How CS Students Go From Code.org Into Its Founders' Mentorship/Angel Investment Fund, 'Neo'

The VC fund Neo "identifies awesome young engineers, includes them in a community of tech veterans, and invests in companies they start or join,"TechCrunch explained in 2018. Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes that Neo is also benefiting from the education non-profit Code.org: Eleven years ago, Neo Founder and CEO Ali Partovi together with twin brother Hadi (Code.org CEO and a Neo investor) publicly launched the nonprofit Code.org (backed and advised by big tech companies). With the support of prominent tech giant leaders and their companies, Code.org pushed coding into K-12 classrooms (NYT, alt.) and now boasts that "591,636 teachers have signed up to teach our intro courses on Code Studio and 19,177,297 students are enrolled," helping to build a pipeline of "college students who excel at CS". Neo taps into this pipeline, and it looks like others also betting on their success include Neo investors tied to Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Uber - including Code.org boosters Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, Reid Hoffman, Jeff Wilke, Sheryl Sandberg, Eric Schmidt. "I love meeting more and more @Neo founders and Neo scholar candidates who learned to code on Code.org," Neo CEO Ali Partovi tweeted last summer. in November Partovi welcomed "32 exceptional CS students" chosen from over 1,000 applicants to be Neo Scholars, "a year-long program of events, trips, and mentorship, as well as long-term membership in our community."

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