Strive

Strive is a Y Combinator-backed coding school for kids, based in Singapore. It had been built by engineers for an entirely reasonable reason: coding is a valuable skill, and children should learn it.

The trouble is that nobody buys a valuable skill from a nine-year-old's point of view, and nine-year-olds don't buy anything. Strive had two audiences with completely different motivations, parents paying for a future, and children deciding every single week whether to show up, and one message trying to serve both.

We researched both groups and found the same answer from opposite directions. Parents didn't want a coder. They wanted a child who could make things. Kids didn't want to learn Python. They wanted to build a game their friends would play.

So we repositioned Strive around creativity, play and building, rather than abstract technical skill. Coding became the means, not the message.

That ran all the way into the curriculum. We split every course in two: Mind and Heart. Mind holds the technical outcomes, block-based code, the transition to Python, writing and implementing code independently. Heart holds the rest, curiosity, resilience, and the confidence to learn new things without being taught. The same structure runs across all four levels, from Headstart to Mastery.

And it ran into growth. Strive League turned the curriculum into a competition, students build, ship and compete, with fixtures, standings and seasons closer to esports than to a classroom. It gave kids a reason to keep going, parents something visible to be proud of, and Strive an acquisition channel powered by its own students.

A joyful journey to coding mastery.