Rob Kaufman founded Notch8, a Ruby on Rails consultancy in 2007. As the team grew and evolved, he brought on a partner and friend, Matt Clark. With offices in San Diego and Portland, they dove headfirst into building web applications and helped entrepreneurs realize their visions and dreams. By the Spring of 2014, they picked up on a scarcity of qualified, hard-working developers. The Portland office teamed up with Epicodus Code School who offered month-long internships to the PDX-based companies. It was such a success that Matt quickly hired four of those interns. Down in sunny San Diego, Rob began to look for a similar partnership. While there was demand for such a program, there simply wasn't one in existence - yet. Rob began the task of reaching out to potential students and tech companies to determine if this idea had any merit. After getting a tremendous response from the local community, he began to set plans in motion and LEARN academy became a reality. Chelsea Kaufman, Rob's wife, had been hearing about this idea for quite some time when it became apparent that she would be a crucial element to its success. Having spent over ten years in education and nonprofit management, she understood how to build education programs from the ground up, how to strengthen communities, and how to manage and lead a business. The LEARN academy website went live in Fall 2014 and classes began in January 2015.