Built by a learner, for learners.
Circle Unchained is an independent product built by Filipe Santos — an SEO operator and product builder who got tired of paying for courses he could never truly own.
Why this exists
In 2024 I lost access to roughly $2,800 worth of paid course content. Two communities I belonged to migrated platforms within four months of each other. Both promised "everything will be moved over." Neither actually moved everything. The lessons I had bookmarked, the slides I'd paid extra for, half the modules I still hadn't worked through — gone, or behind a paywall I'd already paid once.
That isn't unusual. Online course completion rates hover around 5–15%, partly because most platforms penalise the way real adults learn — on flights, on commutes, in 20-minute pockets between meetings. Streaming-only access turns those windows into nothing. Subscription lapses turn an entire library into a memory.
Circle Unchained is the smallest tool that fixes that for one specific platform really well. It runs in your browser. It only sees content your account already has access to. It doesn't bypass paywalls or share anything between users. It just lets you keep, locally, what you already paid to learn.
Background
A decade in SEO, growth and independent product. Highlights:
10+ years shipping organic growth for SaaS, marketplaces and editorial brands
Built and maintained Chrome extensions used by thousands of paying users
Public speaker on technical SEO, structured data and product-led growth
Bootstrapped multiple profitable independent products — no VC, no growth hacks
Timeline
- 2014–2019SEO & growth at scale
Led organic-growth strategy for SaaS and content businesses, shipping technical SEO, structured data, and editorial systems that ranked at the top of competitive verticals.
- 2020–2024Independent product builder
Founded and shipped multiple bootstrapped products serving creators, communities and learners — focusing on small, sharp tools that solve a single problem completely.
- 2025The Circle problem
After paying for a course library that disappeared mid-migration between platforms, started prototyping a Chrome extension that would back up legitimately-purchased lessons locally.
- 2026Circle Unchained launch
Shipped Circle Unchained v1.0 with full Circle.so support, custom-domain detection, HLS merging and document/image extraction — built for serious learners who want to keep what they paid for.
Want to chat?
Press, partnerships, feature requests, or just to say hi — Filipe reads every message.