Growing a back-end development curriculum from a side project into a $441k MRR business

Lane Wagner saw a problem with the existing backend development curriculum online — there was none. So he built boot.dev, filled it with stellar content, added interactive elements, and talked about it on YouTube.

Now, it's making $441k MRR. Here's Lane on how he did it. 👇

Finding the gap

I like making stuff. I like money. And I like to be in charge. That's why I'm a founder. That's the most honest way I can put it.

I was a backend engineer for three years, then an engineering manager for another three before starting boot.dev.

At the time, my wife wanted to learn backend development, and I couldn’t find a proper, in-depth curriculum for backend developers online. This is a stereotype, but I'd say that backend folks are even less into content creation than frontend folks. As a result, there are still very few platforms focused on backend learning — almost none.

So I built it out myself. It made sense because I’m obsessed with writing and mansplaining. Most engineers hate writing. I love just sitting down and cranking out explanations on how things work. I genuinely love it.

And I'm good at it. I like to think I’m a good engineer, but I wouldn’t say I’m top 1% or anything like that. I think I am in the top 1% at writing explanatory content.

Interactive learning

I launched boot.dev in 2020. It started as a side project and hobby, and it stayed that way for a few years. I didn’t have kids when I started, so I just worked a ton on nights and weekends.

All content on boot.dev is free. Interactive elements and game mechanics are paid on yearly/monthly memberships.

It's an education platform and it’s somewhat of a content play. But even more so, it's a software play. Other course platforms only share content. But what we're really selling are interactive features like answer verification, AI chat mentor, solution viewing, spellbooks (interactive cheatsheets), quests, achievements, and so on.

The tech stack is Golang, Vue/nuxt, postgres, Tailwind, GCP, k8s, stripe, sendgrid, and a lot of custom code.

The MRR is currently $441k.

Focus on one growth channel

Initially, it was really hard to get users. Education is a crowded space, even if there's very little on backend development. You really have to find a way to stand out and get people trying your stuff. So validation took a very long time.

Here's what I did:

SEO

I started with my blog. It was slow, but at least it was organic acquisition via SEO. To be honest, I focused on this tactic for too long.

YouTube

Later, growth came from Youtube, both through the Backend Banter podcast and our main YouTube channel.

We use YouTube purely for growth, so we've never made any money from it. I'd rather have the focus of our free content be on building traffic and trust in the Boot.dev platform, rather than trying to monetize the content directly.

I started YouTube waaaaay too late. And it's not my strong suit. But it's incredible for building trust.

Sponsorships

I also sponsored creators in various niches — particularly gaming and tech. It’s hard to find sponsorships that work, especially now. It was easier in 2022, but it's still doable.

There are a few things you can use to weed out deals that almost certainly won't work:

1. Start with small creators. They will give you better prices on a per-view basis that convert at higher rates.

1. Figure out a "relevant audience CPV" (cost per view) that will work for you. We don't just look for views at a certain price point, we look for the number of views within our demographics (age, gender, geography) at a certain price point.

1. Find creators who actually like what you're building. They'll give you better prices, they'll make better integrations, and their audiences will be a better natural fit

Focus your energy

People say you need to take advantage of all the “free” distribution channels. Don't. They aren't free. They're very expensive in terms of your time.

Find one distribution channel that’s working, and focus on it until you can’t figure out how to scale it anymore. So many indie devs want to be on all the launchpads, all the socials, all the whatevers. Don’t do that.

No dark patterns

Just don’t do dark patterns. They don’t actually work as well as I think marketers think they do — mostly because marketers often aren’t as good at tracking as they think they are.

Make something people want. Let them leave if they want. You can build a lot of great word of mouth and positive brand vibes by just being amazing to work with and buy from.

Don't avoid D2C

Everyone says you need to be selling to businesses. You don't. We’ve made a few attempts at selling to businesses, and there have been a few bites — we have a couple hundred business accounts — but the vast majority of our revenue is direct-to-consumer.

It’s a different game, but there’s nothing wrong with D2C.

That said, don’t sell to other indie hackers. They don’t have money, and they have a ton of time. It’s one of the worst demographics for bootstrappers.

Get better at writing

Here's my advice: Don’t underestimate copywriting. If you don’t have at least decent copywriting chops, I legitimately don’t think you have any business starting a business that sells direct to consumers on the internet.

When it comes to content, focus on quality. The power law in content creation is centered around the quality and word of mouth surrounding your stuff, not the quantity of crap you produce.

What's next

Our goal each time we ship a course is to make it the very best course in the world on that subject: the most concise definitions, the most religiously updated, the highest quality visualizations, and the most in-depth, interactive features. If that’s not the case, we keep iterating on it.

We don’t launch courses and update them once every year or once every 4 years or never, like some instructors. We update daily and weekly.

We’ve shipped most of the interactivity that we need for the current content. Now we’re hellbent on polishing the UI since we're confident in the feature set.

Aside from polish, the other big priority is just new content. We want to offer TypeScript as well as Go. We also want to expand into data engineering and devops.

Other than that, I plan to grow, grow, grow.

You can follow along on X and LinkedIn. And check out boot.dev.