Then came .
Unlike many founders who retire to a beach, Ryan has stayed deep in the tech education weeds. He currently serves in an advisory capacity and continues to create content. Notably, he has been focusing on and Prompt Engineering .
Their first course was AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Level . It was a Hail Mary pass. They uploaded it to a nascent online learning marketplace, hoping to reach a few hundred students. ryan kroonenburg
In the rapidly evolving landscape of cloud computing, where Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) release hundreds of new features every year, traditional education has struggled to keep pace. For most of the last decade, if you wanted to become a cloud architect, you had two options: read dense, thousand-page whitepapers or pay thousands of dollars for boot camps.
He proved that technical education could be compassionate, human, and even fun. In a world obsessed with AI-generated content and faceless tutorials, Ryan's human touch remains the gold standard. The cloud computing industry owes a debt to Ryan Kroonenburg. He didn't invent cloud training, but he perfected it for the modern learner. He showed that the best teachers aren't necessarily academics, but passionate practitioners who can translate complexity into clarity. Then came
The crescendo came in 2021. Pluralsight, a publicly traded enterprise learning giant, announced it would acquire A Cloud Guru for approximately $2 billion.
At the time, video learning was dominated by low-resolution screen captures and monotone voiceovers. Ryan believed that complex topics like Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs), Auto Scaling, and Serverless architectures didn't have to be dry. He began recording his own lessons, using a whiteboard, a MacBook, and a very specific type of energy that was missing from the market: enthusiasm. Notably, he has been focusing on and Prompt Engineering
As the co-founder and former CEO of A Cloud Guru (ACG), Ryan Kroonenburg didn't just build a training platform; he redefined how a generation of IT professionals learns. From a modest operation in a Melbourne bedroom to a $2 billion acquisition by Pluralsight, Ryan’s story is one of technical foresight, creative storytelling, and relentless execution.