SoloLearn. The biggest mobile platform for learning programming

787 lessons, 2327 quizzes: Armenian-American SoloLearn platform for learning Programming has more than 3 mln users.

Apart from the web version SoloLearn is also available in Windows Store, Google Play and App Store.

Davit Kocharyan, cofounder of SoloLearn, told Itel.am that the platform is completely free. Basic programming knowledge can be acquired here for a short period.

“We aren’t monetizing yet: instead, we are trying to get a large number of users. Monetizing will happen by itself later. The largest number of users is currently from the U.S. as the platform is in English. We are planning on making it available in other languages in the near future”, he said noting as well that they are supported by Granatus Ventures Fund and some angel-investors.

Davit Kocharyan thinks that the universities nowadays are more focused on the theoretical knowledge.

“More practical part is missing which is very important in technical specialties like programming. The student can learn theoretical programming at the university and have no practice. Taking into consideration this we decided to create a new educational platform at the end of 2013 that aimed at giving practical knowledge to programmers and other technical field specialists”, Davit Kocharyan tells.

He recalls that the first lesson was HTML.

“We were dividing the video into parts and were making short quizzes. The 30-40 seconds video was followed by relevant questions. The questions were interactive and based on code writing capacities”, he says.

SoloLearn cofounder mentions that at the beginning they also offered photo and make-up courses but understood shortly that programming courses gained the most interest.

“One course takes 2-3 weeks to complete if the content is ready beforehand. We are trying to make the lessons as short as possible, because if they are long they will be simply ineffective”, Davit Kocharyan mentions.

Talking about 3 mln downloads of their app, he highlights that they didn’t spend separate amount of money on marketing.

“It just grew organically. Maybe one of the reasons is that we listen to our users’ opinions and take them into consideration”, he notices.

SoloLearn’s target is the American market. The company is currently cooperating with UPwork, one of the most popular platforms for recruitment, and posts its announcements on the SoloLearn website.

“In future we are planning to allow our best students to get interviewed for work at once, without the qualifying round”, concludes Davit Kocharyan.

It should be recalled that SoloLearn is one of the winners of the co-funded grants contest organized by Enterprise Incubator Foundation.

Narine Daneghyan