#### In S2E3, we fall hard for Adda Birnir, founder and CEO of Skillcrush—the online coding school with a heart.

While coding bootcamp programs tend to talk about turning students into rockstar programmer gods, Skillcrush focuses on using tech to build a fulfilling, creative, and sustainable career. And the message is working: after some early ups and downs back in 2012, Adda has taken the business from a fledging idea to a stable, profitable, and growing company of 35 employees. And she’s here to tell us all about it.

> At some point I decided that I wanted the business to survive and I was going to figure out what it would take for it to survive and do that. And that really meant sort of letting go of kind of any idea I had about what the business was going to be.

>

> —Adda Birnir, founder and CEO, [Skillcrush](https://skillcrush.com/)

Listen in for a super-real convo about:

- Bootstrapping a business instead of raising venture capital

- How to bounce back when the bank account runs dry

- Why women are flocking to Skillcrush to learn technical skills—while most bootcamp programs struggle to attract them

- Building [pay equity](https://iwpr.org/issue/employment-education-economic-change/pay-equity-discrimination/) into the heart of how Skillcrush runs

- Making sure you don’t end up hating the company you built

Plus:

- Friend dates, cheese plates, and ordering [as many desserts as possible](https://medium.com/no-you-go/working-with-friends-is-amazing-but-its-still-work-6255ad0854c)

- Vocab swaps for “crazy” and “guys” (for more ideas on this one, check out [this article from The Establishment](https://theestablishment.co/replace-crazy-with-the-adjective-you-actually-mean-425562812da2))

- Morning people: are they a _fuck yeah!_ or a _fuck that_?

## Sponsors

This episode of NYG is brought to you by:


_[Shopify](https://www.shopify.com/careers), a leading global commerce platform that’s building a world-class team to define the future of entrepreneurship. Visit [shopify.com/careers](https://www.shopify.com/careers) to see what they’re talking about._

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