Entrepreneurs & Leaders: Learning to code will change your life!
Learning to code was one of my best decisions in recent years as an entrepreneur. Here are some lessons I have learnt from this experience and why every entrepreneur and leader should take action.
In January 2018 I left Teads, a company which I cofounded; it was acquired last summer by the Altice Group for $307M. I allowed myself a period of a few months before delving in a new start-up adventure in artificial intelligence and video.
Having been a serial entrepreneur over 15 years, it was the perfect opportunity for me to dedicate some time to add the ultimate feather to my cap: learning to code.
It was during the month of January that I was convinced by a talented entrepreneur, Guillaume Lestrade, co-founder of Meero (world leader in online professional photography) who had just completed an intensive coding boot camp at Le Wagon.
Quickly I understood that it had really changed his life, widened his vision and multiplied his creativity tenfold.
In a few words of Boris Paillard, Le Wagon CEO, here is what their coding boot camp brings to people: « Bringing tech skills to creative people and entrepreneurs all over the world»
I cannot imagine anything better!
Without a moment’s hesitation, I apply online on their website that very evening to join the «Fullstack Program”.
Admitted after a period of preparatory tests, here I am at the beginning of April to be a student member of the Batch-145 in Paris for a giant leap into the unknown, in an intensive classroom-training course from Monday morning till Friday evening.
9 weeks later, here we are at the beginning of June, the coding training course comes to the end and I have learnt to code in only 2 months.
After a one-of-a kind human experience and a true “Back to School” environment, here are the lessons I have retained as an entrepreneur; and finally, why according to me, every entrepreneur and leader should learn to code, and not necessarily for the reasons that you might imagine.
As an introduction,
What is a coding boot camp?
It is an accelerated coding training course, ranging from a few weeks to several months, with the goal of letting you understand and produce on your own:
- To understand various informatics languages (there are a great deal of languages, it is very difficult to know all of the them, which is why generally boot camp favors certain specific languages to give a precise technical package “to start”; Le Wagon focuses on Ruby on Rails)
- Adopt the right technical workflow
- Know how to code your own product
- Know how to work in a team to build an IT program or a Web project from A to Z (from back-end to the front-end including databases).
There are dozens of coding boot camp companies in the world, in my case I chose the European leader to know the French company “Le Wagon”, based in Paris and in 20 other cities in the world.
They have already taught coding to +2800 people in 4 years, that’s pretty huge.
👉 find all the information on lewagon.com website
Concretely, this is what I learnt during the 9 weeks
- Algorithmics and programming in Ruby
- Web applications development with Ruby on Rails
- Architecture of Web applications (MVC, user stories, databases schemes)
- Databases PostgreSQL
- Front-End development: HTML, CSS, Javascript ( jQuery ) + Bootstrap
- Deployment via Heroku + management of media files on Cloudinary
- Teamwork around a project, a collaboration with Git / Github
- And in the end, a DemoDay where we present a project built in teams of 3 or 4 people over 2 weeks.
Here you can see the video replay of projects (mine with an awesome team is “That’s My Rock!”)
We were a class of 40 apprentices in Paris (Villa Gaudelet 75011 Paris) and more than fifteen professors and teacher-assistants, devoted, caring and passionate about what they do, who accompanied us from morning till night to assist us and teach us how to code.
This boot camp is really for everyone; in my class there were lawyers, consultants, designers, product managers, marketing managers, investors, former students, leaders and entrepreneurs (some of whom had already done the course more than once), ranging in age from 20 to 40 years old, and with 1 common point for all: we had never done a line of code before setting foot in Le Wagon.
Why learn to code?
Next, the real reasons for “why” we wish to learn to code, 2 solid reasons appear:
Become a true developer
As freelance or by joining a company or a start-up in a role as developer. Several students had signed a job contract just as boot camp came to an end, and for others even before the end!
Become enlightened
Add a new feather to your cap, to understand finally how this technological world which surrounds us works, or simply for the intellectual enrichment. Indeed, at the end of this training course, some returned to their previous companies but bringing with them a unique asset (allowing them to aim for new challenges), and others are going to dash into entrepreneurship but with a better knowledge of today’s tech risks and opportunities opening in front of them.
In a personal capacity, when I decided to join Le Wagon, I started with a clear objective and by knowing what would be “my journey” after the boot camp.
I knew that at the end there would be little chance that I write an additional line code, because my purpose was not to code the product of my next start-up myself or to become a developer, my purpose was to …
1. Be capable of “ thinking as a developer ”
2. Know how a developer and a team of developers work and reason
3. Widen my field of knowledge, enlarge my vision
4. Reveal new opportunities, identify risks and constraints which we can foresee only when we know how things work
5. Have a technical background for being able to go farther still in technical key subjects, such as artificial intelligence.
Here is why every entrepreneur and leader should learn to code
Learning to code allows you to pass to a higher level on 3 key pillars of company management and to know the innovation, the human being and the execution.
1. THE INNOVATION
Widen his vision
To acquire knowledge of the main informatics languages used by today’s startups will incite you to understand the avant-gardist technologies and to project yourself into the future.
See more opportunities
By diving into the learning of unknown universes and by embracing new concepts of reflection; it will sharpen your capacity to see things under a new angle and to see paths which the others do not see (there are never dead ends, but paths that others do not see).
Multiply tenfold his creativity
As entrepreneurs we have constantly 100 ideas which come into our head, when you have the capacity to think as a developer in your creative playground, your ideas can only get bigger and richer.
2. THE HUMAN BEING
Detection of young talents
Having learnt to code, you will finally know how to read between the lines of collaborators and candidates, challenge them on some languages, projects, issues they face and to understand their reasons for being and their first motivation, understand the developers you will meet or work with (Is their goal to take up challenges? Learn constantly? Create the « perfect » code? Etc.)
Trust and goodwill
By having the commitment and the time to understand a completely new universe for you, to accept it deep within you, quite naturally your relations and exchanges with the women and men of art will be only more genuine and really fascinating.
Positive leadership
Understanding the stakes and computing challenges will make you no longer a “blinded manager” by the technology, but an “enlightened leader”. Because you will have a clear understanding of the terrain (health and current state of a platform, a technological debt), of time (forecasts, deadlines), of the discipline (quality of the code, the commented code understandable by other developers), of the command (technical workflow, respect and good collaborations) and for the doctrine (have a clear unity of thought, a technical discipline in the technical biases held there).
3. THE EXECUTION
Acute decision-making
By understanding the technologies, you will have acquired a better knowledge of the cost of certain decisions on a financial, temporal or human point of view and also the opportunities of ground gained further to certain decisions or of technological debt engendered potentially.
Critical analysis
Understanding new languages will naturally allow you to take part in new circles of thought, and to no longer be excluded from subjects which in the past would have seemed minor and trivial to you, while, in reality, can be critical concerning the future of your project.
Master the time
By having coding even if only a few weeks and brought to a successful conclusion a single project or with a team, you will thus know that something seemingly simple can hide numerous technical problems (or opportunities), potential additional stages and in the end, extend your deadlines considerably. Having the control of the time in the innovation and on the ground of competitive space will make you become a master in the art of execution.
Hoping these few notes you have just read inspire you to learn new things, I invite you to pursue the reflection by watching Aurélie JEAN’s keynote which was a great source of inspiration for me
👉 Follow Aurélie JEAN on Twitter
🚀 Then apply immediately to Le Wagon to learn to code!
Share my article with an entrepreneur,
Because… you may very well change his life!
Finally, for those who follow me, I am at the beginning of a new adventure!
So, because I have been passionate about the Video world for over 20 years, my next project will be in the video market and with a technology which is fascinating: Artificial Intelligence.
I’m convinced that video + AI can change the world.
Then as Hergé said when seeing Neil Armstrong walk on the moon « by believing in his dreams, man turns them into reality” … OK — mission accepted my friend!
Today I’m still in my g̶a̶r̶a̶g̶e̶ kitchen to build the future!
I’m sure you will love it.
Be in touch soon for more news. #Video #Ai
If you love topics such as Artificial Intelligence, Video and Advertising as much as I do, then contact me at hello /at/ olivierreynaud.com and let’s change the world together! You can also subscribe to my Newsletter in order to keep updated on my projects.
