Thus, the company had to raise additional venture capital. The company also garnered massive media attention, and Samantha was put on a number of “30 under 30” lists.Īfter its launch and the media hype, Hopscotch was attaining phenomenal growth in its number of users however, the app was still free, so the company didn’t have any revenue. Hopscotch was launched in 2012, and the Hopscotch app was downloaded 20,000 times in its first week, and it quickly earned 200,000 active users per month. What happened to Hopscotch before Shark Tank? When Samantha returned to work after the two weeks spent working on the new app, she says that by her lunch break, she knew that she had to quit, so she told her boss that day that she was giving her two-weeks’ notice, and she never really looked back. They made their first app, Daisy the Dinosaur, and they were excited about it and wanted to continue working on it, so they each took a two-week vacation and stayed at home to expand on their idea, working toward an educational programming app. The women often worked together at night and on weekends, but they never felt excited enough about anything to pursue it full time until Hopscotch came along. At first, they considered working on some consumer-facing projects, such as a social-local project or something in the travel industry, but according to Jocelyn, they kept thinking, “It’d be so cool if we could figure out a way to teach girls how to do engineering.” How did Hopscotch get started?Īccording to an interview with application review site iMore, Samantha and Jocelyn met in New York, and they started working together because they wanted to be entrepreneurial. Samanatha then moved on to co-found Greencastle Partners, a commercial real estate investment and advisory partnership. After teaching, she entered the commercial real estate industry, and she first worked for Kennedy Wilson, a global real estate investment company. Jocelyn started her working career as a History teacher, first in Hawaii, and then in New York. Jocelyn Leavitt, CEO of Hopscotch, studied at Dartmouth College, where she earned a BA in Geography and Environmental Studies, and then she went on to Columbia Business School to study for her MBA in Real Estate and Finance. After graduating from school, she remained in New York to become an Entrepreneur in Residence at the YouWeb Incubator, and following the residence program, she worked as a Programmer for Pivotal Labs. Samantha is originally from Michigan but attended college at Columbia University in New York City, where she earned a BA in Applied Mathematics, with a Minor in English and Comparative Literature. Hopscotch was co-founded by Samantha John and Jocelyn Leavitt in 2012. Other entrepreneurs had success in the Tank by promoting products aimed at kids, such as Big Bee, Little Bee and Create A Castle, so there was every reason to believe that Hopscotch would also interest the Sharks. With the Hopscotch application, kids learn to code organically as they create, and the open-ended environment of Hopscotch keeps the app compelling each time they return. The Hopscotch iPad app was the first programming language designed for a touchscreen device. Hopscotch Technologies is a software company which produces a programming tool for kids.
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