Forest, 2019–2023

A developer hosting platform co-built from nothing with two other engineers and no outside money. Reached 1,000+ users and 10,000+ deployments before the product was acquired.

2019–2023 co-built, three engineers acquired

Overview

Forest was a zero-config, Git-based deployment platform: push to a branch and the app was live, without touching a server. Built with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket integrations, and a public API for automating deployments.

Context

In 2019, hosting a small app still meant either managing a server by hand or accepting a much more expensive managed platform. Forest targeted the gap for developers who wanted git-push simplicity without enterprise pricing.

Role

Co-founder, one of three engineers. Owned full-stack and infrastructure work across React, Node.js, CI/CD, and LXC/LXD containers, including backups, rollback systems, SSL, and environment management.

Results

Scaled to 1,000+ users and 10,000+ deployments while balancing architecture, infrastructure cost, and reliability. The product was later acquired.

Lessons

The constraint that mattered most was cost, not features. Containers instead of full VMs were what kept the unit economics workable at that scale, and that decision shaped almost everything built on top of it.