Getting Started: The Challenge

Firecrown Media, a $60 million media company managing 50 websites and over 20 magazines, faced a critical operational challenge. With a large team of journalists and contributors spread across multiple brands, budget management had become chaotic and decentralized.

"Some people were doing it off of a Google Sheet. Some had pencil and paper, some had other methods," explains Nick Torres, Head of Product. "Because of that, we had no central way and true visibility into where they were at in that budget, what even was their budget. It just created a lot of chaos."

The company needed solutions for multiple pain points:

• Budget management: No centralized visibility into contributor budgets across 20+brands
• SEO optimization: Journalists creating excellent content but missing technical SEO fundamentals
• Sales pipeline: Fragmented proposal and sales tracking systems
• Development bottlenecks: Ideas waiting weeks or months for developer bandwidth

Traditional solutions would have meant expensive software contracts that didn't fit their unique media company structure, or lengthy development cycles that couldn't keep pace with their needs.

Choosing Replit: The Turning Point

The breakthrough came from an unexpected source. Just days before Firecrown's internal hackathon, Nick discovered Replit after watching the CEO on Joe Rogan's podcast. He started experimenting with the platform immediately.

"Coincidentally, a day or two before this, I saw a Replit CEO on Joe Rogan. I jumped into Replit and I started playing around with it. Then the meeting happened, which I built that prototype. Then the hackathon happened. So it was perfect timing, very serendipitous."

During a meeting about the budget chaos, Nick built the first prototype in just 15 minutes while the discussion was happening. "I was playing around with Replit and within 15 minutes, I built our first prototype of a contributor management system. It was all within a single meeting. I was doing it kind of in the background."

When Nick showed the CEO, the response was immediate: "Go just do whatever you need to do. Let's make this happen."

Why Replit:

• Working prototypes & production ready-apps: 15-minute prototype during a single meeting
• Accessibility: Non-developers could build functional applications
• Cost-effectiveness: Build exactly what's needed instead of paying for bloated SaaS products
• Ownership: Full control over custom tech stack
• Rapid iteration: Instant feedback and fixes pushed to production in minutes

"I'm not eating up a bunch of my bandwidth or my budget, and kind of allocating that to other things," Nick explains. "The amount of money I'm saving on not having to go buy software, I'm investing in people."

Building with Replit: Three Transformative Products

1. ExpenseFlow: Budget Management System

The Problem: 45+ employees managing contributor budgets across 20+ brands with no centralization or real-time visibility.

The Solution: Nick built ExpenseFlow in one week, creating a system that gave:

• Individual contributors real-time visibility into their budgets
• Managers live oversight of all budgets under their purview
• CEO complete company-wide budget dashboard
• Instant expense entry and tracking

The Result: "We were able to dramatically reduce the overages because we had visibility and we're on track to be saving $100,000 each month just because we have this product."

This system will eventually speak to it’s parent application called "ProfitFlow," an interactive P&L that brings together multiple Replit Apps o into one executive dashboard.

2. SEOToolkit: Removing Technical Barriers

The Problem: Journalists writing excellent articles but missing crucial SEO elements—long URLs, inconsistent keywords, missing metadata. "These journalists, they write incredible pieces of work, but sometimes they don't think about SEO."

The Solution: Built overnight in bed, the SEOToolkit uses AI to analyze completed articles and automatically generate:

• Five optimized headline options
• Target keyword recommendations
• Properly formatted URLs
• Complete metadata

The critical constraint: "I'm not editing a single bit of your article. All I'm doing is I'm asking you when you're done, drop the full article into this text box and click a single button."

The Result: Even during a period of decreased overall page views, Google Discover referrals jumped to 1.3 million in October from 850k million in September. "It's already giving us a nice little bump because the journalists don't have to think about all these technical rules. They just do what they do best, drop it in a tool and it gives them what they're looking for."

3. SalesFlow: Unified Pipeline Management

The Problem: Sales reps using disconnected systems for proposals and pipeline management, with no tools supporting both print and digital media sales.

The Solution: A unified sales pipeline tool that:

• Centralizes proposal creation
• Tracks deals through the entire sales process
• Provides CEO visibility into incoming and closed sales
• Integrates with the broader Profit Flow dashboard

"It's just the visibility and an easier tool for sales reps to use, which is all banked off of Replit."

Bonus: Company-Wide Innovation

The internal hackathon, powered by Replit, transformed how the entire company approaches problems. Non-technical employees built:

• Data aggregation tools: Marketing teams pulling metrics from 12+ sources into a single dashboard
• FIRE (File Image Recognition Engine): An image processing and categorization system that won the hackathon and is rolling out company-wide as their photo warehouse solution
• Proposal generators: Systems that reduced 4-week manual processes to 4 hours

"This was the first aha moment for not only my CEO and I, but really a lot of other people to understand that they have now the ability to become the devs, but still being the product and idea people."

Value Realized: Transforming Operations and Culture

Financial Impact

• $100,000 monthly savings from Expense Flow alone
• Eliminated multiple SaaS contracts by building custom solutions
• Increased page views and referral traffic through SEOToolkit
• Budget reallocation from software licenses to hiring new team members

Operational Excellence

• 50+ employees using ExpenseFlow for real-time budget management
• Zero drag on core WordPress development team
• Minutes to fix bugs instead of waiting for vendor support
• Instant prototypes replacing weeks-long development cycles

Cultural Transformation

The shift has been profound:

• Journalists initially fearful of AI now see it as enhancing their work
• Non-developers building production applications
• Idea people creating 80% complete prototypes for developers to finalize
• All ages and roles "revived in their creativeness"

Nick's Advice for Others

For first-time builders: "Don't let AI make you leapfrog the foundation. Spend a little time doing the Project Manager work—scope it out, get refined requirements. When I built ExpenseFlow, I had to go back and refactor user roles and permissions. The second time with SalesFlow, I started with users, roles, and permissions, which led to an easy cascading effect."

For scaling to production: "Don't let perfection stand in the way of progress. Get your prototype, get feedback, push it to production right away, get people using it, receive feedback, and restart the process over and over again. The greatest thing about Replit is that feedback can be instantly ingested, fixed, and pushed to production."

On the bigger picture: "There is truly not a better time to be alive. I have such a runway to make a lot of these products that not only myself had, but others had, become reality. Before, we had so many ideas on the table, but it took so long to even get a prototype out. Now, just toss it in. The idea people can bring my dev a fully baked out prototype and say, 'I got it 80% of the way. Just take it past the finish line and let's go to production.'"

Looking Ahead: 2026 and Beyond

Firecrown Media Inc. is betting big on their Replit-powered tech stack. The company is actively hiring "Replit power users"—people who can bridge product vision and technical execution without traditional development backgrounds.

"I'm hiring someone who knows all of that, that can speak to AI, speak to Replit to build the product. That's really our sweet spot that we're finding," Nick explains.

With ExpenseFlow evolving into ProfitFlow, new tools in development, and a culture of innovation spreading across 200+ employees, Firecrown is positioned to own its technology destiny.

"2026 is going to be a big year for us. And Replit's a huge part of that."

About Firecrown Media

Firecrown Media is a $60 million media company operating 50+ websites and 20+ magazines with a team of 200+ employees. Based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the company is redefining what's possible when media companies own their tech stack.