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I'd worked with enough people from enough backgrounds to know: most of them couldn't work as a team, didn't understand cross-role goals, and had no shared vocabulary for how design and development connect. Coding bootcamps were charging $30k. I figured I could do something at least three times better for a third of the price. Lambda School raised $50 million and still failed its students. I started Perpetual Education with $50k.
I called the first program "Design for The Web" but had to frame it as a coding school. People hear "coding" or "UI design" and think they know which door they'd pick - but they don't know enough about either to choose yet. The best way to find out is to actually do both, and understand both, before picking a direction - and that's what DFTW facilitates. The long-term bet is someone who thinks like a designer - in any field - no matter how the tech changes.
It ran in cohorts - just two to three hours a day, six days a week, for six months, in contrast to the 10-plus-hour-a-day programs - and it got better results, because we made space for real learning instead of shoving React.js tutorials into your eye sockets.
I wrote the curriculum, designed the workshops, built the modules, wrote the glossary, filmed and edited the videos, created the animated graphics, handled marketing, and built a custom Learning Management System (LMS) from scratch. Every little piece, down to the enrollment form, was designed to teach people about the program while they filled it out, so by the end they knew whether it was for them. I met with every prospective student personally before accepting them.
We experimented with ISAs, payment plans, and different pricing models to keep the program accessible. The platform grew over the years into a full system - milestone tracking, dashboards, and features we added as we naturally learned what we needed. The first cohort launched March 2021, with overlapping cohorts every three to four months for four years after.
