If you build it, they will come. But what if you don’t know how to build it?
That was the problem facing Mattan Griffel, founder of a new YC-backed startup called One Month Rails that is launching today.
“I didn’t study computer science or anything, but I had this great idea for a startup,” he said. “I just didn’t know how to build it. I spent the next few months looking for someone who could build it for me, and never quite found the right person.”
Eventually, says Griffel, he realized he had to build it himself if he wanted to get it done, and started scouring the web for resources to help him learn to code.
“I realized that when you don’t know anything about coding, you don’t know what language to learn or what you need to know,” said Griffel.
Codecademy and Learn The Hard Way are different from One Month Rails in that they teach a comprehensive curriculum for becoming a coder in general, but don’t necessarily teach you just what you need to know to build your intended product or web app.
According to Griffel, nobody knows which resources to use, or which courses to take to develop the skills they need to build what they want.
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One Month Rails teaches Ruby On Rails in less than a month, with a webbed structure so that you learn to build what you want without learning every single lesson under the sun. This way, you can have a functional web app up and running in no time.
But why Ruby on Rails?
Griffel explains that not only is Ruby on Rails highly popular right now (making it easier to troubleshoot problems with a simple Google search), but that Ruby on Rails allows a single developer to handle the front-end, back-end, and everything in between.
As it stands now, the YC-backed startup has over 9,000 paying student customers, with a month of tutorials costing $49.95. Eventually, the team will expand beyond Ruby on Rails to Python, JavaScript, etc.
