S12 Bonus: The Social Curation Revolution: Moving Beyond Messy Bookmarks to Build an Intuitive, Shareable "Stacking" Ecosystem with Martina Zrnec, Co-Founder & CTO of Stacklist

0:01 [SPEAKER_00]: I think he startups you make trade-offs every single day. [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, I did trade-off today. [SPEAKER_00]: I was rolling out entire peeling platform, and it changed like 90% of how we do peeling. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like in the morning, Kyle is asleep. [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I just pushed this production and fixedbox along the way, because we need this for today for new customers to enroll. [SPEAKER_00]: So I think trade-offs are something that we are doing daily. [SPEAKER_00]: own what you decide and move forward, even if it was a bad decision like fine, it doesn't matter scratch that less move on, and I think that's how startups should operate, moving mountains every day is the goal.

0:40 [SPEAKER_00]: My name is Martina Zernetz, co-founder and studio at Steadust. [SPEAKER_01]: This is Code Story. [SPEAKER_01]: The podcast brings you interviews with tech visionaries. [SPEAKER_01]: Six months moonlighting goes. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm lost in all the backgrounds. [SPEAKER_01]: Who share what it takes to change an industry? [SPEAKER_01]: I don't exactly know what to do. [SPEAKER_01]: It certainly goes to get right. [SPEAKER_01]: Who built the teams that have their bad company is its people.

1:06 [SPEAKER_00]: The teams help each other achieve this proud of our team. [SPEAKER_01]: Keeping scalability top of mind. [SPEAKER_01]: All that infrastructure was happening. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we've been fighting it as we grow. [SPEAKER_01]: Total waste of time. [SPEAKER_01]: The stories you don't read in the headlines. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not an easy thing to achieve. [SPEAKER_01]: To get the shelf and dust it off and try to begin. [SPEAKER_01]: To ride the ups and downs of the startup line. [SPEAKER_01]: Need to really want it.

1:27 [SPEAKER_01]: Not just about technology. [SPEAKER_01]: All this and more. [SPEAKER_01]: On code story. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host Noah Labhart. [SPEAKER_01]: And today, how Martina Zernick has built a way for you to share and discover. [SPEAKER_01]: Collecting your favorite things into stacks.

1:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Martina Zernick is located in Croatia and grew up playing basketball, spending every minute she could on the court. [SPEAKER_01]: And when I say every minute, I mean it. [SPEAKER_01]: She would even skip the last few hours of school and hit the court for some practice. [SPEAKER_01]: Eventually, her mother decided for her that she should not pursue it professionally, and she'd focus on her schooling. [SPEAKER_01]: But outside of tech, she's married with two kids. [SPEAKER_01]: She notes that she is not just a coding person.

2:12 [SPEAKER_01]: She likes to socialize. [SPEAKER_01]: She plays piano, and as a family, they spend a lot of time outside, biking, playing sports,

2:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Martina's co-founder Kyle had this idea that he wanted to create, a platform that allowed people to organize the product services and experience they love into stacks. [SPEAKER_01]: He found Martina on a freelancing platform and they instantly connected on the idea, and got to building.

2:41 [SPEAKER_01]: This is the creation story of Stac List.

2:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Essentially, Stacklist started as bookmarking, like literally you could say anything from anywhere. [SPEAKER_00]: And when I think about it, how simple that sounds and where we now is ridiculous. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I would say Stacklist is a branded content hub for businesses. [SPEAKER_00]: Think about having a utility for the end person where you can actually save anything from anywhere, group it in restaurants you like, books you like to read, movies you like to watch, and so on.

3:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And just with one, click you can send it to anyone. [SPEAKER_00]: But then for businesses, it's like a quantum hub where people can find you and actually real estate agencies. [SPEAKER_00]: You are looking for an apartment, and I'm your agent. [SPEAKER_00]: When you are signing off, I send you a stack, but inside not just the apartments or houses, it's like neighborhood, restaurants where you can go, kids playground, school, district, everything inside. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's much more, and it's much heavier than it started.

3:50 [SPEAKER_00]: It was actually my co-founder, so Diaz, so Kyle Hudson, he was the originator of the idea. [SPEAKER_00]: and we clicked immediately, that's actually a fun story because he's from the US in Atlanta and I'm in Croatia and everybody asks, okay, what's the connection? [SPEAKER_00]: And he found me on the freelancing platform, I was a freelancer at the time, but I was always building my head and we shared the same vision from the first conversation we had and it was like, okay, let's build this.

4:19 [SPEAKER_00]: So, he's vision was, he was living in New York at the time and people were asking him, okay, where should I go when I go to New York? [SPEAKER_00]: And he would open a Google Maps and has, I don't know, 1,000 stars across Manhattan and then how do you share all of that? [SPEAKER_00]: It's so silly that you cannot aggregate, I don't know, Airbnb is hotel restaurants, nightclubs, accommodation, Broadway, whatever in one place and send it as a one-ling. [SPEAKER_00]: It feels like a jolly, you need to sit in front of your laptop, get all of those stuff and I don't know Google Drive, know it's something and then send it to people, which is crazy.

4:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And that how idea was born.

4:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's dive into the MVP then, that first version of the product you built. [SPEAKER_01]: I want to take to build and listen to tools we're using to bring it to life. [SPEAKER_00]: We used the usual stack type script, React Neckges, and on the back-end cloud functions in Google. [SPEAKER_00]: Also written in TypeScript, and basically the MVP was we started in May and we launched four friends and family in September. [SPEAKER_00]: It had Chrome extension where you could save quickly on the web, you could paste a link as well.

5:32 [SPEAKER_00]: You could aggregate those in stacks into collections, which is a bigger item, and then share it with anyone. [SPEAKER_00]: We also started building like the first iteration of the public profile and that was kind of an MVP, but I could see them more MVP style in December, where we launched on product hunt. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's actually when we had the mobile apps for Android and iOS and it was like the full product. [SPEAKER_01]: Excellent, tell me about a trade-off or a decision you had to make in the early sort of platform, right?

6:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Tell me about a decision and it could be like a, I don't know, feature limitation or trade-offs or tech debt acceptance. [SPEAKER_01]: Things like that, tell me about some of those you had to work through and how you coped with them. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I think it started up so you make trade-offs every single day. [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, I did trade-off today. [SPEAKER_00]: I was rolling out entire billing platform, and it changed like 90% of how we do billing. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, in the morning, Kyle is asleep.

6:33 [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I'll just push this production and fix bugs along the way, because we need this for today for new customers to enroll. [SPEAKER_00]: So I think trade-offs are something that we are doing daily, but early on, it was like, okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Do we build the app to spend money on the developer and build that stuff? [SPEAKER_00]: Do we not do it? [SPEAKER_00]: And how to cope is just like own own what you decide and move forward. [SPEAKER_00]: Even if it was a bad decision, like fine, it doesn't matter.

7:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Scratch that last move on. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's how startups should operate. [SPEAKER_00]: Moving mountains every day is the goal. [SPEAKER_01]: So let's move forward. [SPEAKER_01]: Then you've got that MVP, but the platform, where you want it, you're getting some traction. [SPEAKER_01]: How have you progressed and mature the product from there? [SPEAKER_01]: Think to wrap in a box a little bit on looking for us. [SPEAKER_01]: How do you build your roadmap? [SPEAKER_01]: How do you go about deciding that, okay?

7:22 [SPEAKER_01]: This is the next most important thing to build or to address with stackless. [SPEAKER_00]: Early on, the roadmap was built basically around what we want to build. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, we found like social profiles should be on the roadmap because people would use those to share their favorite stacks with people online. [SPEAKER_00]: We made a decision to already design cars because it wasn't looking as nice as it should maybe. [SPEAKER_00]: Stuff like that. [SPEAKER_00]: But nowadays, the road map is defined by the businesses because the transition to be to be.

7:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And now we have a lot of more paying customers and paying agencies that require, OK, we need they actually require features. [SPEAKER_00]: So we need to put their requirements in total road map as well.

8:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's flip the team, to build something like stack list, you got to have the right team. [SPEAKER_01]: Tell me about how you built that team and what you look for in those people to indicate that they are the winning horses to join you. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, if you look at our Slack in the past year in 2025, I think more than 80 people were rolling inside outside because our goal and our whole concept is let's give people a chance but do it project-based. [SPEAKER_00]: Like you don't want to commit to somebody full-time long-term if you don't know that person is actually good and it can last the startup mindset where it's [SPEAKER_00]: It's really high tense and the speed of evolving stuff is crucial.

8:55 [SPEAKER_00]: So we would hire and fire pretty quickly if the person was not equipped for the job or not the right mindset. [SPEAKER_00]: But we didn't found a couple of people that were resonating with the product and us. [SPEAKER_00]: But unfortunately, you know, how it is financials. [SPEAKER_00]: We didn't have the investments as we thought we would, so some people had to roll off not by our interventions. [SPEAKER_00]: Nowadays, it's just Kyle myself and Juan Concierge the member in Philippines, and now we are hiring for more because we just got 500k investments.

9:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's flip to scalability, and this will be interesting. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious about how you approach scale in the beginning, I could probably as an engineer cherry pick some ideas you may have gone about with, and some of the things you said, but I'm curious of how you approached it, and if there's been interesting areas we've had to fight it as you've grown. [SPEAKER_00]: how I operate in startups and basically I spend my whole life in startups is don't solve for what you don't have today.

10:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Meaning I will not solve scalability or performance issues for I know 100K users that I don't have today. [SPEAKER_00]: If I'll have those users and I will hit some scalability issues that will be nice problem to solve to be honest. [SPEAKER_00]: We are scalable, we are performing really well, so I didn't put that much thought into it maybe at the beginning, I was just like, okay, let's roll this out and see how it works and then we'll scale as we go if that makes sense. [SPEAKER_00]: Now we are at the place where we have 15k users in the platform and now it's getting more heavier and operational and people are actually using it on a weekly basis like 12k users on a weekly basis, which is super huge number for me.

10:45 [SPEAKER_00]: So now we are performing bit of operationalize how to scale those functions in Google Cloud, what to optimize, do we how to deal with cold starts and so on. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so as you step out on a balcony, you look across all that you've built, thus far with stack was, what do you most proud of? [SPEAKER_00]: That's a good question to be honest. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm proud of the entire ecosystem that we built so many features, and you know how it is, we start up so built, and then you'll delete because nobody uses that, but we have so many features.

11:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And it works really well. [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I watch Carl when he does the demo to potential client, [SPEAKER_00]: And he goes through some features and I'm like, oh, yeah, I forgot we had that. [SPEAKER_00]: And then if the client goes, oh wow, that's amazing. [SPEAKER_00]: I go, oh yeah, that's truly amazing. [SPEAKER_00]: That we build something that people actually use daily and find that that's wow.

11:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's flip the script a little bit, Martina. [SPEAKER_01]: Tell me about a mistake you made and how you and your team responded to it.

11:53 [SPEAKER_00]: there were many mistakes for sure. [SPEAKER_00]: There too, actually. [SPEAKER_00]: First one is pushing on mobile app when it just wasn't working. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a foster developer and I am building web and back-end and basically, it's in our DevOps, but I don't have skills with Flutter or mobile apps. [SPEAKER_00]: And we have had to develop or do that. [SPEAKER_00]: Nowadays, when it's caught quite maybe I would even dive into that portion, but they have so much so many hours.

12:21 [SPEAKER_00]: But at the time I was building so fast and I was pushing features out so many at the time and mobile developer couldn't follow the pace. [SPEAKER_00]: and the mobile app was always behind, but people loved the apps, and actually a lot of people were using the app. [SPEAKER_00]: So if I could go back in time, I would probably pull the plug earlier in terms of okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's not do the app until we have more stable version out and more slower pace that we are building stuff that we can actually catch up with web.

12:52 [SPEAKER_00]: That's one and the second one is most recent where we did the whole flip into the single user on the platform and now there is a organization and workspaces and you can get invites into workspaces and so on. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's the whole architectural decision. [SPEAKER_00]: Minecalf are pretty much the same in that way. [SPEAKER_00]: Should we build this? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let's build this. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay fine. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I go and build it. [SPEAKER_00]: But I, this was underestimated on my side, complexity wise completely.

13:24 [SPEAKER_00]: So if I could go back, I would definitely do it different.

13:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, let's move forward then. [SPEAKER_01]: This will be exciting. [SPEAKER_01]: What does the future look like for Stackless, for the product, the platform, and for your team?

13:44 [SPEAKER_00]: The product for sure, I'm building at the moment like I can, I know exactly where this should go and will go. [SPEAKER_00]: Like MCP connection to the claw. [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine you're going to claw at our claw to call it doesn't matter. [SPEAKER_00]: Check your PTP or Plexity whatever is your favorite choice and go. [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, can you pull up five best restaurants in Croatia? [SPEAKER_00]: Create a stack, Croatia restaurants, and put those in a stack. [SPEAKER_00]: And it goes in does that for you.

14:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And then you are like, okay, can you suggest maybe I have a couple of restaurants, maybe I can merge those, or put them in a collection, what do you suggest? [SPEAKER_00]: Can you out-to-tag those, or make some kind of improvements? [SPEAKER_00]: Then on the other side, there is also save, you know how LLM's produced so much text nowadays. [SPEAKER_00]: Who reads that? [SPEAKER_00]: Then you're going to go, okay, can you summarize this for me? [SPEAKER_00]: I keep it simple, so I can read it in three sentences.

14:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And imagine those summaries you can save as empty files, and then work around those per project. [SPEAKER_00]: invoked them in Chagipiti Claude perplexity doesn't matter and like you don't even have to go to Staclist to use Staclist. [SPEAKER_00]: That's the goal. [SPEAKER_00]: And the whole AI enhancement. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh you say three cards that are from New York do want to put them in a stake you have actually two New York stacks which fund the prefer. [SPEAKER_00]: Like talking to Staclist and talking to the Staclist agents and MCPs all the time and having more structured way of saving everything in your life.

15:09 [SPEAKER_00]: That's where the product for sure. [SPEAKER_00]: For team, I would like to have a couple of more developers who are same-minded as me that we all should ship real fast and explore stuff as we go and remove if we see that it doesn't work. [SPEAKER_00]: So I need to build team around me that's fast, executable and killer sales go to market and just bring it to the level that we know it can exist.

15:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's wish to you who influences the way that you work. [SPEAKER_01]: Name a person or many persons or something you look up to and why. [SPEAKER_00]: We were an accelerator in Hawaii, and there I met what happened to be my friend now, and I am proud that I can call her my friend, Shizmiki, and she's the CEO of all-all intelligence, and I think she's the most brilliant person I met. [SPEAKER_00]: And the way she runs the company and she's also city, she has great technology and skills and ability to do amazing stuff.

16:11 [SPEAKER_00]: And the way she operates with the team and the company with such a calm structure. [SPEAKER_00]: She knows exactly where she wants to go, just turn something in me like I want to do that as well on that level. [SPEAKER_00]: So she's the one for sure and then my husband and my co-founder, like both of those guys are extremely good in what they do and they both have one. [SPEAKER_00]: item in common which is they go into this executable mode and they will not stop until it's done. [SPEAKER_00]: So I respect that and I'm not in that mode I can be but I'm more like all over the place so I am really respectful when somebody goes okay yeah you told me to do that I'll do that no matter the cost and no matter how much time will take.

17:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Last question Martinez, so you're getting on a plane, and you're sitting next to a young entrepreneur who's built the next big thing. [SPEAKER_01]: They're jazzed about it, the kit went showed off to the world, and can't we show it off to you right there on a plane? [SPEAKER_01]: What advice do you give that person having gone down this road a bit now? [SPEAKER_00]: I would say build quickly, iterate even quicker, don't be afraid of falling, don't be afraid of negative comments and don't take that close to heart because there will always be people who will say you are not good enough, the product is not good enough.

17:35 [SPEAKER_00]: XYNZ is not good enough, so those people who should just say, yeah, thank you and move forward. [SPEAKER_00]: So, just be bold enough to take on whatever is in front of you and build a trade talk to users and do it in repeat. [SPEAKER_01]: That's fantastic advice. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, Martin, thank you for being on the show today. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for telling the creation story of Staclus. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank you for having me.

18:13 [SPEAKER_01]: code story is hosted and produced by Noah Labhart. [SPEAKER_01]: Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or the podcasting app at your choice. [SPEAKER_01]: And when you get a chance, leave us a review. [SPEAKER_01]: Both things help us out tremendously.

18:29 [SPEAKER_01]: And thanks again for listening.