Mike McGee and Neal Sales-Griffin aren’t programmers, so at first it seems a little strange that they would start a company that teaches people how to program.

But their startup Code Academy does just that and apparently does it well.

CodeAcademy (not to be confused with CodeCademy) offers a 12-week course that teaches people how to build web applications in Ruby on Rails, a web framework made popular by fellow Chicago-style entrepreneurs Jason Friedand and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals.

While their program now boasts of renowned teachers and mentors like Jeff Cohen, McGee and Griffin launched without any teaching staff. Actually, they launched without space or a curriculum too.

“We started with no money and no mentors, but we knew people in the Ruby on Rails Community and leveraged that,” said Griffin.

And it worked. Within weeks, CodeAcademy had teaching space at Groupon, Rails expert Jeff Cohen’s support, and many more applicants than they expected.

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