Hi! My name is Dastan (from Kyrgyzstan),I'm a full-stack developer with 5 years of experience. In this post, I want to share the story of my project and the journey it has taken.

On January 26, 2025, I launched Hack Frontend — an all-in-one interview preparation platform for frontend developers. In short, here is what it offers:

  1. Knowledge Base (200+ topics): for users who need help with theory.
  2. Task Base (5 sections, 300+ tasks in total): for those looking to practice coding problems.
  3. Knowledge Check: a flashcard-style feature designed specifically for frontend devs.
  4. Other features: progress trackers, an interactive roadmap, and more.

Statistics
Here are the numbers shown in the screenshots:

  1. Vercel Analytics (last 12 months): 220k unique visitors and ~1.17M page views.
  2. Google Search Console (last 16 months): ~46k clicks and 3.3M impressions.
  3. Yandex Metrika (last 16 months): 280k unique visitors and ~1.7M page views.
  4. Registered users: 6,510 users to date.

Google search

Vercel analytics

Yandex metrika

How the Platform Evolved
At first, it was just a pet project. As soon as I deployed it, I sent the link to my friends and acquaintances. The project was very small back then with limited content, but the concept was clear. My friends approved, so I started posting in Telegram groups for frontend developers and on LinkedIn.

Within just 3–4 days, about 100 users signed up. That’s when I realized I could keep working on this and build something bigger. At the time, I didn't even think about monetization - I just wanted to build a useful tool for myself!

Then I got super enthusiastic and assembled a team: two developer enthusiasts and one non-dev who handled promo/marketing.

There were four of us. In February, we entered Product Radar and took 3rd place as Product of the Week. We didn't get much direct benefit from it, except for some backlinks for SEO. Still, better than nothing.

When we submitted our application to Product Radar, we also applied (mostly for fun, to be honest) to the Skolkovo accelerator. We got accepted and tried to do something there, but nothing really came out of it. Zero real impact.

We kept developing the platform, adding theory topics, tasks, and so on for about a month. I tried writing articles on Habr, Dzen, etc., but got banned everywhere 😆.

Next, we tried joining Deep Into Silicon Valley (a program by High Tech Park Kyrgyzstan). If you win, you get to go to Silicon Valley. To be honest, I didn't take it seriously enough. I acted like a fool and didn't realize how serious the event was. After we passed the selection (I was shocked we made it), I messed up completely. I came totally unprepared and approached it irresponsibly. I basically rambled through the pitch and failed.

And what did I do next? I took offense 😆. I got upset with the organizers and the jury: "THEY DIDN'T APPRECIATE THE PROJECT! THEY AREN'T DEVELOPERS, THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW USEFUL THIS IS!"

Now imagine the situation:
This was my first experience building my own project and managing a team. Everything was moving super fast. I had my main job, plus daily syncs with the team where everyone kept asking: "What's next?", "What's the end goal?", "Something broke, what should we do?" I put on a smart face and squeezed out answers, thinking to myself: "How should I know what's next? This is my first time doing this too!"

After about 1.5 months of working at this pace, I completely burned out. Failing the Silicon Valley program was the final blow. I stopped actively working on the platform, and because of that, the team broke apart — first one member left, then another, and finally we decided to split up.

For about 3 months, I didn't touch the platform or the code at all. I took a break, rode my motorcycle, and did everything possible to avoid looking at the project.

In September 2025, I checked the platform analytics and realized: the platform was alive! It had around 300–400 daily active users, and new people were signing up every day — even though no work had been done on it for ~3 months! So, I decided to resume development as a solo founder.

I added localization (English support), a lot of new tasks and theoretical content, and completely rewrote the online IDE. And guess what? After 2 months of work, daily active users grew to ~700!

Later, I launched a YouTube channel (though I haven't uploaded anything for 4 months now). The idea was simple and useful: I invited strong engineers to share their career stories. Right now, there are 4 videos featuring devs from Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft. The main goal was to bring extra traffic to the platform.

Step by step, the platform kept growing.

First Revenue
On September 21, 2026, I finally took the leap and added a small Pro plan to the platform. Honestly, when I pushed the update, I thought I was "killing" the project and would end up closing it soon. But the opposite happened.

Here are the results after 15 days:
About 65 sales. Most buyers are from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, with a small percentage from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan 😅. Since my "payment method" is just a manual card transfer, people actually took the time to read the instructions, figure out how to transfer money, and find workarounds just to make a purchase. They literally navigated a maze to pay (because of sanctions).

So, that's the story of how the platform developed so far.

To Fellow Solo Founders, Makers, Experienced Leaders, Marketers, and the Habr Community:
What do you think of these results?

What should I do next? How should I scale and grow the project?

I'd love to read your feedback, advice, and experience in the comments!

P.S. If you like the Build in Public format, I regularly share metrics, failures, and the development process on my LinkedIn. I’d love to connect and hear your feedback!