Kroonenburg: Ryan
In 2015, Ryan Kroonenburg partnered with his brother, Sam Kroonenburg, to launch A Cloud Guru. While Ryan handled the technical instruction and curriculum, Sam built the proprietary streaming platform from scratch. This symbiotic relationship was crucial. Ryan provided the soul (the teaching), while Sam provided the skeleton (the technology).
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.
The response was seismic.
Within months, thousands of students were passing the notoriously difficult AWS exams on their first try. Word of mouth spread like wildfire through Reddit forums (r/AWS and r/cloudcomputing) and tech Slack channels. Students weren't just passing; they were actually understanding the cloud for the first time.
Ryan’s trademark catchphrases—like “Hello Cloud Gurus”—became a signal of quality. Students knew that if Ryan Kroonenburg was teaching the module, it would be accurate, up-to-date, and actually fun.
Ryan Kroonenburg doesn't act like a guru; he acts like a senior engineer explaining a complex concept to a junior teammate over coffee. He admits when a service has quirks. He warns students about "gotchas" that will appear on the exam. This authenticity builds deep trust. ryan kroonenburg
While Ryan Kroonenburg was the technical visionary, his success is inseparable from his brother Sam. In the business world, the duo created a perfect synergy. Sam handled the business strategy and platform architecture, while Ryan remained the face of the content—the lead instructor who students trusted.
Their sibling dynamic translated perfectly to video. The banter, the inside jokes, and the mutual respect made complex topics like VPC peering or IAM policies digestible. This chemistry turned A Cloud Guru from a simple training library into a community. Students didn't just watch Ryan Kroonenburg; they felt like they knew him.
Ryan didn't try to teach Python, Java, and AWS all at once. He taught AWS Certification. He became the undisputed king of that one niche. Only once he conquered that hill did he expand into Azure, GCP, and AI.
As of 2025, Ryan Kroonenburg remains active in the cloud community, albeit with a slightly lower public profile due to executive duties. He is currently focused on the intersection of Generative AI and Cloud Architecture.
He has recently been spearheading new course initiatives on how to use AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI Service, and Google’s Vertex AI. His latest thesis is that "AI is the new cloud"—a paradigm shift as large as the shift from on-premise servers to EC2 was in 2008. In 2015, Ryan Kroonenburg partnered with his brother,
Furthermore, Ryan has become a quiet but powerful mentor to new tech creators. He frequently invests in Australian ed-tech startups, hoping to find the "next A Cloud Guru." He also runs a private Slack channel for senior cloud architects, fostering a community where the elite engineers of the world solve problems away from the noise of social media.
As the cloud boom intensified, so did A Cloud Guru. Ryan Kroonenburg became a vocal advocate for Serverless architectures. He predicted early that engineers would stop caring about operating systems and start caring only about code and data.
His courses were among the first to heavily feature AWS Lambda, API Gateway, and DynamoDB. Ryan famously argued, "If you are managing a server in 2020, you are doing it wrong." This stance was controversial at the time but proved prophetic.
By 2018, A Cloud Guru had millions of users worldwide. Ryan’s face became synonymous with AWS certification success. For every 10 AWS Certified Solutions Architects you met, 9 had likely watched a Ryan Kroonenburg course.
In the B2B SaaS world, "boring" gets funded, but "boring" doesn't change behavior. Ryan understood that learning retention is tied to emotion. By being charismatic and designing delightful user experiences, he built a brand that people genuinely loved—a rarity in the exam-prep space. Ryan provided the soul (the teaching), while Sam
To understand the man behind the keyword, you must understand his teaching philosophy. Ryan Kroonenburg is not an "influencer" in the Instagram sense; he is an engineer who happens to excel at communication.
1. Respect for the Student’s Time Ryan abhors "fluff." In a typical 40-hour certification course, Ryan often argued that only 20 hours of real value existed. His editing style is ruthless. He speaks fast, moves fast, and cuts the "ums" and "ahs." He respects that his students are usually working parents or stressed IT pros trying to level up after a 10-hour shift.
2. The Whiteboard is King In a world of slick PowerPoint slides, Ryan often returns to the digital whiteboard. Drawing diagrams in real-time forces the student to follow the logic step-by-step. He once said in an interview, "If I can’t explain a VPC flow log with a drawing, I don’t understand it well enough to teach it."
3. Imposter Syndrome Destroyer Ryan openly talks about his own failures. He shares stories of accidentally taking down production environments or misconfiguring security groups that led to breaches. By humanizing failure, he gives students permission to struggle, which is the first step to mastery.