When Yahya Bouhlel was ten years old, he would spend his free time sneaking into his father's office to play on the computer. The games were pre-installed with a time limit, meaning Yahya could only play for 20 minutes before being asked to pay to continue.
Aware that his father did not have a credit card — and if he did, he would likely not be allowed to use it — the young gamer accepted his fate. For months on end, Yahya would play the same five games for fixed 20-minute time slots.
By the time of the Tunisian Revolution in late December 2010, Yahya was starting to get itchy feet. Previously, he had googled ways to solve his time issue to no avail. The aftermath of the Revolution, which led to Tunisian internet users finally gaining access to YouTube and other online forum sites, changed things for the gamer.
“I could go on sites that were previously blocked,” Yahya recalls. “I soon learnt that you could use reverse engineering to overcome the time limit on the games. It was not long before I found out about hacking and coding, too.”
Enthralled by the freedom that coding provided, 12-year-old Yahya started to learn Java and C++ to create his own games.
“There was no formal way to learn about that stuff at school or external classes, so I would research online,” Yahya recounts.
His hard work soon paid off; the video games he created became popular, and he started to generate money through ads on his website, YahyaGames.
By the age of 14, Yahya had become an experienced coder and was recruited by a Silicon Valley startup, Make School, for a summer internship.
“I remember turning 15 on the flight to America,” Yahya shares. “I knew no one there, and I barely spoke English. I would cry a lot because I was so overwhelmed by the change and the fact that I could not express myself.”
Determined to make a name for himself, Yahya spent hours learning English and coding. After two summers at Make School, he was recruited to UPGRADED as a product manager.
“Then I met Sam Altman, who invited me to attend his class ‘How to Start a Start Up’ at Stanford,” Yahya explains. The classes inspired the coder, who quickly became a regular at the Stanford campus, attending design courses and dreaming of studying there one day.
A return To Tunis: Broadening horizons and increasing accessibility
On a trip back home to see family and friends in Tunis, Yahya met with a friend at Cogite, a co-working space.
“It was the first co-working space in Africa,” he tells The New Arab. “I met founders, designers, and people working in technology there. I was blown away, there was a real go-getter energy that I had not seen in Tunisia before. I suddenly realised there was potential and room for growth in my home country.”
Inspired, Yahya decided to relocate to Tunis for a year. "When I was young, there was nowhere I could go to learn coding in Tunisia. I wanted to improve accessibility, so I rented a room at the Cogite space and started hosting lessons.”
GoMyCode was founded, and Yahya's aim was clear from the get-go.
“In Tunisia, people dream of their children becoming successful footballers or movie stars. Or they see success in traditional careers, like law or medicine. I started GoMyCode to present technology as a viable career path,” the young entrepreneur explains.
Financially assisted by his brother, Amine Bouhlel, the founder spent the summer of 2017 working on the first GoMyCode prototype. The summer camp experience hosted 30 students, teaching them how to build a video game.
Sam Altman presented for the class, speaking on the future of technology. “That gained us a lot of attention,” Yahya recalls. “I realised there was a real appetite in Tunisia.”
Determined to develop GoMyCode’s offering, Yahya started applying for grants.
“We received $35,000 (USD) from the MIT Enterprise Media Lab Competition,” the founder explains. The money was revolutionary, allowing them to open their first school in Lac 1, a neighbourhood in Tunis.
“We spent the next two years building teaching programmes, helping students, and marketing GoMyCode,” Yahya tells The New Arab.
The company continued to grow, with 30 to 50 students attending each month. By 2020, they opened another school in the city of Sousse and in 2022, they opened operations in Sfax. Around the same time, they started looking for investors, raising half a million USD in their Seed Round of funding.
“The money meant we could finally focus on expanding across the Middle East and Africa,” Yahya recounts.
“We soon went from three schools to ten schools.”
Global expansion: Recreating the spirit of Silicon Valley and facing challenges
Alongside increasing access to technological education and the industry itself, one of Yahya’s main aims was recreating the spirit of Silicon Valley.
“The energy I experienced in America was like nothing I had seen when growing up in Tunisia,” he tells The New Arab. “People were so entrepreneurial, collaborative, and thought anything could be possible. I wanted our spaces to embody that.”
GoMyCode started to offer this by incorporating collaborative sessions, networking events, and co-working areas in their spaces.
The option of attending online classes was introduced in order to ensure full access for those who may not be able to visit the physical schools due to time limitations or geographical constraints. After the courses are completed, a career team helps graduates find their dream job.
“We quickly saw there was a real appetite for our programmes, and by 2022 we had the numbers to back another investment round, which totalled $8 million," he says.
Rapid expansion followed, though the path was not necessarily smooth. “We have faced a lot of challenges,” Yahya shares. “It is intimidating to open a business in a country you know nothing about. We had to find specialised ‘country launchers’ to oversee the on-the-ground operations in each destination.”
Another challenge was accurately pricing their programmes. “Government-funded education is often free but of poor quality. On the reverse, privately funded education tends to be good but extremely expensive,” Yahya says.
“Obviously we wanted the best of both worlds, but reaching an affordable middle ground was difficult to navigate.”
The team focused on the GDP per capita in each country they operate in, fixing the price of their programmes relative to this figure.
“In some cases, this made it impossible to operate in particular countries,” Bouhlel elaborates. “We had one instance where the currency devaluation over a short period was so severe that we had to close our school. Relatively, the fees we were charging for our programmes could no longer cover our operations.”
Despite this, the company continued to grow; GoMyCode currently operates in 8 countries and 40 cities in Africa. The number of successful graduates sits at 40,000, with an employment rate of 70%.
As they look to the future, GoMyCode is keen to expand further.
“We want to open more locations, but also develop our programmes, too,” Yahya tells The New Arab.
“Our next goal is English lessons; 80% of documentation on technology is in English, so people really need the language skills to operate in the industry. By providing English courses, we can improve accessibility even further," he adds.
“Through all of these initiatives, we want to show people that they do not always need to immigrate to another country to find good education and job opportunities,” says Yahya, who was recently named in Forbes Middle East's 30 under 30.
"There are options to get it in their home country, on their computer or at our schools.”
[Cover image credit: Karen Tomczak]
Amelia Dhuga is a writer who, after spending much of her life under perpetual grey skies in the east of England, started plotting her grand escape. Now she spends her time chasing the sun around Europe and the Middle East
Follow her on Instagram: @ameliadhuga