Founder · Strategist · Builder
In a world that rents, I build to own. An ecosystem of websites, apps and brands, each one solving a real problem and each one strengthening the next. We don't sell on Amazon. We don't build our brands for social feeds. That is not a rejection of either; it is a decision about foundations.
A profile is rented space. A domain is owned ground. When a platform changes its rules, rented audiences vanish overnight. Owned work stays exactly where you built it, and it keeps compounding.
Social media can amplify the work. It will never be the backbone of it. The backbone of the internet is still the page: a domain, a publication, a place that belongs to you.
So we build there. We publish our own work, promote the businesses we believe in, and trust that excellent work, on ground we own, finds its way back into the light.
The podcast
Honest conversations about building a company while raising a family: what's working, what isn't, and what I'm learning along the way.
Episode 01
The tutor search that turned into a company.
The ecosystem
Somewhere along the way, owning became optional.
Our photographs moved from the drawer to the cloud. Our films moved from the shelf to a monthly subscription that can change its library overnight. Our storefronts moved to marketplaces that set the fees and the rankings. Our audiences became followers, and our websites became profiles on someone else's domain. It all felt like progress, and much of it was. But with each convenience, we handed over a little more control.
Today a handful of companies set the rules most of the world plays by. They earned that position, and there is a great deal to admire in how they built it. They did not get there by renting. They got there by owning: their platforms, their data, their customer relationships, their ground.
So we asked a simple question. Why should the rest of us rent?
This is our answer: an ecosystem of websites, apps and brands built on ground we own. More than sixty sites connected into one web network, spanning media that informs, commerce that stands on its own, and services that arrive at your door. Every domain is ours. Every customer relationship is direct. Every site strengthens the next, so the work compounds instead of resetting with someone else's policy change.
Ownership is not only how we build. It is how we do good. When the foundation is yours, you can build for people instead of for the feed. You can bring a certified teacher back to a family's kitchen table. You can give women the care the weeks after birth deserve. You can make something worth keeping.
We use every tool the modern web offers. We just don't hand any of them the deed.
That is what we are building, and that is what this place is for: to show how it's done, to help you do the same, and to make room for anyone doing great work to be part of it.
Rent social attention. Own the foundation.
Publications, interviews and journals that inform readers and promote businesses doing great work.
Brands built to last with or without Amazon, Instagram or TikTok. A business built entirely on rented ground (aka other websites) is always one decision away from starting over.
Big SchoolHouse, an app that brings a certified teacher to a family's kitchen table, the same one every week.
The latest addition · An app
Where Big SchoolHouse gets built, most days.
Big SchoolHouse didn't start as a business plan. It started as a mom who needed a tutor and couldn't find one she trusted.
When my daughters needed extra help with school, I did what every parent does. I searched. I downloaded the apps, scrolled the marketplaces, and read the profiles. What I found was a maze.
There were thousands of listings and no way to tell who was actually a teacher. Nobody promised anything about quality. Most options were a video call. And the few that offered someone in person felt more like booking a gig than bringing an educator into my home.
I didn't want a screen. I wanted what I had growing up: a real teacher at the kitchen table, with a pencil, a workbook, and a plan. So I decided to build it.
"I couldn't find the tutor I was looking for, so I built the place where she could be found." Cara Coley, Founder
Big SchoolHouse connects families with verified, degreed, background-checked teachers for in-person learning. Every session is backed by real curriculum. And teachers are treated like the professionals they are.
What I kept running into
Endless profiles, pay-to-browse walls, and no clear way to compare real credentials.
Anyone could list themselves. Nobody stood behind the person who showed up.
Most options were another screen, for kids who already spend all day on one.
What we've built
Families choose their teacher and keep the same one each week: certified, background-checked, and at their own table on their schedule.
Learning happens in person, with books and pencils the family can hold, close enough that you can hear your child learn.
Teachers earn a professional second income inside the profession they trained for, not a side job outside it.
Up Next
Olas means waves. Steady, unhurried, certain. Luggage for people who treat travel as a rhythm, not an interruption.
Women-owned and Black-owned in a category with very few of either, and built to answer to its customers, never to a marketplace.
Club Olas
A little about me
We live in a world that rents. I build in the other direction.
Our files, our films, our storefronts and our audiences increasingly belong to someone else. My work is an ecosystem of more than sixty websites, apps and brands, owned, not rented, spanning media, commerce and education. Each one solves a real problem. Each one strengthens the others.
I have deep respect for the companies that shaped the modern web. The lesson I take from them is the one they rarely say out loud: they own. So do I. Nine years as a founder, including a hair company built without Amazon that has lasted for years, taught me that ground you own keeps paying you back.
The instinct started long before the web. I'm an old soul who keeps things. Ownership on the web is the modern form of the same value. Build something that can be kept, and handed down.
I'm based in Miami, raising my daughters and building most of this after bedtime.
More about me →
Learning in public
I'm not a trained engineer. I'm a founder who decided to learn. These are field notes on building with AI: what I tried, what broke, and what I'd tell a friend.
I put Big SchoolHouse on Wix with a Supabase backend, pairing with an AI coding agent the whole way. I learned more about databases in a week than I had in years.
Lesson: describe the outcome, then read every change before you accept it.
I set up a panel of AI advisors (finance, legal, operations, a skeptic) to stress-test every Big SchoolHouse decision before I make it.
Lesson: the most useful advisor is the one assigned to disagree.
Research summaries, draft reviews, and gap checks for a federal education research grant. The AI did the legwork, and I kept the voice and the judgment.
Lesson: AI speeds up the draft. Only you can make it true.
My first repo was a CS50 exercise in 2020. Six years later I'm building news, family, wellness, and kids' projects, and every one of them has taught me something.
Lesson: start embarrassingly small and keep shipping.
Built & managed by Cara
Every domain here is ours, and every one has its own purpose: news and civic life, Miami, women and family, and places for kids to learn and play. The sites speak about each other, to each other and for each other. Six are live today. The rest are being built now, and each will launch on ground no platform can take away.
Live now
BUZZZ · Membership
BUZZZ is the network's free, application-only membership. Businesses we believe in get written about across our sites, on ground we own.
Where it started
Virgin Brazilian was my first site. A hair brand built on its own domain, without Amazon, and thriving for nearly a decade.
Open notebook
Most of my client and company work lives in private repos, but I share what I can. Come see what I'm tinkering with.
github.com/carareaves ↗Be part of it
The porch is my favorite place. It is where neighbors arrive unannounced and ideas move freely. If you're doing something great, we're open for business for you.
Or write to hello@caracoley.com
