Not just the same idea, or similar design.
Look at their projects!
It really bothers me that this is getting so much attention and that they're backed by 500 Startups, who didn't do their due diligence.
I carried over only my work and what I was entitled to as a legal co-owner of the company, including my design work, only projects that Brandon (my first hire at my previous startup Rocketrip YCW14) and I worked on over to my new company that remain backed by 500 Startups because of the trust they placed in me.
Believe it or not, Brandon and I are in this for the mission to contribute to practical project-based learning for anyone to create real products and learn how to code, and from that perspective, your comments are hurtful. We hope our projects can benefit more people out there and it is our belief that more online schools that focus on creating real products like Udacity, Thinkster, Udemy, Watchandcode and so on should exist.
But I hope you can understand how this misunderstanding would happen since it was never explained. From an outsiders perspective, I don't think the conclusion I came to was a stretch. You looked like the bad guy, and Leo looks like victim. I'm happy to be proven wrong.
Congrats on getting funding.
What's weird is the founder/ceo of codeupstart used to work for code4startup.
I was excited for him when he announced he added someone to help, then sad for him when she wasted no time stealing it and raising funding.
Shady.
December 3rd, she's tweeting about CodeUpstart joining 500 Startups: https://twitter.com/CodeUpStart/status/672509204737822720