reraiseMe — Video Hosting for Poker Players

Who Needed It

Pros needed a place to sell courses and datasets. Learners needed a place with ratings, sane payments, and no hunting videos across forums.

Context of the Era

2011: poker boom; educational videos and datasets a real market. YouTube hadn’t nailed monetization for “courses,” Vimeo was waking up. The niche needed a specialized platform.

Business Insights

• Value lies in monetized knowledge and trust in authors.
• “Paid access + protection” is a balance of convenience and anti‑piracy.

What I Built

• Video transcoding and storage (FFmpeg + S3) so it played for everyone.
• E‑commerce: Stripe, access by purchases, protected links, watermarks.
• Social: profiles, comments, ratings, new releases feed.

What Made It Different

YouTube couldn’t “sell a course” then; Vimeo was only getting there. We filled the gap: “upload — set price — get audience and payment.”

Results

Lessons

• Content protection always trades complexity for inconvenience. Balance is mandatory.
• Video is infrastructure. Nothing exists until queues are tuned.
• Narrow vertical beats “another YouTube.” That’s where money and gratitude live.