# Louie Bacaj

> Louie Bacaj is an Albanian-American software engineer turned entrepreneur who climbed from immigrant poverty in the Bronx to Senior Director of Engineering at Walmart, then walked away from it all in 2021 to build a portfolio of small bets. He co-founded the Small Bets learning community with Daniel Vassallo, runs the M&Ms Newsletter on Substack with 9,000+ subscribers, and teaches engineers how to level up their careers and build income outside the 9-to-5. His philosophy: make money with bits, diversify into atoms.

- **Role:** Independent Entrepreneur & Co-founder at Small Bets
- **Organizations:** Small Bets, Motivation Stack LLC
- **From:** Albania
- **Nationality:** Albanian-American
- **Known for:** Rose from immigrant poverty in the Bronx to Senior Director of Engineering at Walmart, Helped build Jet.com through its $3.3 billion acquisition by Walmart, Led Pharmacy Tech at Walmart serving 100M patients and $35B+ annual revenue

## Career timeline

- **~2012-2016** — Early engineer and engineering leader at Jet.com, a eCommerce startup
- **2016** — Jet.com acquired by Walmart for $3.3 billion
- **2016-2021** — Senior Director of Engineering at Walmart, leading Pharmacy Tech teams serving 100M patients and $35B+ annual revenue
- **2021-09** — Left Walmart to become an independent entrepreneur
- **2022** — Co-founded Small Bets community with Daniel Vassallo; launched M&Ms Newsletter on Substack; generated $100K independently
- **2023** — Grew newsletter to 9,000+ subscribers; generated $200K+ independently; sold 1,500+ courses
- **2024** — Featured on Tech Lead Journal Episode 181; continued building Small Bets to 7,700+ members
- **2025** — Built WalkWrite iOS app with local AI; published essays on AI and career growth

## Achievements

- Rose from immigrant poverty in the Bronx to Senior Director of Engineering at Walmart
- Helped build Jet.com through its $3.3 billion acquisition by Walmart
- Led Pharmacy Tech at Walmart serving 100M patients and $35B+ annual revenue
- Generated $100K independently in first year after leaving corporate (2022)
- Generated $200K+ independently in 2023
- Co-founded Small Bets learning community (7,700+ members, 53 expert-led courses)
- Built M&Ms Newsletter to 9,000+ subscribers
- Sold 1,500+ copies of engineering career courses
- Arctic Code Vault Contributor on GitHub
- Featured in The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter by Gergely Orosz

## Latest updates

- **2025-09** — Published 'Become Useful' - essay on career growth via incremental improvement
- **2025-08** — Published 'Real Talk on AI' - nuanced critique of AI strengths and limitations
- **2025** — Built and open-sourced WalkWrite iOS app with local Whisper.cpp and Qwen 3 LLM
- **2025** — Continued building games and small SaaS products with AI tools
- **2024-07** — Featured on Tech Lead Journal Episode 181 discussing engineering career and entrepreneurship

## Links

- Website: https://louiebacaj.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louiebacaj/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/LBacaj
- GitHub: https://github.com/lbacaj

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/louie-bacaj
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-04-24