the show Shark Tank, where none other than Mark Cuban committed $550,000 to the project.

We chatted with John about how a passion for photography led her to coding, why being a CEO defied her expectations and what makes coding like gardening.

How did you first get into coding?
I was a little late to it; I didn’t start until the end of college. I took a class in computational photography – how your phone automatically adjusts an image to make it look better – and made a mosaic generator that took all the photos from our class and created an image of our campus. It was art by coding, and it was a revelation. Before that, I didn’t even really know what coding was for.

When did Hopscotch become a full-time endeavour?
Back in 2012, my co-founder and I took two weeks off to work on our first app, and we got so much done. I remember coming back to my day job and feeling like, “I’m programming someone else’s products and I have no time to work on the thing that I want to make.” I gave notice that day.

How did you settle on a framework for teaching coding?
The metaphor we use is “plants in a garden”. We want to give kids the idea that they’re not creating a complex piece of machinery; they’re planting seeds and seeing how they grow. An acorn will turn into an oak tree, not a rose. But you can’t control it all; you can’t define everything about that oak tree.

What advice do you have for other aspiring founders?
When we started out, we hired contractors who often didn’t work out. We needed to solve our own problems; for us, subject matter expertise was less important than understanding our business. You might want to work with professionals for things like accounting or logo design to help you realise your vision. But nobody is going to understand it the way you do.

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned?
I thought that if I ran my own company I’d get to tell everyone what to do and that I’d never have to compromise again. It turns out to be kind of the opposite. I’ve had to learn to be a much better listener.

Hopscotch

为每个人设计的计划: 适合孩子们的编码

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Hopscotch Technologies is a part of the App Store Small Business Program. If you are a developer and would like to learn more about the program, follow the link below.