Who Owns Codesmith? A Court Fight Takes Us Under the Hood to the Hard Parts
I wrote this piece about a lawsuit from 2024-2025 impacting Codesmith for many years. It's a neutral, factual summary of the public record that hasn't been told before that I can find... hundreds of pages of court documents summarized into something digestable.
[https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/codesmith-in-court-the-hard-parts](https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/codesmith-in-court-the-hard-parts)
u/Past-Rutabaga4646 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
[https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/](https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/)
>It's a neutral, factual summary
Sure buddy. When are you gonna let this die? Talk about petty
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The blog post does not even mention this lawsuit and the examples it attributes incorrectly to causing millions of dollars of revenue loss are out of context comments that received dozens to hundreds of 'view counts' compared to negative Codesmith posts **from other people** that received tens of thousands of views.
That is clearly tunnel vision blog post that started with a narrative around motivations that I believe is false and then worked backwards. In middle school that's how you fail essay writing.
Codesmith's CEO emailed me several months before that blog post when we discussed it and said: "I do not consider Formation a competitor, it is quite clear to me that our products are different."
If you want my opinions about the lawsuit, I have many, and I'm not sharing them.
u/Past-Rutabaga4646 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
You need to seriously go outside and touch some grass. You're not even in the industry anymore and still have some weird personal vendetta against that company. Get a life buddy
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
Explain the vendetta, explain the marketing strategy. Like there's no proof of any of the wild claims. No text messages, no slack messages, nothing... I'm one person, sharing my personal opinions, and not talking to anyone about them.
Yet I have many text messages, slack messages, and otherwise of people who were asked by Codesmith leaders to post and comment and share stuff on Reddit, LinkedIn etc...
I'm defending my reputation as a single person against a very large coordinated group and that's why respond to all of that.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Vote manipulation continues. I'm not saying who is doing it, but someone is.
Comment after 2 hours from commenting: +4 karma, 60 views
2 more hours later: -7 karma, 92 views
So the first 60 people that saw this had a 4 karma rating
Then the nex 32 people 11 of them voted negatively.
The participation rate in commenting went from 7% to 35% suddently, **but only one one comment**
Makes no sense and regardless of who is doing it, it makes Codesmith look bad.
Especially after Codesmith's CEO sent me evidence unintentionally of hiring a Reddit market who manipulates Reddit comments and has had dozens of accounts banned from Reddit.
u/Past-Rutabaga4646 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
[https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/](https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/)
>It's a neutral, factual summary
Sure buddy. When are you gonna let this die? Talk about petty
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy
To whoever is responsible: Last time there was a mass downvote campaign someone lost all of their Reddit accounts, you all are playing with fire.
u/michaelnovati wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Vote manipulation continues. I'm not saying who is doing it, but someone is.
Comment after 2 hours from commenting: +4 karma, 60 views
2 more hours later: -7 karma, 92 views
So the first 60 people that saw this had a 4 karma rating
Then the nex 32 people 11 of them voted nega
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy
I made this new comment to honeypot the view counts against the other comment being crushed. Thank you all and I'm forwarding to Reddit!
u/michaelnovati wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
To whoever is responsible: Last time there was a mass downvote campaign someone lost all of their Reddit accounts, you all are playing with fire.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy
And yup a couple of these comments are honeypotting view counts so I can send that over to Reddit and I have what I need.
u/michaelnovati wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
And yup a couple of these comments are honeypotting view counts so I can send that over to Reddit and I have what I need.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy
Please keep going, we're monitoring and it's very helpful data collection.
u/michaelnovati wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Vote manipulation continues. I'm not saying who is doing it, but someone is.
Comment after 2 hours from commenting: +4 karma, 60 views
2 more hours later: -7 karma, 92 views
So the first 60 people that saw this had a 4 karma rating
Then the nex 32 people 11 of them voted nega
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy
Please keep going, we're monitoring and it's very helpful data collection.
u/Past-Rutabaga4646 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
[https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/](https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/)
>It's a neutral, factual summary
Sure buddy. When are you gonna let this die? Talk about petty
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy
The more voting manipulation the louder and louder I'm going to get.
u/Past-Rutabaga4646 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
[https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/](https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/)
>It's a neutral, factual summary
Sure buddy. When are you gonna let this die? Talk about petty
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The blog post does not even mention this lawsuit and the examples it uses attributes incorrectly to causing millions of dollars of revenue loss are out of context comments that received dozens to hundreds of 'view counts' compared to negative Codesmith posts **from other people** that received tens of thousands of views.
It's up to you to decide if the lawsuit was relevant during this period of decline, but leaving it out of that blog post does not give you the information needed to do that.
That is clearly tunnel vision blog post that started with a narrative around motivations that I believe is false and then worked backwards. In middle school that's how you fail essay writing.
Codesmith's CEO emailed me several months before that blog post when we discussed it and said: "I do not consider Formation a competitor, it is quite clear to me that our products are different."
If you want my opinions about the lawsuit, I have many, and I'm not sharing them.
For example, this is not an opinion, but a fact, that a founder trying to raise new capital will need to explain why they sold 70% of their company for $900K, when the standard silicon valley investment would be a single digit percentage for that amount. If you all want to defend Codesmith instead of being humble about mistakes and growing from them, then you likely won't succeed in this industry. You have accept your mistakes, take feedback, grow, improve.
Finally, trying to flip the table around to personal attacks **instead of addressing the substance** is not a valid way to prove a point.
u/Past-Rutabaga4646 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
[https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/](https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/)
>It's a neutral, factual summary
Sure buddy. When are you gonna let this die? Talk about petty
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
The blog post does not even mention this lawsuit and the examples it uses attributes incorrectly to causing millions of dollars of revenue loss are out of context comments that received dozens to hundreds of 'view counts' compared to negative Codesmith posts **from other people** that received tens of thousands of views.
It's up to you to decide if the lawsuit was relevant during this period of decline, but leaving it out of that blog post does not give you the information needed to do that.
That is clearly tunnel vision blog post that started with a narrative around motivations that I believe is false and then worked backwards. In middle school that's how you fail essay writing.
Codesmith's CEO emailed me several months before that blog post when we discussed it and said: "I do not consider Formation a competitor, it is quite clear to me that our products are different."
If you want my opinions about the lawsuit, I have many, and I'm not sharing them.
For example, this is not an opinion, but a fact, that a founder trying to raise new capital will need to explain why they sold 70% of their company for $900K, when the standard silicon valley investment would be a single digit percentage for that amount. If you all want to defend Codesmith instead of being humble about mistakes and growing from them, then you likely won't succeed in this industry. You have accept your mistakes, take feedback, grow, improve.
Finally, trying to flip the table around to personal attacks **instead of addressing the substance** is not a valid way to prove a point.
u/randomengineer69 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Crazy. I really enjoyed the hard parts and got so much out of it. Personally I've got nothing bad to say
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
Well I can give my personal opinion on that and I have been researching for a while.
I think Will is a gifted explainer. He said he wrote the Hard Parts originally because he didn't really know how to code well. I think he said in an interview he didn't know what a JS "Map" was when he wrote them. He has additionally said that he does talks when he wants to learn something because it forces him to learn in order to then present it to people as an expert.
So given that it's absolutely fascinating how well he can explain things he literally just learned.
He has additionally said that he never wanted to teach, but both his parents are teachers and he said that as a kid he would force his sisters into doing classes on the weekends at home where he would lecture to them on things....
So it sounds like he's a gifted lecturer and it's just his superpower.
My opinion is the situation is quite tragic like it's an incredibly sad story.
He has said publicly that he can't do something, like start a company, unless he has "permission" and that this led him to seeking degrees for the school name to feel like they gave him "permission" to be in the room. What he means by permission is really self esteem. Tying his self esteem and identiy to external validation is the thing that starts the downfall.
Like since 2015, the beginning, Will has been hiring lawyers, accountants, marketers, etc... on Upwork to do critical things at Codesmith.
No offense but one of the lawyers for example was $100 an hour, which sounds like a lot, but sillion valley lawyers are $1000 to $2000 an hour (seriously).
But he hired people less qualified who puffed up his self esteem, told him how amazing he was, etc...
This is always why I think deep down Codesmith hired into alumni as teachers - all the way to the head of instruction - because they all keep boosting the self esteem.
The second someone tells him he's doing something wrong or he just doesn't accept the feedback, both as a protection mechanism and also because after a while he had a circle of hundreds of people worshiping him.
The reason it's so sad is because I was an outsider that cut right into the heart of this world and spoke about it so transparently in public that he couldn't get rid of me. He tried to ignore me and keep my feedback out of his mental space and instead people in the circle, like other execs and loyal alumni, went after me instead. He never once addressed any of the feedback I gave directly (publicly or privately).
The reason it's traffic is all of the things I warned about and gave feedback on that were issues actually contributed to their downfall and he generally ignored them instead of listening.
Again this is all just my opinions. But I think at some level if he heard my feedback and took it seriously that Codesmith would be surviving today.
That blog post written about me was the last straw though. No more trying to help Codesmith because clearly Will will say whatever he has to not have to look into the mirror.
u/randomengineer69 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Oh yeah I know nothing about codesmith. Just saw his stuff on FrontEndMasters
Edit: sorry just realized the sub
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Yeah nothing takes that away from him, it just seems he can't get his shit together as an operator based on my opinion of publicly available information.
Codesmith lost the AWS credentials and Codesmith's email and primary website were down for 3 weeks as they struggled to recover it.
He personally screen-shared evidence of pirated "web rip" copies Landman Season 1 and 2 numerous times in a public talk just a week or two ago about Open Claw.
He has intentionally screen shared his calendar numerous times in his presentations making it public info, student information numerous times.
Codesmith's website had numerous major security/PII issues that took several attempts to fix.
Codesmith student projects have leaked credentials, keys, etc... including a real charity's test Salesforce login information.
That's just a handful of explicitly public things off the top of my head that in my strictly personal opinion point out operational problems he hasn't learned from.
Like I dunno, I've been talking about this for years and tried to give the feedback and the only time he has every contacted me he yelled at me and told me he has taught 1M+ people for some reason.