Marcin Ziąbek

Origin

I started QuestPDF in 2020, alone, as an open-source side project. Within a few years it was one of the most popular PDF libraries in its field, and I left a steady job to run it full-time. At the time it felt like a gamble. Today it serves thousands of developers and more than 800 paying companies around the world.

Beyond the code

QuestPDF is my childhood dream, and the best education I could have asked for. It stopped being only about programming a long time ago. The other half, running the company, is equally exciting: strategic decisions made for years ahead, quick answers when something unexpected lands, and a calendar nobody fills but me. When something goes wrong, it becomes a lesson. When it goes right, the business takes a step forward, and it has taken many.

Deeper and sideways

Running the company takes me deeper into programming, and sideways into subjects I never planned to study but now enjoy a lot: visual design, psychology, marketing, negotiation, economics, analytics, making videos…

What the company is for

I am building the company to give me freedom, not to consume me. For five years I worked alone. The first employee was hired for two reasons: the company needed more hands, and I needed my evenings back. I am very glad he joined. Delegating is a skill in its own right, and I am learning it. A second hire is on the way. I can work from anywhere, and I intend to spend the time that frees up on travel, relationships, and family.

The move

I moved to Warsaw recently, from a village to the middle of the city, and I am still learning it. It was the most visible part of a bigger decision: in 2026 I set out to change how I live, starting with the place and the people around me. None of this would have started without psychotherapy, one of the best choices I have made.

People, every day

I traded a comfortable home office, with a forest a hundred metres away, for a city where I see people every day. Some have become close friends. A surprising number run small companies of their own, so coffee often turns into business talk: like Monopoly, but with real prizes and real consequences.

2008–2013 First steps

It began with a computer at home. By high school, programming was what I did and a business was what I wanted, so the two met: small browser games, then games for mobile phones. Countless other projects and attempts at a business followed, some smaller, some bigger, most of them short-lived.

2013–2018 University

I studied Computer Science at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and finished my master's degree with honours. During that time, I received the Minister of Science scholarship twice. On the side, I recorded a free Polish video course on making games, which was watched over 750,000 times.

2014–2018 The physics lab

For most of my university years I had the pleasure of working with experimental physicists, writing the software for scientific efforts. One system served a gamma-spectroscopy lab and had to keep up with millions of events per second. Another ran a network of sensor stations spread across Kraków, measuring the weather and the air quality. Hard, complex problems and exceptional people to learn from: those years shaped me as a programmer more than anything before.

2017–2025 Jacobs

I spent eight years at Jacobs, an engineering firm. I was extremely lucky with the people around me: a boss who became a second dad to me, and an exceptional team. I grew up there, as a programmer and as a person.

I started as a software engineer and left with the responsibilities of a software architect, looking after the technology foundation of the whole project portfolio. The libraries I created let the entire team build faster, and sharing my knowledge became the part of the job I liked most.