From Teacher to Tech Founder: My Story

The Classroom Was Always a Lab

I spent years standing in front of classrooms, and I want to tell you something that took me a while to articulate clearly: everything I've learned about building products, communities, and companies — I learned first as a teacher.

Teaching is, at its core, a design problem. You start with a learning objective (what should this person be able to do or understand at the end?), you design an experience to get them there, you watch them engage with it, and you iterate relentlessly based on what actually works. Sound familiar? It should — it's also the exact description of building a good product.

What I didn't recognise for a long time was that the skills I had developed over years in education were precisely the skills the most effective founders are described as having: deep empathy for the people they're building for, the ability to explain complex things clearly, patience with iteration, and a genuine orientation toward the success of others.

The Moment I Decided to Build

The decision to start building didn't arrive dramatically — it accumulated. Years of frustration with tools that weren't designed for people like me. Software built by engineers for engineers, with user experiences that assumed technical literacy I didn't have and my students didn't have. Marketing platforms designed for corporations, not for solo creators trying to grow something meaningful from nothing.

At some point the frustration tipped into action. I had a Masters in Psychology and Linguistics, which meant I understood how people learn and communicate. I had become a certified Webflow designer, which gave me the ability to build things visually. I had two decades of experience understanding what educators, creators, and entrepreneurs actually need. And I had the stubbornness to build something that didn't exist yet.

The First Tools — Learning by Shipping

The first things I built were imperfect. Flowboard — a portfolio and link-in-bio builder — came from my own need for a portfolio that matched how I thought about creative work: not a static gallery but a dynamic, flippable, media-rich showcase. It solved a real problem for me, which meant it probably solved it for others too.

The process of building Flowboard taught me more about product development than any course I'd taken. I learned how users actually interact with things you've built (differently from how you expect). I learned how to balance design ambition with technical reality. I learned how to ship something imperfect and improve it in public. These lessons informed everything that came after.

Building the Ecosystem

Each tool in the Beanstalk ecosystem started from a real problem: Speedeco from the hours I spent manually building presentation decks. Bean AI from the struggle of developing marketing strategy without a team. Papaya Press from the royalty structure of traditional publishing that seemed designed to enrich everyone except the writers. POQO from the lack of accessible UX research tools for solo builders.

The common thread is that each tool was built by someone who had felt the problem acutely — and who had the specific combination of skills (educational psychology, design, product thinking) to build a solution that worked for the people experiencing it. Read more on why experience like this is such an advantage in entrepreneurship.

What I've Learned

The transition from teacher to tech founder is not as dramatic as it sounds from the outside. It's a series of small expansions: learning one new skill, shipping one small thing, getting one piece of feedback, making one improvement. The founder identity emerged gradually from the accumulation of these small actions rather than from a single decisive leap.

The things that stayed constant: curiosity, care for the people I'm building for, and a deep belief that the tools people use shape what they're able to imagine and create. If I can give creators and entrepreneurs tools that expand what feels possible, I've done the same job I was doing in the classroom — just with different students and a different medium.

If you're standing at the beginning of a similar transition — with a teaching background, a creative practice, or a career that seems far from technology — I want to tell you directly: the skills you have are exactly what's needed. The gap between where you are and where you want to be is smaller than it looks. Start building. The path reveals itself when you move. See our full guide on reinventing yourself at 40 for a practical framework for making the leap.