Best (& fastest) way for nontech startup founder to learn coding?

Yeah that's not a bad idea if you can wrap up all up before YC. There's no way in heck you could do anyting, including sleeping, after starting YC. But you might also find some cofounders or contract employees through Codesmith alumni and they are making a bigger push for this kind of thing. Working at startups for free/part time/contractor is a great way for bootcamp grads to get experience. From my experience it's a terrible way to build a company because of the lack of experience of those people. But if you are a startup and have no funding and no experienced friends to help, I know a number of fresh Codesmith grads who don't have jobs, can't get interviews and this kind of thing would be potentially a win win. There are some grads and alumni who are actually starting to do this! I've heard of two cases myself. Side note from longstanding discussion about Fanzter :P, u/Swami218 Eric actually did a [blog](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/an-interview-on-entrepreneurship-with-codesmith-sr.-advisor-eric-kirsten) post where he clarified that Fanzter was not sold to Disney, that it didn't do that well and he left long before it closed up shop, and that Disney acquired IP and two engineers but did not acquire Fanzter or Coolspotters in any capacity. I also spoke to two of the three final employees and this aligns with there version. Although the "IP" in question seemed vague as the employees just worked on ESPN and one beleived it was a formality to pay back Fanzter's investors as ESPN wanted to hire the final two employees.

I would also say +1 to this argument. You'll also need to learn how to manage people, run a company, do HR, register in states, learn about contracts, paperwork, sales, partnerships, operations, legal, legal, more legal, terms of service and all this stuff. I wouldn't only focus on the technology side and you need to build a team than covers all your bases at the exceptional level/bar. I've seen hundreds of YC companies that are more like MVPs built by people with a couple of areas of strength but the companies that make it beyond that have to cover all their bases at a truly exceptional level. You can't get to that level as a technologist in a 3 month bootcamp.

Yeah I love reading about people's stories, and the twists and turns along the way and it's a pretty detailed overview. He's certainly moved around a lot and jumping between film/tv and tech (and jumping from product to marketing and back). I like the shift in narrative in general with Codesmith in 2024, Profiles In Tech and focusing on people having impactful jobs and stories, rather than just "we are the best", I think it connects more with people. At the end of the day though, it's tough to run a 13 week 11 hour a day bootcamp in this market and I'm seeing a lot of "wordsmithing" with the marketing around placement times that demonstrates to me some concern that cohorts aren't filling up and they don't want people to delay or get cold feet because of the market. So hopefully the market turns around or they make bigger changes to adjust. P.S. I still diagree on the framing of the projects, but I think that's something I could have a conversation with Will and Eric about, whereas during the boom times I feel like we were on different planets.

It's worth checking out Codesmith then, it fits that vibe and there is one person I'm 100% positive they would connect you with that took that path. Stanford MBA -> Codesmith -> CEO. It's super intense and it's an all in-world so it's ultimately up to you to figure out if it's the right use of time. I might also consider something like https://www.beondeck.com/ . Anyways feel free to connect with me LI, my partner technically did YC and can't hurt to connect to see where your company goes!

yeah sure! happy to chat things through and different options.