David Rusenko
Founder & Managing Partner, Leap Forward Ventures. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestorhost@drusenko ↗LinkedIn ↗leapforward.vc ↗
David Rusenko is the co-founder and former CEO of website-building platform Weebly, which was acquired by Square for $365 million in 2018. Following his time as General Manager of eCommerce at Square, he founded Leap Forward Ventures to invest in early-stage climate and clean energy startups.
2shows
2appearances
40statements
1resolved
1supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
1said about them ↓ Everything David Rusenko said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Rusenko: Direct Sales Requires Charging At Least $200-$300 Per Month
“If you're going to have a sales force, you're probably going to charge people at least Two, 300 dollars a month to be able to afford the Salesforce, and if you aren't gonna have a Salesforce, then you should probably charge 25 dollars a month or less.”
Rusenko: Great brands are built on the same core insight as the product
“Great brands are built around a fundamental insight, a consumer insight that some truth that's just not really acknowledged out there. And ideally this is the same one that your product is built on. So it's really, really powerful if you can identify that insi…”
Rusenko: 2008 Silicon Valley consensus was to actively avoid charging users
“In 2007 and 2008, the prevailing thinking in Silicon Valley was that you should actively not charge money. You should actively be not making money. That was the prevailing thinking. It sounds really, really crazy now. But at the time, the logic went that Twitt…”
Rusenko: Comparing startups via feature checklists makes catching up impossible
“Don't look at your product in terms of like a feature grid, like a feature checklist. If you think about it like that, you can never win because you're behind and you can never catch up.”
Rusenko: Most paying Weebly customers pay $8 to $15 per month
“No, most people are sort of somewhere in that like eight to 15 dollar a month price range.”
Rusenko: Weebly sees some free users convert to paid after six years
“We see people converting six years later for the first time, someone who signed up for the first time, who has been consistently using the service, who's paying us for the first time six years later.”
Rusenko: Weebly has over 50 million users on its platform
“We're over fifty million people that are using Weebly.”
Rusenko: Weebly sites get 325 million monthly visits globally
“About three hundred twenty-five million people every single month visit one of those websites or online stores that were created by those entrepreneurs. I think that's really cool. That's a global number, just the US component of that represents about half of …”
Rusenko: Weebly saw under 0.5% conversion at paid launch in 2008
“When we first started to introduce our first paying subscription, which was Weebly Pro, and when we first introduced that I think it was in June of 2008. We saw a conversion rate of just under .5%.”
Rusenko: Weebly reached 50M users and sold to Square for $365M
“Grew the company to fifty million users and around 350 employees. Sold the square in May of this year for three hundred sixty five million.”
Rusenko: TechCrunch and press spikes drop immediately the next day
“This is exactly what you should expect if you get on TechCrunch or any press. It goes straight up, and it's really exciting that day, and then it goes straight back down the next day. And, but at least settles a little bit higher.”
Rusenko: Weebly raised $650K Series A at $2M pre-money in 2007
“We raised 650 K on a two million dollar pre-money valuation. So 2.65 post. That was considered above average, slightly above average. We were all very jealous of Dropbox, who had raised a five million dollar post money valuation”
Weebly still struggles with statistical significance in testing
“Even at Weebly scale today, we still sometimes have difficulty with getting statistical significance for some of our tests.”
Rusenko: Weebly achieved an 80% NPS in its early days
“So in the early days Weebly had an NPS of 80%.”
Rusenko: Weebly became cashflow positive in January 2009
“We basically became cashflow positive in January, 2009, and more or less were through the rest of the history of the company.”
The other half of the tape: David Rusenko's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
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the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 1
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens David's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Y COMBINATORLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, Leap Forward Ventures | 1 | 27 | 100% 1/1 | full record on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast → |
 TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, Leap Forward Ventures | 1 | 13 | — | full record on Top Founders → |