5 ms·

David Rusenko's 2012 Startup School Talk

81 points by dannyv 14y ago

flexxaeon 14y ago
Seeing that TechCrunch "spike" become a "blip" will fire you up.
rgrieselhuber 14y ago
One of the best things I heard the Weebly founders say at an event was that an exponential function looks like a flat line for a long time.
freework 14y ago
Lots of self-promotion, very little content
- mode80 14y ago
  If you're looking for education watch something else. If you could use some inspiration, this is awesome.
hoodoof 14y ago
Is this available in MP3?
EGreg 14y ago
Wow, this was definitely inspiring. They stuck through it even as they weren't making a lot. They were happy to get just 10-20 users. It made me feel very proud of what our own startup has achieved relative to other startups. We just hit a million users, we have revenues, etc. I made a post about it at http://qbix.com/blog http://qbix.com/blog . I know it sounds like self promotion but I genuinely was happy to see that we have been able to pull it off despite not being accepted into YC or anything like that. So far all the funding has come from friends and family, but I can definitely relate to what these guys were going through ... we are at a point where we need to raise our next round of funding, because we still haven't reached our break even point and our burn rate still exceeds our revenues. I can tell you from experience, when you pick a problem you really are passionate about solving, then you have a reason to work on your startup every day, and a reason to continue it even when things are looking tough. Everything those guys are saying ... about prioritizing paying the people who are working for you, all is exactly what we've been going through, and are still facing. So great job guys! Really inspiring for us to see that they've made it.
- vampirical 14y ago
  Just FYI, http://qbix.com/ http://qbix.com/ just shows "Error rendering this page." in Opera. Took me a second to realize it was just a browser compat issue, at first I wrote the whole service off as broken. You might want to drop in an explicit browser support warning.
  - EGreg 14y ago
    Thanks for the heads up! Looks like we weren't detecting the Opera browsers correctly. In any case, I fixed it already. Shout out to browserstack.com for letting us test quickly. (By the way this was fun: http://cl.ly/image/1t0u2r471g18 http://cl.ly/image/1t0u2r471g18)
photorized 14y ago
You have Flash player 0.0.0 installed. You need Flash player 8 to view this page. - on iPad. :(
sideproject 14y ago
Reminds me of this quote. “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” ― Calvin Coolidge
- confluence 14y ago
  What about all the startup-type weebly guys that worked for years and years and just never made it? That quote is just survivorship bias. It also has a whiff of a "blame the victim mentality" embedded within it. Persistence is necessary for success - as is being alive. However neither condition is sufficient.
pankratiev 14y ago
For those who don't have Flash, here it's on Youtube: Part 1: http://youtu.be/l_b228qEVi8 http://youtu.be/l_b228qEVi8 Part 2: http://youtu.be/F90BRJHXsVI http://youtu.be/F90BRJHXsVI

81 points by dannyv 14y ago

Seeing that TechCrunch "spike" become a "blip" will fire you up.

One of the best things I heard the Weebly founders say at an event was that an exponential function looks like a flat line for a long time.

freework 14y ago

Lots of self-promotion, very little content

mode80 14y ago
If you're looking for education watch something else. If you could use some inspiration, this is awesome.

hoodoof 14y ago

Is this available in MP3?

EGreg 14y ago

Wow, this was definitely inspiring. They stuck through it even as they weren't making a lot. They were happy to get just 10-20 users. It made me feel very proud of what our own startup has achieved relative to other startups. We just hit a million users, we have revenues, etc. I made a post about it at http://qbix.com/blog http://qbix.com/blog . I know it sounds like self promotion but I genuinely was happy to see that we have been able to pull it off despite not being accepted into YC or anything like that. So far all the funding has come from friends and family, but I can definitely relate to what these guys were going through ... we are at a point where we need to raise our next round of funding, because we still haven't reached our break even point and our burn rate still exceeds our revenues. I can tell you from experience, when you pick a problem you really are passionate about solving, then you have a reason to work on your startup every day, and a reason to continue it even when things are looking tough. Everything those guys are saying ... about prioritizing paying the people who are working for you, all is exactly what we've been going through, and are still facing. So great job guys! Really inspiring for us to see that they've made it.

vampirical 14y ago
Just FYI, http://qbix.com/ http://qbix.com/ just shows "Error rendering this page." in Opera. Took me a second to realize it was just a browser compat issue, at first I wrote the whole service off as broken. You might want to drop in an explicit browser support warning.
- EGreg 14y ago
  Thanks for the heads up! Looks like we weren't detecting the Opera browsers correctly. In any case, I fixed it already. Shout out to browserstack.com for letting us test quickly. (By the way this was fun: http://cl.ly/image/1t0u2r471g18 http://cl.ly/image/1t0u2r471g18)

photorized 14y ago

You have Flash player 0.0.0 installed. You need Flash player 8 to view this page. - on iPad. :(

sideproject 14y ago

Reminds me of this quote. “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” ― Calvin Coolidge

confluence 14y ago
What about all the startup-type weebly guys that worked for years and years and just never made it? That quote is just survivorship bias. It also has a whiff of a "blame the victim mentality" embedded within it. Persistence is necessary for success - as is being alive. However neither condition is sufficient.

pankratiev 14y ago

For those who don't have Flash, here it's on Youtube: Part 1: http://youtu.be/l_b228qEVi8 http://youtu.be/l_b228qEVi8 Part 2: http://youtu.be/F90BRJHXsVI http://youtu.be/F90BRJHXsVI