From -$75k to +$500k Venture in 3 Years: Live Business Lessons, Raw Numbers

TL;DR: Started $75k in debt (2023). Broke even (2024). Hit $537k revenue (2025) with profit across 9 streams: Fractional Advisory $239k (45%), Community $130k (24%), Mentoring $117k (22%), Workshops $51k (9%).

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2023: The Starting Point

In 2023, I left a $350k job offer to create an engineering leadership coaching business, building Silicon Valley-caliber leaders in the heart of Europe through professional mentoring and the Engineering Leaders Community.

The start was messy. I made every rookie mistake. The only reason I survived that first year was cashing out a small portion of Mews stock options to cover both business expenses and living costs.

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2024: The Break-Even Grind

2024 was about proving the model works. We turned the Engineering Leaders Community into a 1,700+ member base of CTOs, VPEs, and engineering managers in Europe.

Mentoring became the main revenue stream. Sessions with CTOs, VPEs, and engineering managers who needed a sparring partner. Someone who understood the technical side but could push them on leadership.

By end of 2024, I broke even. We reinvested the full profit back into the business.

See my full 2024 rollercoaster business review for the details.

Why reinvest everything? Because I wasn’t building one tiny business. I see bigger potential: Mentoring. Fractional advisory. Leadership academy. Community. Hiring platform. Conference.

A Disneyland.

I believe we can build something extraordinary in 10 years if we keep marching in the right direction.

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2025: The Year We Levelled Up

Our engineering leadership business hit $500k revenue in 2025, growing from $0 to half a million in 3 years across 9 business streams.

For the first time, we ended up in a profit.

Cashflow analytics in Tableau. CZK currency.

1. Mentoring: $117k

311 sessions this year. 2,000+ total since 2023. With two more mentors we can rely on, we helped 57 individuals navigate their leadership journey. 33% were first-time managers dealing with the transition from IC to manager. The rest are directors, VP, CTO/CPOs level working on strategies or scaling challenges.

2. ELC Community: $130k

Our community grew from 900 to 1,700 members. The community is free for members. Revenue comes from corporate partners who sponsor our meetups. We ran 11 high-quality meetups, partnering with Ataccama, Microsoft, Productboard, CodeNow, or Kiwi.com.

Quality brings strong leads. For 2026, we closed Pure Storage, Ataccama, and two super-magnificent partners we’ll reveal in Jan 2026.

Our meetups turn into 100+ events where people learn and build connections.

With Anna Kozuch, our community CEO, we continue to reinvest to strengthen our core ventures.

3. Academy Workshops: $51k

53 trainings delivered. 47 highly tailored workshops across 7 companies. 6 open courses in Prague. Module flexibility turned out to be key. Build leadership courses that actually work. Forget certificates and slick slides.

I hoped to merge and rebrand our edu platforms, ITensity Labs and Leadership Program, by November 2025. We’re close to finalising it.

4. Fractional Advisory: $239k

Three major companies: Trinity Bank, Eurowag, and one under NDA. 3 more in the 2026 pipeline. On-site work.

Transition to Product operating modelTeam efficieny dashboards

The assignment:

• Turning companies into product trios of 30+ teams,
• enabling dev team efficiency,
• auditing teams’ delivery and org structures,
• or boosting joint leadership between the CTO and CPO.

With Zuzka, Jan, and Jirka leading the workshops for one of the clients.

And yes, there’s a point where you should fire your consultant, including me. IMO, an advisor should move across companies often, as it makes them stronger. I’m convinced that being a consultant at a company for several years is harmful to both the company and the consultant.

5. ELC Conference

We launched the ELC Conference for 350 people in Prague. High-risk experiment. Top speakers from Netflix, SpaceX, BetterStack, Incident.io, Bloomreach, or Make.com. It turned into a super-success. Here’s a full ELC 2025 conference recap about how it sparked a leadership revolution in Europe.

#ELC2025 Aftermovie | 25 Speakers, 330 Engineering Leaders, Unforgettable Impact - YouTube

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#ELC2025 Aftermovie | 25 Speakers, 330 Engineering Leaders, Unforgettable Impact Engineering Leaders Community

Engineering Leaders Community170 subscribers

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April 2026 ELC conference will be epic.

6. Product Leaders Community

With Jirka and Anna, we started regular Product Leaders Community meetups. The reason: I believe product manager and engineering manager roles will blend. No PM survives without engineering. No engineer survives without understanding value delivery from idea to production.

Product Leaders Community meetup in 2025Q4

7. University partnerships

We also partnered with the University of Economics in Prague to launch an MBA in IT Management course. I’m happy to be the lead lecturer for IT Leadership, starting in Feb 2026.

With Ota Novotny and MBA students

8. Tamira AI

With Jan, we launched Tamira AI. A Team Leader AI Agent for healing dev teams. Currently in pilot. The thesis: AI won’t replace managers, but managers using AI will outperform those who don’t.

Tamira.ai

9. Marian’s List

In 2025, the hiring market froze. But top performers still get crazy offers while the rest ask for help.

Through Marian’s List we helped 11 individuals land jobs, mostly in 2025Q1. 180+ people registered, 40+ in active matching mode.

For example, people ask for help with imposter syndrome. They struggle to articulate their achievements in interviews. This is why I wrote about 10x-ing your market value to help with precisely this problem.

Open candidate list

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Lesson #1: Sustaining the business

Creating a successful business is fun. Sustaining it is exhausting. It requires discipline.

Clients demand super-high quality.

• Mentees want strong KPIs we’ll hit in 3 and 6 months
• Community partners want great events, venues, speakers, networking, and social media presence
• Fractional clients want on-site advisory and availability for the 9pm calls

Our ambitions grow faster than our capacity. That’s the tension we live with.

Lesson #2: People above all

We’re community-centric and people-centric. AI won’t kill us, because finding reliable business partners is key. They do exist. People who don’t just talk but execute. Hiring includes firing sometimes.

Losing one major contributor could mean one year of lost opportunity in the market.

With our core community group

Building alone is a myth. Anna is the main community engine. Tom does does magic with his flawless design skills, Miru making conference miracles happen, Jirka covering the product as a true master I have a lot to learn from, Jan our ambassador and steering member, Ivo our super-proactive ambassador, Denisa helping us with the brand, Marki organising meetups, Jakub our #1 person being available no matter what, Klara our strategy and community coach, Serhii helping us with the video content, Yurii covering the digital community footprint, Adrian with the video post-production, or Alaa with the copy.

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In the mirror

I struggle with how open to be. Some people question it, including posts like this. Transparency about strategy, finance, materials, and crazy ideas. It sometimes backfires and upsets people.

I’m okay if 5% of things go bad. I mean, very bad. Perfection kills. Luckily, Radical Candor works in our environment.

The second thing is that by the end of 2025, I struggled to allocate time properly. Quality suffered in some areas due to exhaustion. That’s on me.

My 2026 commitments

1. I’ll work with a speaking coach. Moderating and conference speaking need improvement. I know my weaknesses.
2. Reading “The Qualified Sales Leader” by John McMahon. Sales is a skill I avoided for 20 years. Time to fix that.

I’m not good enough at selling our mission as I feel obsessed with it.

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What’s in it for you?

If you’re an aspiring speaker, tell us what topic you could speak about at a meetup or conference in 2026. Submit your talk.

If you want to partner with ELC to strengthen your mission, brand, or revenue, check our deck.

If you need a strong mentor, we’d be happy to boost your career and value in the market.

Are you building your own venture? I’d be happy to share my lessons learned.

If you want to help our mission, raise your hand and ping Anna or me. We look for true ambassadors, reliable mentors, and volunteers in love with our mission.

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Thanks to everyone supporting us!

We’re building Silicon Valley-caliber leaders in the heart of Europe.

The momentum is here. 2026 is ours.

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[Writing time: 9h]