Year 2025 Review: Don’t chase the carrot. Business Update.

2025 was a shocking year for me in business. It started with my full devotion to a mission of Self-degree and ended with me selling 2 of my previous companies and returning full-time to Scrimmage.

In this article, I wanna dive into how the hell that happened. Show you some backstage of company acquisitions, show you where all of my companies are going, and share a message with my future colleagues.

Voopty acquisition

Acquisition announcement: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yepaccelerator_more-great-news-just-three-months-after-activity-7361750246139293697-RfS4/

After months of building Self-degree without revenue, I was running short on funds. At the same time, Voopty (a company I co-founded, focused on building online schools) was facing its own challenges.

We had hit $5k MRR after our initial acquisition in 2023, but growth stagnated. I suspect it was partly our strategy: we invested heavily in tech but didn’t push enough into marketing and sales. We also aimed to expand beyond Ukraine, but 98% of our clients remained Ukrainian. It just wasn’t working out.

We faced a decision: double down with more investment, or sell the company.

I proposed making Voopty open-source to attract contributors, but the non-technical stakeholders weren’t sure that would work.

We compromised: put selling as Plan A, but use the open-source idea as leverage.

Then, unexpectedly, we found a buyer in under a month. We agreed to sell Voopty (terms confidential). As a co-founder, I pocketed a five-figure sum—enough to pay off debts and invest back into my own projects (and yep, I spent it all by year’s end).

I remain in close contact with the new Voopty team. I still believe in the mission: Voopty makes it easy to create and run a school. It empowers educators to focus on teaching rather than tech. I’m excited to see where the new owners take it. I’m always ready to help if they need me.

What is self-degree (word)

Finally, I want to explain what “Self-degree” really means. Some of you might know it as Quested. I changed the name because “Self-degree” is more than a brand—it’s a new idea, hopefully a new term in the dictionary.

I’ve always been passionate about learning on my own. But the term “self-education” has been diluted. These days, anyone who watches a few tutorials calls themselves “self-educated.” The original meaning of self-education (18th–19th century) was deep: it was the deliberate cultivation of one’s intellect, character, and moral judgment without formal schools. It was a disciplined, lifelong process—a moral duty, not a casual hobby.

Our modern language lacks a word for someone pursuing a degree-level education on their own. “Homeschooling” comes close, but that implies a child learning at home with family involvement. What about an adult teaching themselves?

What do we call someone who becomes an expert through self-study, investing hundreds of hours in learning, practicing, and collaborating? I call it a self-degree. It means you’re not just learning casually—you’re earning an education on your own, with the rigor of a college degree.

Some might say, “You can’t replace formal education. How would you socialize or get help?” True, it’s a huge challenge. But I believe the Self-degree platform can help make it possible.

What is Self-degree (company)

I have a vision of a world where everyone has access to a 100% personalized education that’s high-quality, social, and recognized. Self-degree, the startup, is building tools to empower this vision.

Yes, it’s a monumental task. Voopty was about empowering schools; Self-degree is about asking “Why do schools exist at all?” It’s a top-down redesign of education for the digital age.

Am I the perfect person to lead this? Probably not. There are educators far more qualified. But someone has to start. I tried impressing people with tech, but I learned a leader is about vision and inspiration, not just code.

So here’s where we are: we have a solid product with dozens of features. In 2025, our codebase saw 622 commits—lots of work. Here’s what Self-degree offers today:

• Proactive AI Learning Agent: An AI coach that proactively guides your learning journey.
• Learning Roadmap Generator: Possibly the most advanced tool to create a step-by-step learning plan tailored to your goals.
• Resource Directory: A growing library of 2,000+ educational resources (courses, videos, articles, books).
• Interactive Activities: 20+ guided projects and exercises to practice what you learn.
• Auto Notes & Experience Mapping: Tools that automatically take notes and map your experiences as you learn.
• Public Profile Page: A page where you can showcase your skills and learning progress—a living resume.
• Tutor Marketplace: A place to find online tutors
• Study Group Hub: A platform for forming study groups around topics.
• Multilingual Support: Our platform is available in English and Ukrainian.
• Free Tools: We even built some free tools, like analyzers for YouTube viewing history, just to provide value and show what’s possible.

Imagine wanting to deeply learn something niche like loyalty marketing. There are almost no structured courses on that. So I asked Self-degree to make me a roadmap. It generated a personalized curriculum from marketing fundamentals up to loyalty strategy, complete with resources and milestones.

Here is my public page where you can see roadmaps, resources, and activity: https://self-degree.com/en/directory/students/profiles/ea3a4eff-6e49-43b9-947f-2f844f0b0689

Here are a few examples of roadmaps generated with Self-degree that I personally use

1. How to be loyalty program design expert: https://self-degree.com/en/directory/roadmaps/2cdbf236-7053-421c-86b7-88fc4bfda06e
2. How to start homeschooling: https://self-degree.com/en/directory/roadmaps/5f0f641e-8708-4659-87db-e0c02e7dca32
3. Deepening buddhism knowledge: https://self-degree.com/en/directory/roadmaps/27fa1ee0-f253-42d4-a4aa-532813a49004
4. Writing a non-fiction book: https://self-degree.com/en/directory/roadmaps/d106fe48-cdde-4f92-807d-6da7ca45bc95

Self-degree Goals for 2026

In 2026, my Self-degree will be nothing more than a passion project. I have a full-time job on Scrimmage now, and I have too high ambitions to sacrifice my time there.

However, there is a high chance this is what self-degree really needs. Being a solo founder with a low budget, I have been stuck in a place where my only asset is me. I believed I could handle everything, and I had neither money nor desire to hire someone else.

Now I won't have the luxury to do that. So I have to adopt a different mindset, where I need to find people who can run Self-degree and make it successful with my minimal input.

I did my part by building a great tech. A few improvements here and there will be needed, but our current state is far from being just an MVP; it is a fully fledged product. Now I need to make it a fully fledged business.

My goal with Self-degree for 2026 is simply to reach $10k in MRR. Daily active users don't matter. Retention doesn't matter too. What matters most is to receive undeniable market recognition of the value we deliver, in the form of money.

I won't be too visionary with delivering value anymore. Our platform already has four main value delivery mechanisms that just have to be activated.

In 2025, we had great progress with growing our SEO presence. Every month, over 4 thousand people see Self-degree on Google, and every day we get 2-3 relevant clicks.

In 2026, we will double down on SEO and grow our social media presence to expedite our domain ranking further. We will partner with expert educators, invest in paid acquisition channels, and explore simpler revenue streams to hit our revenue target.

Message to colleagues

This year I started thinking about live as a pig chasing a carrot on a stick: we rush after this promise of happiness that always seems just out of reach. Chasing that moving carrot is exhausting and unsatisfying.

But stopping doesn’t mean giving up on everything. It means changing perspective. True happiness isn’t at the end of some distant goal; it’s in how we live each day.

After the break I took in 2025, my energy is back and sharper than ever. My skills are recognized, my network is strong, and I have the momentum to make big moves.

To my colleagues and partners: I want you to know I’m going to demand excellence this year. I set high standards because I believe in what we can achieve together. I hope no one resents that. We all deserve better lives, and pushing each other to do our best is how we get there.

If you’ve read this far, I have one final lesson I’d like to share. It’s about the importance of standards.

“The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.”

Think about it. If you slack off or make excuses in one area of life, that mindset will spread. If you blame your boss for mediocre work, you’ll likely blame others in your personal life, too. You’ll settle for average everywhere.

But if you train yourself to seek excellence at work—no cutting corners, no blaming— that mindset becomes your identity. It carries over into your personal life: you’ll strive to excel in your relationships, hobbies, and goals.

Energy isn’t a finite fuel. It’s more like a feedback loop. If you tell yourself you’re tired and deserve to coast, you’ll feel drained all the time. If you find meaning and challenge in what you do, energy flows naturally.

So don’t try to save energy by doing less. Use it all. Work hard, challenge yourself, and seek excellence. Happiness and fulfillment come when you stop chasing the carrot and start finding meaning in the journey itself.