Stacie Phyo is the CEO of Tutearn based in Thailand although she is from Myanmar. In this conversation, she unpacks how she built Pace Forward, Tutearn and Women4Women—three ventures that feed into each other and into a bigger mission: expanding access to education and empowering women founders across ASEAN.
She was studying biotechnology in New York because she wanted to become a microbiology researcher. That was the plan – it was, in her own words, very safe and absolutely clear.
“Then I came home for a gap year and started Pace Forward as a side project, just to help a few students with English. During COVID, it grew faster than anything I could have imagined. Suddenly, the tutors I hired, who were mostly university students, were using their income to support their families because their parents had been laid off during the lockdown. That completely changed me,” says Stacie.
She Built A Lifeline for Tutors in Myanmar
She realized this wasn’t just a business. It was a lifeline for the young people in Myanmar. She admitted that she couldn’t walk away from that to go back to the lab in New York. “Not when I was seeing how education could directly translate into dignity, income and stability for families is what still inspires me to keep going, especially on the hard days!”
Starting from the edge of necessity Stacie’s entrepreneurial spark came from observing a real need in her home country of Myanmar. “We advertised on Facebook; they joined Zoom,” she recalls of her early online tutoring days in 2019. The pivot from a simple project to a scalable platform happened quickly, accelerated by the COVID-19 lockdown which made online learning the norm. That rapid shift was a blueprint: start with what you know then build the system as you go.
Three Ventures, One Thread
Pace Forward began as a local initiative in Myanmar and expanded internationally, focusing on affordable access to education via a lean, learner-centric model
Tutearn targets education providers—tutoring centers and training centers—through SaaS tooling that simplifies payroll and scheduling.
Women4Women is a nonprofit mentorship platform born from the YSEALI program that Stacie was part of, one that connects ASEAN women founders with mentors and peers. Her ventures illustrate a holistic approach: equip learners, empower educators and cultivate a supportive ecosystem for women leaders.
Bootstrapping as a Mindset
A core thread running through Stacie’s story is bootstrapping. She contrasts bootstrapped growth with VC-fueled scaling, emphasizing the discipline of revenue from customers as the true north. “The revenue coming in is from the customer,” she notes, explaining that bootstrapping keeps you relentlessly focused on value creation for learners and teachers alike. That focus shapes every decision from product features to go-to-market tactics.
Two principles anchor Stacie’s approach to growth:
- Focus on one thing until it runs on its own or can be delegated or handed off to your team.
- Build systems to free people. “Put in systems and structure so that life gets easier,” she insists. Early on, that meant SOPs, HR processes and dashboarding that enabled the team to operate with clarity as headcount grew.
Listen to The People Who Buy From You
Stacie is clear that customer insight should drive every marketing move. “Listening to the customers and then doing the marketing that actually connect to what your customers want” is the operating principle behind Pace Forward’s growth in Myanmar and beyond. When you couple customer-led product decisions with a tight go-to-market approach, you’re solving real problems and problems solved are what customers pay for!
Her story and journey offer practical and proven insights:
- Solve your own problem first, then scale. Stacie’s path shows that the strongest products often emerge from personal pain points—then widen to serve others facing the same challenge.
- Bootstrap with a customer-first mindset. You don’t need large external capital to begin; you need clarity on value and a plan to deliver it consistently.
- Build teams and systems early. The discipline of SOPs and clear roles buys you time to dream bigger and delegate more as you grow.
- Invest in community. Women4Women demonstrates the power of mentorship and network effects in accelerating women’s leadership across ASEAN.
Her most recent read was Reset by Dan Heath. She remarks, “It really hit me how easily founders get stuck in routines once a business starts running, and how important it is to zoom out, see what’s actually working and what isn’t, and reset whenever needed instead of just pushing harder.”
She is proud of building multiple education ventures across Myanmar and Thailand from scratch, scaling impact to 30,000+ learners and now creating systems that empower other founders to grow without chaos.
Stacie finds it surreal that she is doing what she does now when her parents were not even high school graduates. “I’m proud that I not only had access to education myself, but now build systems that support the education of others. It feels like closing a loop that started before me.”
If you’re inspired by Stacie’s journey, take small, concrete steps today: map your top problem to a potential customer segment, outline one system you can implement this month or sign up to mentor or be mentored through Women4Women.
This episode is sponsored by Redbox Studio.
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