How ISA's Entered the Mass Market w/ Kush Patel (CEO of App Academy)

Reshaping Education - Online Education, Cohort-based Courses, Bootcamps, and More

NOTE: The following transcript was AI-generated and likely contains many errors.

App Academy (Kush Patel)

Kush: [00:00:00] Five hours on top of that, and you'd be putting in close to a hundred hours a week I mean, I literally dreamed in code. it was wild. I never thought anything like that could happen

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[00:00:08]Ish: [00:00:08] What's up everybody? My name is Ish and I am the founder of virtually, and this is the virtually podcast where we discuss everything online education, including higher ed, online trade schools, bootcamps, ISA, , and so much more. .

[00:00:22]This week's conversation was with kush patel We talked about the founding of app Academy, which may very well go down in history as a major turning point for education. Specifically, we talked about the very first income share agreement that hit the mass markets and kickstarted the coding bootcamp revolution. This conversation was absolutely fascinating and i hope you enjoy it as much as i did

[00:00:46]Hey, everybody. My name is Ish and I'm the founder and CEO of virtually, and I'm joined today by Kush Patel, the founder and CEO of app Academy.

[00:00:55] Kush, would you be able to introduce yourself real quick.

[00:00:59] Kush: [00:00:59] Hey folks. I'm, I'm happy to join the program today. I, I've been running app Academy for the past almost eight years now. And, yeah, I hope to be able to share, some, some insights about the bootcamp marketing software during the market.

[00:01:15] Ish: [00:01:15] Yeah, that sounds exciting. And we're going to get into app Academy a lot more, to actually start us off. I think for helpful context for the audience, today the date is April 9th, and we are very much in the thick of things when it comes to the coronavirus and the quarantine thing.

[00:01:30] And so that is going to be a big kind of focus and kind of topic for us to discuss, especially about higher ed bootcamps and the implications of all these different programs moving forward, especially given the fact that 10 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the month of March alone. and we're all, we're all going to get to that, but right now I would love to go back to June, 2008 so at June, 2008, I believe at this point, you were in Mumbai, India, is that correct?

[00:01:57] Kush: [00:01:57] Yes, correct.

[00:01:58] Ish: [00:01:58] Okay. So could you tell us what you were doing there? Wow.

[00:02:02] Kush: [00:02:02] Yeah, so that was actually, There was an internship that I had a junior year of college. those may, that was a hedge fund job. So I was, I was doing like, multi-strategy value investing. So, investing across all different kinds of asset classes, mostly equities, across a broad, different portfolio of, of, of, industries. I focused on real estate, financial, so banks mostly. but, yeah, well, looked at a lot of different kinds of companies. But, yeah, that was, that was my first, I kind of had edge fund internship and, and, and, got me into the hedge fund industry. So ultimately ended up joining that company after college as well.

[00:02:37] But, 2008 was a very exciting time to be, in the, in the equities markets. the 2008 great recession, was, was kind of unfolding. you know, as, as that internship was, was happening, that, it, you know, to have a front row seat for, you know, to that, to, to, to have that be the, they kind of come back down context for this.

[00:02:55]you know, markets, education for me was, this was pretty exciting.

[00:03:00] Ish: [00:03:00] no, totally. And again, it's interesting to reflect on the 2008 crisis and kind of all the implications that had for education and then also come and look at, you know, the current crisis and what the implications are there. But I'm really quick, curious about, I guess. How did your experience in Mumbai kind of shape you?

[00:03:17] What were the big learnings and how would that ultimately lead you to start app Academy?

[00:03:23] Kush: [00:03:23] Sure. So, I've learned, I learned a ton, at that, at that job. So a lot of it was, I had the chance to sit down with, with CEOs, all day long and ask them questions about how, you know, they, they ran their business, how they saw the future outlook, how, you know, they were positioning themselves, et cetera.

[00:03:38]and, and really getting kind of in the . Into the weeds of it. So, from that angle, you know, I think that was kind of my crash course MBA, to some, to some extent. I also had a chance to sit on the board of some of some public companies there and, and see that kind of in the, the, the, you know, kind of from a firsthand point of view how boards should be run, what could go wrong, how to, all the, all the kind of, Background stuff that you never really read in the business school textbooks, if you will. So, that, that was a great learning opportunity for me. I think also just, being in that, that, you know, fast forwarding a little bit to, to, you know, after college when I was doing that full time, Seeing all the opportunity that was there, both in the emerging markets.

[00:04:17] So it was, I was in India goes mate, this huge opportunity, and this was before the second wave of tech had really taken off there. So before the web, I guess two or 3.0 you can call it really, really took off there. So, so a lot of low home recruits, one of opportunities are there, but, but also got a, got a chance to see, kind of the ways that entrepreneurs would go and tackle booze, tackle those.

[00:04:39]opportunities very differently. and then folks kind of start to build a business in the us, but, still very, realistic to be able to start a company there, which somehow made it real in my mind. So I, I, you know, I think it was always this thing that I thought, Oh, I know, I don't really understand how a person could start a company.

[00:04:56] Like, it seems like this big, this huge undertaking, but, it's certainly become a lot, a lot realer to me. And, and, I think that's where also that pretty excited about starting my own thing.

[00:05:06] Ish: [00:05:06] Yeah. And so while this was going on, were you thinking that, Hey, after this I want to start a company, or do you just kind of stumble across it.

[00:05:13] Kush: [00:05:13] Yeah. So I think I kind of developed that desire, to some extent while I was on the job. So I think, you know, meeting all those CEOs and getting a sense of, you know, what was actually involved in it. You know, company building was a big piece of it. it was that I was lucky enough to be born into a family where my dad, was, was an entrepreneur.

[00:05:31] So he worked as an engineer for a couple of decades and then he went out and kind of, you know, hung up his own shingle, you know, starting a company. So, having that partner center there as a child, also was very helpful and made it, and also, gave me the support of my parents in making this leap, which is a big thing that I, that I don't take for granted.

[00:05:51] Ish: [00:05:51] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I know, I know in our last conversation you said you were feeling homesick, and so I believe the year is 2012 that you decide to return to the United States. Is that correct?

[00:06:02] Kush: [00:06:02] Yeah. I think it was basically ended cause we haven't like just the beginning of 2012. Yeah. So at that point I was starting to, you know, my friends, family, everybody I knew was halfway across the world. ...