A coders journey into a tech startup.

Introduction

Hey everybody!

If you're reading this it's probably because I piqued your interested in a Facebook group when I said:

Who would be interested in a blog series about how I coded my latest startup, the skills I needed, and what I look for in a developer? Comment below 👇

Welp, today I'm starting on this journey to detail, highlight and share what I needed to know to start a tech startup, code an MVP, the tools I use, the tools I've built and more.

Everything in these articles is about Arbington.com.

I'm keeping it relaxed and informal, but informative (hopefully!). I might throw in some jokes and humour - just remember if you don't laugh then the article disappears 👀

What we'll highlight over the next series of posts

Let's dive right into this list, shall we?

Load the drum roll sound effect, please.

1. This post. The introduction!
2. How I decided which languages to code in
3. What frameworks did I use, and why?
4. Nothing can replace certain human tasks. Nothing.
5. How to handle credit card payments
6. APIs: Super important stuff here.
7. Hosting solutions and what we use
8. Tools and programs I use every day
9. Tool or programs I've built to get the job done, and automate months of work into just a few hours. You'll probably dig this one a lot, it's the most fun!
10. Who I would hire (developers), under which conditions, and why? Plus the juicy details in my mind about this.

What is the startup and why I created it

This is context for all future posts. It's good to know the history and thoughts behind pretty much anything in life, so I'm going to data dump my thoughts on you here.

As mentioned before, this is all about Arbington.com - an EdTech startup designed to challenge the current solutions out there, like Udemy and Skillshare.

Why did I create this startup, in EdTech, though?

Because I'm a student and a teacher. I've taught over 500,000 people how to code over the years. And I've read thousands of blog posts, watched thousands of tutorial videos, and basically I'm a full time student in the Internet University.

I've been coding for over 20 years. And guess what? It should NOT have taken me 20 years to get this far.

I've worked with NASA and Mozilla, and a some other cool (re: big) organizations and I should have made it there faster.

And if I had an affordable solution to learn everything I needed, I would have gotten there in 4 years instead of 20.

But alas, the internet didn't do video last century. And online courses only recently become popular, so blogs and tutorials it was.

So basically.. I wish I had something like Arbington.com.

I wish I had something like Arbington.com to help teach me coding faster to hit my life goals sooner.

Udemy is good for students, but nobody takes just 2 courses on Udemy and eventually it gets expensive, and nobody finishes courses on Udemy either (well, almost nobody). But Udemy treats their teachers worse than any other platform. A $199 course nets a teacher about $1. So I can't support them.

And thus, Arbington.com was born. We profit split with teachers more than any other platform, and it's an affordable monthly subscription.

Easy. as. pie.

Until the coding started.

Stay tuned for the next post about how I decided which programming languages to use, and why.

I'll throw some real life experience at you in the next one.