$600M Earned, Zero Commission: Why Stan Gives Away the Money

Stan has helped over 100,000 creators and entrepreneurs earn more than $600M online — and takes $0 in commission on any of it. Vitalii Dodonov, co-founder and CTO of Stan, explains why the team made that call on purpose, and what it's built on top of it since. Vitalii traces his path from arriving in Grand Prairie, Alberta not speaking English, to self-teaching his way into a software career at eBay, to co-founding Stan with John Hu after a chance customer introduction. We get into why Stan walked away from transaction fees, how founder-led content became their only real marketing channel, and the "Hacker House" method Stan uses to build entire products from zero in 14 days — including the honeymoon-prep trip to London that became the origin story for Stanley, Stan's AI content partner, which negotiates its own price with every user.