David Rusenko at Startup School 2012

Well, thanks for having me, guys. Uh, you can hear me all right? Cool! So, I wanted to start by just uh, going over the Weebly story a little bit, telling you uh, kind of how we got to where we got to today and some of the lessons we learned along the way.

So, uh, what is Weebly, first of all? If some of you guys haven't heard of it, uh, Weebly is a simple and powerful way to create a site. People want to create a site, they want to create a blog, they want to sell things online, and they just want it to work. They don't want any of the frustrations around it.

Um, so let me show you a couple of Weebly sites. Uh, the first site is uh, a photographer from Toronto showcasing their photography. Uh, the second site is an interior designer from Oregon; these they've actually been featured in Dwell magazine for their interior designs, run their website on Weebly. Uh, the third site is a graphic designer from California. You can see all these sites just look great, and uh, not one line of HTML or CSS was written for these sites.

Um, this next site is pretty special. This is Brian; he's 80 years old. Uh, he retired, and his passion is building ukuleles. He started doing it in his spare time, went on Weebly, and created a website. Uh, what do you know? The word got out, and, you know, he could build a couple of ukuleles out of his shop per month. He now has a 3 to 6 month backlog of ukuleles.

And this last site's really special to us. Uh, you may have seen the Longanda initiative, I think, last year. Um, but this group of students who had volunteered in Kenya, uh, heard this story about Omari, who had been brutally attacked while trying to defend his orphanage, and they didn't even have a fence to defend themselves. So, they created a Weebly website about this, posted it to Reddit, and were able to raise over $100,000 in less than a week for the orphanage. They built a wall and a fence, and much more than that, and that's actually now helping out that orphanage in Kenya.

So, a little bit about our story and how we got to where we are today. Uh, in early 2006, as part of a class project at Penn State, um, we came up with the same idea. Six years ago, we thought, you know, why is this so hard? Why is it still so hard to build a website? We're seeing people all around us, uh, that were just struggling. And so, we came up with the idea; we started working on it.

Now, I'm going to introduce you to the theme of the presentation here. This is a graph of our new signups per day. Uh, this is August 2006. Uh, this is real data, and you can see up at the top, it's 6 months after we started working on Weebly. Uh, so, 6 months after we wrote our first line of code, our grand signup day, we got 12 new users, and uh, you know, it was just kind of friends and family. It was still in Alpha stage. This wasn't something that was easy to pump out in a month; it was something that was difficult that took some time to build.

Uh, so over that summer, Dan and I and Chris were working on it. Uh, here's October 2006, eight months later. So we've now been writing code and working on the idea for eight months. Um, we posted a private beta invitation on some forums, and we thought, man, this is going to blow up. Uh, and we got about 30 people to sign up that day.

Um, so you know, around this time, I was up pretty late at night, was browsing Slashdot. That kind of tells you also, uh, you know, that was the most popular tech news site back then. And I was reading an article on, uh, why commentator. I said, you know, I think I've heard about this company before; I'm not really sure. Started reading the article; oh, this sounds really cool, this sounds interesting. Oh, application deadlines in two hours. Uh, so, uh, well, I thought, you know, what the hell? I'll put something really quick, uh, you know, it doesn't hurt to apply.

Now, I didn't actually have enough time to call up Dan or Chris to ask them if they'd be willing to drop out of school and move to San Francisco. Um, so I took a guess. Uh, I figured, you know, Chris would probably do it; he's a little, he's a pretty wild guy. And Dan's a pretty wild guy too, but I figured he might want to finish his college career. Um, so, you know, we applied to YC with literally less than an hour to go on the clock. Um, got accepted for an interview, drove up to Boston, interviewed. We thought it was great.

Um, incidentally, the morning of the interview, I wake up, check my phone, I'm reading email all bleary-eyed, and, and I got an email from someone congratulating me on the TechCrunching. What the hell is this about? So I open TechCrunch; it just so happened that, uh, TechCrunch wrote about us that morning. And, you know, I'm sure it definitely didn't hurt with the interview.

Um, but I also had to explain this graph. This is really important. This is not normally what a TechCrunching looks like; normally, it goes straight up and straight back down. Um, we had an invitation system in place, you know, to make sure our servers didn't crash. And um, so, that's why I see it spread out over more time. But, um, you know, later that night, you know, Paul told us, uh, expect a call from us by 7 p.m. the same day; we'll let you know if you made it or not.

So, you know, we were pretty nervous, and uh, we went out to dinner. And we sat down, and literally, I remember, you know, 7 p.m. rolled around, and 8 p.m. rolled around, and we were all just staring at our plates of food in front of us, like we literally couldn't eat. We were so nervous. And then by 9:00 p.m. we're like, this is it; we're definitely not making it in. They've called everyone they've accepted and now they're just, uh, calling the losers that aren't getting in.

Um, so I think around 9:30, the phone call from Paul comes, and I answer, and literally, his first words were, "I'm calling to end your college career." Um, so, you know, funnily enough, you know, I ended up talking to Dan later and say, "Hey, guys, do you want to, you want, you know, I know we have a semester left, but sounds crazy, but how about we just drop out of school, move to San Francisco? What do you think of it?" And Chris was like, "Hell yeah, let's do it!" And, uh, and I asked Dan, I'm like, "Dan, like, like, what do you think? This is pretty crazy." He's like, "Yeah, I'm on board; this sounds awesome."

Uh, so, you know, this is a picture of us that we took right after, uh, we got that phone call. I think this picture was also right after we each took three shots, uh, at the bar to celebrate. Um, and this is with our friend Dana.

Um, so the next graph is January 2007. So we moved out to San Francisco, start the Y Combinator program. It's now 11 months after we started working on, you know, this is a pretty long time; this is almost a full year after we started writing our first line of code. I want you to take a look at this graph and I want you to notice something. This isn't straight up and to the right; it goes straight up, it comes straight back down.

Now, maybe you got a couple squiggles here that are a little hopeful, but things aren't looking great. We're getting less than a hundred people per day signing up right now, almost a year after we started working on Weebly. Um, you know, this is a picture of our first office. So we literally moved into an apartment. Uh, we put three desks together; you could really tell how long ago this was because of that old-ass TV in the lower right-hand corner, uh, and then the 15-inch monitors.

Um, and we literally just pushed three desks together, put it in the living room, and this is what startup looks like. Uh, we just worked our asses off. We had one important rule, which is we took Saturday off. Um, but otherwise, every other moment, every other waking moment was 24/7 work. Um, it wasn't all bad; we had a great view of the San Francisco Bay.

Um, and you know, this is a fun story. Um, this is a little display that Chris hacked up, and he just put it in the middle of the table, and it showed kind of some basic stats. So it showed, like, load average, which you don't see right here, but, uh, it also showed total users and, uh, logged in users. And there were three logged in users here, and that's because it was the three of us around the table using Weebly.

And one of our biggest moments, still, I think, in company history was one night we were sitting there, and it went to four, you know, while we were excited. Uh, that was exciting. Um, so, you know, in January 2007, we also got featured on TechCrunch again. This is much more normal; it goes straight up and straight back down.

And you know, again, 11 months after we started working on Weebly. Um, this is April 2007, and there's a couple hard times I also want to share. CU, sometimes you just hear about the good stuff; you don't hear about the bad stuff. You don't hear about the times that were really hard. Um, this is 14 months after we started working on Weebly.

Now, the first thing I want to address on this slide is the signup graph. I kind of want you to look at the end there and notice, you know, I think we were just oblivious and very hopeful at the time, but that kind of looks like it's heading down. It's not heading up; it's actually heading in the wrong direction.

Um, at this point, April 2007, I mean, we were just finishing the YC program. We were really hopeful that we could raise money, but you know, talking to some angel investors, but at one point, we had less than $100 in our bank account, and that's all the money we had. Um, we, you know, we spent money on two things early on: we spent money on rent and we spent money at the bar.

Um, and that's pretty much it. Um, and you know, we were pretty hopeful, but rent was coming up in two weeks, and we had to pay rent in two weeks. So we started talking about raising a friends and family round. We started talking about moving to San Jose to save 800 bucks a month in rent, and, uh, luckily we didn't do that.

And, um, you know, luckily, sort of right in the nick of time, uh, we ended up raising a $650k angel round from uh, from Ron, from uh, Steve Anderson, Mike Maples, a bunch of angels. Um, this is another thing that really dates this story; uh, that big stack of paperwork is what an equity financing looks like.

Uh, these days, you know, all the financing, most early-stage financings are done via convertible note; two, three pages tops. This is a fat stack for equity financing. So, you know, the next big thing for us was being featured in Newsweek. Now, this used to be a really big deal. Um, I don't know today if it's as much of a big deal, but back then this was a huge deal; this was the thing that your parents bought ten copies of the magazine and afforded it to everyone they knew.

Um, and, uh, so this was a really big deal 15 months in. That was definitely a high point. Um, and that's what that looks like. So now you're seeing the effect of what being featured in Newsweek looks like. You know, again, it's a very similar pattern; it goes up and it comes right back down.

Um, you're now noticing, you know, it settles higher. That's definitely a good sign, but it's still going down; it's not going up. This is 15 months after we started working on Weebly. Um, you know, here's a shot of our, uh, office here in, in, in July 2007, and that's, that's Dan sitting there. Um, and that's also our stats dashboard that you can kind of see what's going on.

Um, the next big moment for us around the same time, um, was being featured in Time. So we're featuring Time as one of the, uh, 50 best websites of 2007. So this is 18 months after we start working on Weebly; a year and a half after we started working on Weebly, and things still aren't taking off. There's no hockey stick here; things are actually going in the wrong direction.

Now, I want to try something out here. Raise your hand if you're currently working on a startup. Okay, now keep your hand up. No, no, keep, keep your hands up! Now keep your hand up only if you've been working on it for over 18 months. Okay, right, that's what I thought. Um, it, it's a long time. This is a really long time, and we didn't have any. We didn't have too much positive; we were just sort of naive. We were naively hopeful that things were working out, and we knew it was a good problem to be solving.

We're getting feedback from our users, but, you know, the metrics weren't entirely there yet. Um, and this is where it changes. This is, this is 20 months in. Finally, finally, 20 months after we started working on Weebly, we're seeing our first real traction. Now, this is good; this is where your rate of acquiring new users per day is increasing linearly. That's a pretty good thing, and one thing to notice, you know, you might think, "Hey, if only I get on TechCrunch, I'll blow up; you know, my company will be successful." If I just get on TechCrunch, well, look all the way back there, just via word of mouth.

Now we are now getting more users every single day than if we were featured in Newsweek, Time, or TechCrunch. In July 2008, uh, we moved into our first real office. 29 months after we started working on Weebly. Funny story: that TV on the wall got stolen. Uh, our office got broken into the first week we moved in; that was fun getting a call from the police officer at the next A, and like, uh, you gotta come deal with your office; it's busted.

Um, so, you know, here's another picture. Um, and this is, this was just it; it was small. It was, 1,400 square feet. We ended up fitting, I think, about 12 people there. Um, and, you know, around the summertime, we started looking at our bank account balance, and, and, you know, we're like, okay, well, you know, how much runway do we have? This is an important thing to know.

Uh, if you're not profitable, how much runway do we have? We said, okay, well we really need to start raising money in September; you know, maybe October, November, we're going to run out of money. It's, you know, so we said, well, what the hell? Let's, let's give it a shot and at least start making some money. Um, so, uh, July 2008, we choose Weebly Pro. We also sell domain names now, and, and when we started at that time, and, you know, things were looking good, but if you know anything about the fall of 2008, it was just a really bad time to be raising money.

Uh, so we went out there, and, you know, it might have worked, but, but the terms were just not what we were looking for. So, um, this is a graph of our company bank account balance. Um, I actually, uh, hacked up Vanguard's graph, you know, like Flash graph, to plot in XML feed to graph this for you guys. Uh, this is 34 months after we started working on Weebly, and um, it was pretty low.

And, and this is, you know, this is another hard time. We basically, we looked at our bank account balance and we said, okay, well, you know, revenue is increasing and things are going in the right direction, and we're pretty hopeful we could squeeze through. But, you know, but we can't pay our bills next month. So, so what are we going to do about it?

So, you know, obviously payroll was just never an option; we're obviously going to pay payroll. If we had to cut our own salaries, that was going to be one thing. But for people we employed, that was just not an option not to pay that. So, the next step was to get out a calendar. Literally, I remember getting out a big calendar on a piece of paper and mapping out all our bills; on which days they were due and how much money we thought we were going to make in the meantime to just barely squeak by.

And, and then there were really two types of bills that we labeled. There was one that was a type of bill that if you didn't pay it, you got a late fee, and the second type of bill if you didn't pay it, they shut your servers off. Uh, so obviously, we had to pay that second category. Um, but you know, in January 2009, which is, which is a great month for us, um, you know, we finally hit Break Even.

Uh, this is where things started turning in the profitable direction. And, um, you know, this is where you first start seeing a working business model. Um, it, it finally clicks and you can see a little bit of history out there, 35 months, that's three years after we started working on it. We finally hit a working business model.

Um, this is February 2010, and now things are looking great; now we're off to the races. This is four years after we started working on Weebly. Um, and I want you to notice all the way in the back that that Newsweek, that Time, you know, the TechCrunch articles, they're just blips on the radar. You know, now every day we're getting about 5,000 new users per day, all via word of mouth, it's all organic growth.

Um, in March 2011, 61 months after we started, uh, we partnered with SEOA Capital. Uh, we, we loved them as partners and, and brought them on board, uh, to help grow the business. And that brings us to today. So where are we now? Uh, today Weebly Pro is about 2% of the active websites on the internet. That's all based on public data from Netcraft.

Um, every month, 15% of the United States visits a Weebly website. And my favorite stat here is our net promoter score. Our net promoter score is over 80%. Now, if you're not familiar with what a net promoter score is, that's, you know, that means 88% of people who answered this survey said nine or ten likely they're going to recommend Weebly to a friend. As a point of comparison, I think Apple's is 67%; that's considered excellent.

So this explains everything about our business. A quick tour of the office here; we moved in this office about a year ago. This is what it looks like when you walk in. Uh, this is a quick snapshot of our lobby and conference room at the front. Here's our open work plan area, and, um, you know, we really like this because you could really talk and communicate, but obviously it gets noisy. So one of the things that we give everyone, uh, who works at Weebly is Bose's noise-canceling headphones to block out the noise.

Um, it's a TV room, great for catching a big game, especially the Giants games that have been on lately. Um, and this is, this is our kind of, you know, kitchen SL wreck area downstairs. And we get super competitive on ping pong, pool, foosball. One thing I want you to notice is that bookshelf in the back. Um, actually, if you go up to that and you know the right book to pull, it actually opens up.

I'm not sure how well you can see that, but, uh, it's, it's policy; we can't show anyone, uh, pictures of inside the secret room unless you come visit. So we'd love to have you over to check that out. Um, so, you know, just for shits and giggles, I pulled our bank account balance from this morning. Um, that's what our company bank account balance looks like now, um, and this is 80 months after we started working on Weebly.

I think the important message here is that it's still an unfinished story, you know? I mean, as large as we've been able to grow, this is just the beginning. Uh, so, you know, what's next for Weebly? Well, six years ago, um, we thought the same thing. You know, uh, making a site is just hard, you know? And, and today, people are just as frustrated, um, you know, just as confused, and all they really want to do is participate in the internet.

And you know what? Most people can't participate in the internet the way they'd like to. Um, you know, people just want to, uh, you know, showcase their business, showcase their art or their talents, um, and, and sell things online, and it's still too difficult for them. So, you know, as much as we've done in the last six years, we think we've just built a foundation.

And what's most exciting is what we're building right now, and there's just a whole lot of work left to do. So, I think the number one takeaway of everything is you can't succeed if you quit. Um, too often I've seen people that build something for 6 months, and then they launch it, and then two months later, they stop working on it. Like, how do you expect that to work? Uh, you know, behind every, I think we've seen it today, behind every quote-unquote overnight success, you see people who have been working for years and years and years.

And, uh, if you want to build a truly big and meaningful company, it's going to take you 7 to 10 years of your life. You know, don’t give up so easily. You just got to keep going. Even at the early days for everyone, including us, it didn't look great; you just had to push through and know that you're working on a valuable problem and, and keep pushing through.

So, last thing I'll close with is that, you know, if you'd like to help us finish the story, uh, that that's still in progress, um, we'd love to talk to you, but I won't go on too much about that. If you have any other questions, please email me. Uh, hope to see you at the party tonight, and thank you very much!