Moncton edtech company Educode Academy has named Peter Hess its new Chief Executive Officer, succeeding founder Guyverson Vernous who is now the Chair of the Board.

Educode creates online courses that help children learn to code, and its international sales have soared recently as the result of a free service it offered in the depth of the pandemic.

“I am very excited to be able to work with the team at EduCode to help bring alive the vision our founder developed for how educating our children can be adapted from the post-war era format to a much more 21st Century style using the technology available to us,” said Hess in a statement.

The four-year-old company is the brainchild of Vernous, a native of Haiti who several years ago launched Moncton-based iCubemedia, which developed digital products for small businesses.  In 2016, he began Educode to help children learn coding through online lessons.

Hess has spent more than 30 years in business, including stints with John Deere Construction Equipment Company in British Columbia and Illinois, and as Managing Director of the New Brunswick Aerospace & Defence Association. In January, he joined Educode as the Vice-President of Marketing and Sales.

When the COVID-19 crisis hit in March, the company offered its online course free to anyone in the world to help children learn while schools were closed. The free period ended in June.

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In an interview, Hess said that offer led to Educode being included in five or six international lists of online educational programs for children that were free during the pandemic.

“Since then, we’ve been getting approached by resellers in countries around the world – the U.K., Australia, UAE, India,” said Hess. “We had a lot of people sign up for our free course and a lot of them have stayed with us.”

Hess declined to discuss the number of Educode users, but said they come from a range of countries. The company still offers a 14-day free trial and 50 to 100 people a day are signing up, he said.

Educode tries to differentiate itself from other online coding material by offering micro-lessons with special exercises within the curriculum. Hess said this means anyone over the age of about 10 can learn without the aid of a computer science teacher. Many online courses either require a computer science teacher to walk children through the lessons, or they are so basic that the student doesn’t learn anything meaningful, said Hess.

The company now offers six courses, and Hess said three or four are in the works. He also said he hopes to begin raising capital within the next month or so, though he did not name a target for the company’s first round of funding.

“Peter brings the experience and leadership required to bring EduCode to the next level,” said Vernous in the statement. “We look forward to watching EduCode Academy grow and prosper under his passion and his guidance.”