It Started With a Game
In 2014, at 14 years old, I uploaded my first YouTube video. It was about Battlefield Hardline. I didn't have a production setup. I didn't have a mentor. I had Movie Maker, an internet connection, and a compulsion to make things.
I taught myself everything: how to edit, how to pace a video, how to hold an audience's attention. Nobody showed me. I just kept making things until they got better.
By the time a GTA compilation series crossed 3 million combined views, something had shifted. This wasn't a hobby anymore. I was building an audience, and I was learning how to do it on purpose.
In 2017, at 17, I ranked among Lebanon's Top 100 YouTubers according to SocialBlade, sitting above local public figures who'd been in the game far longer. That same year, I went on camera for the first time. It was my face reveal video. Everything that came after that started there. Read full blog
Paying My Own Way Through University
That same year, I enrolled in Computer Science at Saint Joseph University, one of Lebanon's top institutions. Annual tuition: significant. Financial support available to me: none.
So I built income streams around what I already knew how to do. YouTube ad revenue. Affiliate marketing campaigns wired into my content.
Client work on the side: I built a barber shop's website and ranked it #1 on Google for "Barbers in Beirut." Read full blog
By 19, I had paid my entire CS degree tuition, over $30,000, entirely from what I'd built online. No loan. No family covering it. No financial aid. The university found it significant enough to write about publicly.
I graduated in 2020. But the education that actually shaped what came next was the four years of building in parallel, not the coursework.
The Corporate Years, and a Deliberate Pivot
After graduating, I made two practical moves. First: Oracle Technical Consultant at Widestreams, writing PL/SQL and building custom reporting systems for enterprise clients. Real technical depth, real complexity. Then: Account Manager at Kingsmen Agency in Dubai, managing four enterprise accounts across facility management, real estate, and financial services, coordinating developers and SEO teams, delivering to GCC clients remotely.
Those weren't detours. They were deliberate. I wanted to understand how businesses actually operate, and I wanted GCC market experience before I tried to build something there.
Mid-2022, I made a different call: go back to engineering. I'd been watching a gap form in the Arabic developer market, and I wanted to be the one to fill it. I left the agency job, started rebuilding my coding skills from zero, and shipped a first project within weeks.
That fall, I ran a simple test: coding content in Arabic versus English. Arabic won, clearly, decisively, and with an audience that had almost nobody building for them.
In December 2022, Devrabic was born.
Building Devrabic: Three Years of Everything at Once
What I built over the next three years, I built almost entirely alone.
I architected and shipped the entire platform myself: Next.js frontend, Firebase backend, Stripe for payments, full multi-language support baked in from day one. Every screen, every flow, every bug at 2am was mine to fix. In March 2023, I took a Frontend Engineer role at my old university, USJ, to keep income stable while Devrabic grew. For the next year and a half, I held both fully.
I recorded and edited every course myself. Writing the curriculum, scripting each lesson, filming it, then sitting in the edit for hours until it was something people would actually stay for. When students messaged me with questions before signing up, I answered every single one personally, hundreds of conversations over WhatsApp and DMs, one at a time, late at night.
That's how you find out if something is real. Not analytics. Real people, telling you it worked.
December 2023: Devrabic went viral. Organic sales accelerated sharply. 2024 was about building on that momentum: revamping the course top to bottom based on a full year of student feedback, launching the first paid Meta campaigns, building out a complete home production studio, and converting every lead personally even as numbers scaled.
In June 2024, Algorand Foundation came in as Devrabic's first external partner, sponsoring Arabic-language developer content to reach the MENA blockchain market. That partnership changed the trajectory.
By November 2024, I was promoted to Senior Frontend Engineer at USJ, trusted with the highest-complexity features on the team, mentoring engineers, and setting the code review standards.
Going Institutional
2025 was different in kind.
In March, I was hired directly by the Algorand Foundation as a Content Creator for their global channels. I rented an office on my own, bought a full travel-ready production kit (Canon R8, DJI RS4, DJI Mic 2) and produced a complete course from scratch: mock technical interviews, mock HR rounds, full behavioral sessions, scripted and shot like a real studio production. Alone, same as always.
I started a series of industry conversations with people who'd landed certifications at Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, insider accounts of what it actually takes, filmed and edited for the community.
Then I started showing up on stages.
April 2025: speaker at Lebanese University. September 2024: a Firebase workshop for 100+ students at Beirut Arab University. October 2025: selected as a speaker at DevFest Beirut, one of Google's biggest regional events in the MENA region. Check where I spoke.
That same month, Algorand brought me back for a second contract: Community & Developer Champion for MENA. I ran technical workshops and multi-day bootcamps onboarding new developers to the blockchain ecosystem, hosted and moderated live AMAs, and provided hands-on support through hackathon programs. I managed the full community, over 2,400 developers, across Telegram, Instagram, YouTube, and X.
July 2025: Devrabic passed 100,000 followers on Instagram. The platform had grown to 130,000+ across all channels, with 500+ paying students.
Qatar, and What's Next
In February 2026, I attended Web Summit Qatar in Doha. Standing next to funded startups, what I'd built alone, with nothing, held up.
A decade of content. Three languages. A platform built from zero. Developer communities at scale. Stages, studios, and real client work in the GCC market.
I'm ready for what comes next.
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