Treehouse claims it can turn waitresses & electricians into $80K/year coders in just two years

Let’s say you want a job making mobile apps. Where do you start?

Treehouse — an online tech school for job seekers — decided to answer that question with a charming video that lays out the basics needed to make mobile apps, websites and web apps:

The idea came “from a discussion with an exchange student in our house,” Treehouse co-founder Ryan Carson told VentureBeat.

“‘If I want to make an iPhone app, how does that work?'” he said the student asked.

Treehouse, launched in 2010, is “an online school that teaches you how to make apps, and takes you from zero to job-ready.”

Up to now, Carson told us, the organization has been “getting its curriculum ready,” and it just recently started up a job placement service. That service is matching Treehouse students with jobs all over the country, he said, and, while he declined to cite figures until more time has passed, he said the placement rate “appears to be high.”

Carson noted that Treehouse students, working an hour a day, pay a subscription fee as small as $25/month.

“In six to 12 months,” he told us, such a person “could become a junior-level iOS developer, making about $45,000 a year.” In two years, Carson said that person’s increased skill level could boost them into an $80,000/year job.

The company, which currently has 10 teachers and over 70,000 paying students, uses a combination of video, online coding and quizzes. It has raised $12.6 million in venture capital, and has trained over 160,000 students to this point.

By comparison, Carson said, a more established online tutorial site like Lynda.com “is focused on a skill, like learning Photoshop,” while Treehouse is “focused on getting people into jobs.”

Aren’t programmers usually the techie and math types?

“In reality,” Carson said, Treehouse has found “no correlation between math and coding, or between science and coding.”

“Some of our most talented developers have [been English majors],” he said. Or waitresses or electricians.

“It’s not rocket science,” Carson confided.

“If you’re creative, this can be for you.”