Codecademy

Company Background

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Codecademy is a leading edtech company focused on reshaping how people learn to code. With over 45 million users and a broad curriculum rooted in computer science, Codecademy delivers accessible, hands-on education to a global audience. As user needs evolved and business priorities shifted—especially during the pandemic—the company sought a partner who could move quickly and collaboratively to support new initiatives. That’s where Stride came in.

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The Challenge

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Although Codecademy had established teams working on company-wide initiatives, rapid user growth and shifting business priorities created the need for additional capacity. Stride was initially engaged to support the Growth team, but soon took on new responsibilities as Codecademy launched two high-impact initiatives:

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Cheatsheets

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User feedback from a hackathon surfaced demand for a new feature: Cheatsheets. While the concept resonated quickly with learners, the initial prototype lacked essential functionality. There was no styling, no navigation, and no contextual integration with the broader Codecademy ecosystem. The company needed to move fast from prototype to fully featured experience.

The new team assigned to Cheatsheets was cross-functional, but it was their first time working together. They needed to establish shared workflows, engineering standards, and delivery rhythms—all while building the product from the ground up, using provided designs, APIs, and data structures.

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Automated Billing System

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Codecademy’s enterprise billing process was entirely manual, requiring significant operational effort to manage transactions, invoices, and upgrades. With thousands of clients—many on recurring subscription plans with custom seat counts and consolidated invoices—the risk of service disruption was high.

The goal was to build an automated billing system that could handle renewals, autopayments, and invoicing without interrupting existing services. The challenge wasn’t just technical; it was operational continuity at scale.

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The Solution

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Stride formed two dedicated teams to work alongside Codecademy’s internal teams, focusing on rapid delivery without sacrificing reliability:

• For Cheatsheets, Stride delivered a fully functional product that incorporated seamless styling, intuitive navigation, and deep links back into the Codecademy platform—turning a promising prototype into a polished feature ready for scale.
  
  
• For the Automated Billing System, Stride helped implement a new backend capable of supporting recurring transactions and invoice logic while preserving continuity for thousands of existing users. Every decision was made with one goal in mind: avoid service interruptions during the transition.
  
  

In both cases, Stride brought structure and discipline to newly formed teams, helping engineers align on agile practices and collaborate effectively from day one.

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Business Outcomes

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Stride’s partnership enabled Codecademy to launch two brand-new priorities—each critical to a different dimension of the user experience:

• Cheatsheets added valuable learning functionality, improving the user experience and integrating a high-demand feature into the core product.
  
  
• The Automated Billing System modernized enterprise billing operations, allowing Codecademy to scale its customer base without overextending manual processes or risking customer churn due to billing issues.
  
  

Most importantly, both initiatives were delivered without disruption to existing users, preserving trust while expanding platform capabilities. Stride’s ability to integrate quickly, work with evolving requirements, and drive clarity across distributed teams helped Codecademy move with confidence—even during a period of intense change.

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