Built from zero, rebuilt four times, still running every day
Zero to thousands of daily users, and a team of 30 that runs without me
I founded Stack Learner with nothing and grew it into an ed-tech platform thousands of developers use daily. I have torn it down and rebuilt it four times to keep up.
The problem
I started Stack Learner from absolute zero. No money, no audience, no brand, no idea how to build any of those things. What I had was the will to make something that mattered. Almost everything I know about running a company, I learned here, often by getting it wrong first.
What I built
Stack Learner is an ed-tech platform that helps thousands of developers every day, but calling it only that undersells what is underneath. It runs on its own data platform, its own CMS, and its own CRM, most of it built in house. It is also my live laboratory. When I want to test a new technology or a new business idea, I test it here, on a real product with real users, not on a side project no one sees. I have rebuilt the whole thing four times. Each version handled more than the last and taught me something the previous one could not.
Along the way I led a team of thirty: developers, designers, devops, data engineers, managers, finance, and more. I hired the people who made it work, and I let go of the ones who did not. Plenty of people can hire. Fewer can do the harder half of that job honestly. I have done both.
The result
Today Stack Learner does not really need me in the day to day. It needs me to check the big decisions and set the direction, which is to say I am its fractional CTO now. That is the part I am proudest of: I built something that can run without me. Most of what I understand about where founders actually struggle, what quietly costs a business, and what is not worth shipping, I learned standing inside this one.