Welcome to HackerNoon’s Startups of The Year 2024 interview series, spotlighting startups from around the world that are changing the way we live, one solution at a time.

Hey Hackers,

DevStacks has been nominated in HackerNoon's annual Startups of The Year awards! Hooray 🥳

Please vote for us here:

Read more about us below to understand why we deserve your vote 🫶🎉

Meet DevStacks

Turn any device into a dev desktop environment✨

DevStacks provides a self-configuring, full-fledged development environment equipped with standard tooling such as IDEs, terminals, and file managers. Our unique cloud-based desktop interface allows users to multitask and collaborate efficiently from any device, be it a high-end computer or an older mobile device.

Experience the future of inclusive & accessible education with our Software Engineering cloud platform. Designed for seamless multitasking and collaboration, it ensures efficient workflow from any device - be it a powerful computer or an older smartphone.

We’re a two-people team, and we’ve been working on this for a while - first, we were focused on building groundbreaking cloud management tech, but then we realized that what we created could solve a very real problem: there’s many talented people that want to learn how to code, but they don’t have access to a proper computer. We want to fix that by putting DevStacks in the hands of as many people as possible.

Here’s the story of our team:

Jamie Kerber

The problem of students and teachers struggling with malfunctioning tech in class is a problem all-too-familiar to me. I encountered it many times during my education, and I joined forces with Marco as we decided to do something about it.

I’m a passionate developer and cloud architect - I love tackling complex problems and coming up with creative solutions, now matter how complex they can get sometimes.

Also I’m a designer and gamedev at heart - I wanted to create interfaces that are beautiful and whimsical, while still feeling familiar and being accessible. There’s always a risk in doing things in a new way, but to paraphrase a famous movie character: “Anyone can code, but only the fearless can be great”

Marco Ciarrocca

First and foremost, I'm an engineer - I’m passionate about solving problems, especially when it comes to making things more efficient. Working on DevStacks has been really exciting because it lets me, once and for all, solve a challenge I’ve faced often—setting up development environments across many devices. As a student, I struggled with this and saw others do the same, so I want to eliminate that hassle for future engineers. My hope is that thanks to DevStacks no one will need to waste time on tedious configuration anymore, allowing students to focus on learning. Plus, working at a startup has been a great experience—I’m learning a lot and meeting many like-minded professionals.

How we achieved product-market fit

We achieved product-market fit through several key indicators:

1. Direct Communication with Target Audience: We engaged regularly with technology educators and students across the continent has helped identify real challenges in software engineering education. Thanks to this direct feedback loop we were able to ensure that the platform addresses actual needs.

2. Alignment of Market Research and Vision: The market research we conducted validated DevStacks’ core vision and helped us refine the product to match user demands - focusing on strong alignment with the needs of educational institutions.

3. Ongoing Validation: We kept in touch with our contacts, receiving continuous feedback from users to ensure that the product is evolving in the right direction, further supporting our product-market fit.

The evolution of DevStacks

Our original vision for DevStacks was to create a cloud-based software development platform that would function seamlessly on any device, from desktop to mobile. This idea emerged from personal struggles using outdated, bulky computers in school and the limitations of alternative devices like Chromebooks. Over time, our focus shifted towards education, especially to assist teachers and students in underprivileged regions. The goal became creating a sustainable technology that could perform well even with hardware constraints.

DevStacks has not significantly pivoted from its original concept, but the team did refine its target market. Initially focused on educational institutions, they later recognized that businesses could also benefit from the platform’s versatility, particularly those with hardware limitations or remote workforces. This realization helped expand the product’s scope without changing its core purpose.

The project’s current priorities, such as optimizing for low-resource devices, are informed by the experiences and challenges of our prospect users. Feedback from future users, will likely play a crucial role in shaping future updates.

Milestones and achievements

2022 - First pitch, began startup incubation 🚀

We started DevStacks fresh out of university, and applied to “Science Park Gotland”, a startup incubator in Gotland Sweden, co-founded by Jamie’s alma mater, Uppsala University. There we received both financial support and mentorship, thanks to which we successfully conducted market research to validate and refine our idea, as well as hiring experts to help us build the DevStacks platform.

Science Park’s support continues to be vital in our development as a startup 💚

Within a few months, we were able to demonstrate a first prototype, after which we intensely engaged in business development.

2023 - First public demo 🔮

In November 2023 we traveled to Lisbon, Portugal for WebSummit! It was the first international event of this size we participated in, and we got to not only meet many other talented professionals in our field, but also we got our own booth!

We showcased DevStacks running live, and we were amazed at how well it performed even in poor connectivity, in a huge building with thousands of devices - this just reassured us that what we have is working and motivated us to keep working at it even harder! ✨

2024 - Developed MVP! 🥳

Over that past year our work was heavy in terms of UI design, establishing a solid UX flow for our users, and creating more smaller prototypes of those concepts. Finally, in Q4 we were able to finalize our first MVP demo!

DevStacks running live on the cloud in a multi-user environment, where every student can choose their favorite technology stack and deploy it within 30 seconds! A large difference from the 30 days as per our university’s current data.

Next steps

Now that we have a working MVP of our tech, we intend to show it to our first interested prospects and make the first sales before the year closes. We’re very excited for students and teachers to finally put it to daily use 🫶

Lessons learned

Prior to working on DevStacks, we’d often work on long-term projects, where deadlines weren’t often a concern. We’d often prioritize quality above everything else. While this taught us how to build really high-quality software, we’d often be quite slow at producing new features.

Working in a startup pushed us to learn how to iterate quickly and push out updates more frequently. Having the knowledge of best practices and techniques allowed us to navigate the most common pitfalls regardless.

What “Startups of The Year” means to us

First and foremost, it’s quite an honor! 😊

Being nominated alongside many other talented devs and creative ideas is not something that happens every day.

We’ve been featured in Sweden before, but this is our first venture into the international aether of many great ideas!

Our hope is that many others will recognize the potential of DevStacks - we want as many people as possible to hear about it!

We believe this will help us get the product to where it needs to be, so we can achieve our mission: enabling anyone, anywhere to become a Software Developer! ✨

Conclusion

DevStacks is more than just a tool; it's a solution to a widespread problem that many aspiring developers face—lack of access to proper technology. We've poured our hearts and skills into creating a platform that can empower students and teachers worldwide, making software development accessible on any device. From our humble beginnings to building a full-fledged cloud-based development environment, we’ve come a long way, and we’re so grateful for the support and feedback we’ve received along the way.

As a community, your support means everything to us. 💚

Together, we can help bridge the gap in education, enabling more people to learn coding without the barrier of expensive or advanced hardware. So let’s continue working towards a future where anyone, anywhere, can become a software developer. We're excited to take the next steps with all of you by our side. Thank you for believing in DevStacks and helping us make this vision a reality! ✨

Vote for us today!