I'm thrilled to announce that today I'm joining Amp as Builder in Residence.

The journey here started all the way back in October 1987 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I was 10 when my dad burst through the door after work and shouted "Kids! I've got a surprise!" I raced down to our living room and there it was: the Apple IIe. Our first home computer.

I booted up Zork and it felt like magic. I could control a story and shape an adventure, all from my keyboard.

Fast forward to my junior year of high school. I was rushing down the hallway when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Miss Bruce, my calculus teacher, stopped me: "Ryan, you should take our programming class."

"What's programming?"

Her eyes lit up. "It's where you tell the computer what to do, and it does it!"

That tap on my shoulder changed my whole life.

I dove into Turbo Pascal, instantly hooked by the magic of creating with code. (Side note: I’m bummed to say my family sold our Mac and went to the dark side and got a PC. Command & Conquer, anyone?) Over Christmas break in 1995, I bought a copy of HTML for Dummies from Barnes and Noble and taught myself how to build my first website.

That hallway moment with my calculus teacher led me to Colorado State University, where I studied Computer Science. After graduation, my first job was writing PHP as a web developer in England. (There was a whole Hugh-Grant-Notting-Hill thing. I was only supposed to be in the UK for a year but I ended up marrying the editor of a magazine after we met in a coffee shop on Tottenham Ct Road. Ask me over a beer sometime.)

Inspired by watching Jason Fried and DHH launch Basecamp, I took the leap. Left my job and built my first startup. I racked and stacked servers in a co-lo, and launched an app to send large files that you couldn’t email.

After two years, it was acquired. That's when it hit me - my true passion was empowering others to learn how to code.

Coding is power - and you don’t need a CS degree to wield it.

So I founded a school to teach people how to build web apps. We ran in-person workshops with legends like Cal Henderson (Co-Founder of Flickr and Slack), then hosted large conferences with thousands of devs and speakers like Mark Zuckerberg, Ev Williams, Kevin Systrom and more.

After that, I founded Treehouse - our online coding school. We raised VC, grew the team, and ultimately taught over a million people how to code.

After Treehouse's acquisition in 2021, ChatGPT exploded onto the scene. My desire to write code returned. Years of CEO duties had abstracted me from actual coding - I hadn't personally shipped an app in ages. So I dove back in, relearning everything (endless copy/paste/learn/repeat with ChatGPT) and shipped a simple llm-wrapper sales coach with Next.js app on Vercel using OpenAI's API. I had always been primarily a backend dev so I was blown away by how quickly I could ship a fullstack app.

I was also super curious about silicon, training and inference. I read the book Chip War and decided to join Intel to learn first hand. I had always been a software dev and had never gone down to the silicon level or operated inside a huge enterprise - tons to learn and absorb.

Then Cursor launched and everything changed. I started using it from day one and went on to try every AI coding agent and IDE I could find.

Finally, a new startup idea sparked in my mind. I chose the solo founder path: Bootstrapping and coding until 1 a.m. almost every night.

Through that process I learned how to effectively build with agents and released a simple open source framework to help manage the agentic development process. Claire Vo invited me on her show to discuss it and 4,200 stars on GitHub and 150,000 YouTube views later - I guess it struck a chord with everyone :)

Then I discovered Amp. I worked hard to learn about every single AI tool, so how did I miss one? I installed it skeptically - but it worked beautifully, exceeding my expectations. The team's accessibility and engagement on X, commitment to great DX, opinionated product decisions (unlimited token usage, no model selector or diff accepts?!), super-fast shipping cycles, and relentless dogfooding created something very different.

A couple weeks ago, I got vocal on X about what I loved (and didn't) about Amp. I DM'd Quinn Slack, the CEO, with some unsolicited, blunt feedback and praise. After some back-and-forth, he suggested a video call.

During our chat, we went deep on agents and the future of SDLC. After a bit, he said, "Why don't you join us? Keep building your startup, ship new features for Amp, and share your experience as you build."

It made perfect sense. I can keep building in public using Amp and use that experience to build and ship improvements to Amp - all while connecting, educating, and empowering a massive community of builders.

I spent time meeting more of the team including Thorsten Ball, Beyang Liu, Connor O'Brien, Madison Clark, Devon Coords, Carly Jones, Erika Rice Scherpelz and more. I was extremely impressed by their deep experience coupled with genuine humility (and kindness). This team is very special.

I now believe Amp will be the power tool that millions of devs use to change the world.

Why? Over 25 years, I've traveled the full journey: CS degree → web developer → solo founder → taught 1m+ people to code → solo founder.

I've witnessed something profound: a single person, augmented by powerful AI agents, can imagine, build, and ship almost anything.

Apps that used to take millions of dollars, more than six months, and large teams can now be shipped by a small, effective team - or even one person. It's an extraordinary time to be alive - and Amp will be a big part of this revolution.

All of this brings me right back to my high school hallway where everything changed.

I couldn't be more excited!