Dev Bootcamp
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Dev Bootcamp, founded in 2012 in San Francisco by Shereef Bishay, was one of the first coding bootcamps: short-term intensive programs in web development run across six US campuses — San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Chicago, Austin and San Diego. Bootstrapped until its 2014 acquisition by Kaplan, it trained more than 3,000 students before closing in December 2017.
02 / Dev Bootcamp FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
The model never balanced: 12,700 to 13,950 dollar tuition for 18-week programs could not cover six physical campuses' running costs, and the company refused to compromise teaching quality or accessibility to make the numbers work. Low barriers flooded the market with hundreds of rival bootcamps, making differentiation expensive while campus overhead demanded ever more capital. Kaplan's 2014 acquisition bought time, not a path to lasting profitability.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Acquisition
EdSurge (12 Jul 2017, updated 13 Jul): Dev Bootcamp (acquired by Kaplan 2014) announced it would shut its doors 8 Dec 2017; president Tarlin Ray said leadership in partnership with Kaplan decided to wind down operations after the last cohort.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
2012 launch: a pioneer of immersive coding bootcamps; bootstrapped growth
- 02
2014 Kaplan acquisition buys runway to find profitability
- 03
Tuition cannot cover campus costs; crowded market raises marketing spend
- 04
Closure announced July 2017; final cohort graduates December 8, 2017