Created in 2006, website and eCommerce service Weebly started with $20,000 in seed money from Y Combinator. In 2014, the platform raised $35 million in funding, and was acquired by Square in 2018.
With more than 50 million users across 225 countries and 300+ employees in five global offices, Weebly has grown significantly since its humble beginnings in the Penn State University dorm room of CEO and co-founder David Rusenko. And it managed to do so without straying from a freemium model that guides Weebly’s main customer acquisition strategy: word-of-mouth.
Although it offers premium packages with a monthly charge ranging from $4 to $35, Rusenko says 80% of what Weebly offers is free.
“If you build a fantastic product, it’s not that you build it and [customers] will come — the core of the success of any company does come down to the product and having a fantastic experience with the product,” he explains. “For us, a lot of that [new customer growth] is driven by the freemium model that drives word-of-mouth.”
Unlike many of its competitors, Weebly offers both a website builder as well as an e-commerce platform.
Rusenko says the decision to play in two markets comes from customer demand. “We go where our customers are, and what our customers have told us more and more is they’re looking to start selling online,” he says.
Still, scaling a platform on a freemium model requires patience. “Where you start is going to be very different [from] where you end up when you’re mature,” says Rusenko, noting that Weebly saw a conversion rate of just under 0.5% when it introduced Weebly Pro, the first paid subscription, in 2008.
Now, the platform’s current free-to-paid accounts conversion rates are “slightly better” than the industry average — something it likely couldn’t achieve with a high churn rate, or renewal rate by cohort, which is Rusenko’s preferred metric to track.
Also one of the steadiest metrics in the business, Rusenko says he measures it by “looking at our cohorts and understanding their renewal rates by term.” That way, he and his team can spot trends from each cohort and ensure they remain consistent and improve.
According to Rusenko, entrepreneurs make up a vast majority of the platform’s customer base. Because of Weebly’s reach, “325 million people every single month visit one of those websites or online stores that were created by those entrepreneurs.”
Based on information from David Rusenko’s 2018 interview.
Featured SaaS Entrepreneur — David Rusenko
Name: David Rusenko, age 32, married with 1 kid
Where to find him: Twitter | Personal Website | LinkedIn
Company: Weebly
Noteworthy: During Weebly’s beta stage, the founders received unsolicited $50 checks from happy customers who wanted to help keep the business running.
Favorite business book: “The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made A Difference”
CEO he respects: Pete Flint
Favorite online tool for building the business: Boomerang for Gmail
Average # of hours of sleep/night: Between 8 and 9
Transcript Excerpts
E-commerce + website builder— why Weebly corners two markets
“We go where our customers are, and what our customers have told us more and more is they’re looking to start selling online. I think maybe 10 years ago, expectations were just a little simpler. It was like, ‘Hey, I just want to get found. I want to get that website online.’ … We’re finding increasingly that our customers are trying to say, ‘Look, getting found is great, but I need to start transacting online,’ and that’s where the magic starts to happen. That’s where you go on vacation, your business is running itself, right? That’s where you’re making money while you sleep. So increasingly, that’s what our customers are looking to do.”
How to balance growth amid the expectations of investors
“I think the key is having the right investors, and we’ve been super, super lucky to have investors who are the best of the best. … Having just a fantastic set of investors around the table means they’re also longterm focused. There is no pressure for driving towards an exit or driving towards an outcome that isn’t in the long term. As far as how we think about growth, what I’ve witnessed is a lot of very suboptimal decision making as far as spending goes.”
Driving growth through product and a freemium model
“Substantially, all of our growth has been via word-of-mouth. At the end of the day, if you build a fantastic product, it’s not that you build it and [customers] will come — but the core of all success of any company does come down to the product and having a fantastic experience with the product. For us, a lot of that is driven by the freemium model that drives word-of-mouth. I think the freemium model only works if … it is driving word of mouth [and] if your marginal cost per additional user is low enough to sort of support the freemium model.”
Conversion rates throughout the lifecycle of a freemium model
“When we first introduced our first paying subscription, which was Weebly Pro … we saw a conversion rate of just under 0.5%. For someone getting started who’s looking to start a premium business, you absolutely have to keep in mind that … where you start is going to be very different [from] where you end up when you’re mature. … If you’re looking at introducing either a freemium or just a SaaS model on top of your business and you’re expecting to get the average on day one, I would say lower your expectations because it takes a lot of time to get there.”
Why churn rates aren’t everything and which metric to look at instead
“Personally, I do not like looking at churn as is defined. I know churn is sort of both a concept and sort of a defined metric. I prefer to look at renewal rates by cohort because churn is sort of this composite measure that I’m not as much of a fan of. Our renewal rates are one of the steadiest metrics in our business. I think if you have a product that doesn’t have product-market fit, you’re going to see really low renewal rates. If you have a product that has really great product-market fit, you’re going to see really high renewal rates. I think that is a key sign for a business on whether the product-market fit is healthy.”
Full Transcript Interviewer: Hello everyone. My guest today is David Rusenko. He’s the CEO and Co-Founder of Weebly. He created the company in his Penn State dorm room back in 2006, and Weebly now hosts over 50 million entrepreneurs in 225 countries all around the world. He’s helped scale the company to 300 plus employees in five different global offices. He’s dad to a 1.5 year old and his hobbies range from stunt car driving to a roaring game of bridge with his mother-in-law. David, are you ready to take us to the top? David Rusenko: Yeah, let’s do it. Interviewer: All right, so here’s the big question. On an average night, who wins bridge more, your mother or you? David Rusenko: Bridge is a tough game and I’ve only been playing for a few years now. So I got to give it to my mother-in-law. She’ll win every time. Interviewer: And what are the stakes? Does she get a percentage of the company every time you lose? What’s on the table here? David Rusenko: That would not be a great bet. Usually it’s bet over a bottle of wine. Interviewer: That’s good. All right, let’s jump into Weebly here. So I think most people obviously are familiar with this space, but for the rare person who is not, quickly tell us what Weebly does and what’s your revenue model? How do you make money? David Rusenko: Sure. We believe the easiest way, if you’re starting a business and you’re trying to try to get online and get found, Weebly is the easiest way to do that. If you’re trying to sell online and start an online store or even just get something as basic as a website up to get started, you can sign up on weebly.com. Within 10 minutes, you can have something online. Within a couple hours, you could be completely finished and be ready to go. Interviewer: And what’s the revenue model? Is it a pure play SasS or is it a mix or what? David Rusenko: It’s really easy. We offer a monthly charge. It starts with free, so you can get started for free. Actually about 80% of what we offer is completely free. And it’s very honest. If you like the service, it starts at $4 a month all the way up to about $35 a month. And just a simple monthly charge, no advertising. If you see value, you just pay for what you get. Interviewer: And David, is it fair to say the average is probably… In terms of if you just looked at your paying customers, you’re closer to four or five bucks a month? Or is the average actually higher end, 30, 35 bucks a month? David Rusenko: No. Most people are somewhere in that $8 to $15 a month price range, so still really affordable. Interviewer: Okay. What different pricing metrics are you using to drive up ARPU? Is it number of seats? Is it number of pages on the website? Is it number of widgets included? What leverage points are you using? David Rusenko: So for us, it’s entirely functionality, right? You get unlimited page views, you get effectively unlimited storage, so there’s no limits on those things. But it’s really just down to the functionality. So are you using a more basic website that’s just telling your story? That’s probably in the $4 to $8 a month range. Are you starting to do some e-commerce and starting to sell online? That’s in that $16 to $25 price point. Are you really getting advanced with the e-commerce, you want to include our email marketing products, our Facebook advertising products, and really start to grow your business and get found? That’s where you’re getting some of those slightly higher price points. Interviewer: Why have you chosen to take the war to two separate spaces? What I mean by that is on your website, there’s a clear delineation right when you start. Are you building a website or an e-commerce platform? And on both of those sectors, you have massive competitors, be it Shopify on e-commerce, or Squarespace, Wix, and the other guys on the website side? Why fight two wars at once? David Rusenko: Sure. I mean the space is huge. A lot of entrepreneurs like to pride themselves on saying, “We have no competition.” If you have no competition, that’s a bad sign. That usually means you’re in a small market. So the market’s absolutely massive. I think we go where our customers are and what our customers have told us more and more is that they’re looking to start selling online. I think maybe 10 years ago, it was really about expectations were just a little simpler. It was like, “Hey, I just want to get found. I want to get that website online.” That’s our bread and butter, that’s where we started. And there’s a whole host of people that are just looking to do that. David Rusenko: We’re finding increasingly that our customers are trying to actually say, “Look, getting found is great, but I need to start transacting online,” and that’s where the magic starts to happen. That’s where you go on vacation, your business is running itself, right? That’s where you’re making money while you sleep. So increasingly, that’s what our customers are looking to do. And we listen to our customers and we offer what they’re looking for. Interviewer: Why not then go all in on e-commerce and ignore the regular hosting? E-commerce is nice too, because you have a direct attribution model. They can see a return. David Rusenko: Yeah. I mean look, we’re continuing to push, like I said, exactly where our customers are looking for value. I think we’ve delineated website and e-commerce on our homepage. It’s not quite so black and white a delineation. I mean even if you’re going to sell a physical product, you might get started by setting up a website. Even e-commerce functionality is on a website, right? So it’s not quite so black and white. I think for a lot of our customers, it makes sense as they’re getting started to understand are you selling today or are you going to sell later? That’s really the delineation. I think over time, a lot of people are going to be upgrading to transacting online. It’s just the logical next step. Interviewer: Yeah. So you launched back in 2006 in your dorm room. You’ve scaled to today. I know you’ve raised capital. Give us a quick update there. How much have you raised total? David Rusenko: Yeah. I wrote the first line of code in February 2006. It was part of a class project at Penn State. Continued working on it throughout that class. Then that summer, we were interning in New York City, applied for and got accepted to Y Combinator that fall. Moved out… Skipped out I should say, from our last semester at school because- Interviewer: Wait, David. Sorry. I want to cut you off there real quick. When you were doing this and you applied to Y Combinator, what got you in? Were you post revenue at that point and the revenue numbers impressed them or your user base? David Rusenko: No. This was 2007. These were simpler times, if you will. Y Combinator had just gotten started. Most companies that were applying for Y Combinator at that point in time were just idea stage. That’s obviously very different today. At the time, I think we were one of, if not, the furthest along company that had ever applied to and gotten into Y Combinator. Interviewer: In terms of what though? User base, code lines written, what? David Rusenko: So we had actually launched something. Interviewer: Okay. David Rusenko: And we had effectively launched a beta. And that was at the time the furthest along, but there was no way that you could pay us even a single dollar. That wouldn’t come for another couple of years. People actually at one point in time were just mailing us unsolicited checks for 50 bucks saying, “I’m really afraid you’re going to go out of business. Here, just take some money. I love your product so much, just have some money.” Interviewer: David, that actually happened or is that just a hell of a good story you tell and it kind of happened like- David Rusenko: No, no. That actually happened multiple times. Interviewer: Do you have a wall somewhere of all those just checks put up? David Rusenko: You know what? If we were smarter, we would have kept the checks. I think at the time we actually did need the money, so we cashed them. Interviewer: You cashed them. You’re like, “That’s Whataburger tonight. That’s McDonald’s tomorrow night.” David Rusenko: Yeah, exactly. Interviewer: That’s funny. David Rusenko: That’s a trip to Costco right there. Interviewer: Yeah. 2006, you get into YC. Keep the story going on from there. David Rusenko: Yeah. Well, I say we skipped out of school because we all ended up graduating after the fact, but we had a semester left and I drove out from Penn State to San Francisco. This was early January. I drove 80. It turns out I would not recommend driving 80 in January. I got stuck in Wyoming for about three days, but made it through with all the servers intact in my car. Made it out here to San Francisco, participated in the Y Combinator program. That April, kind of a fun, I suppose, if you want to call it that milestone. We at one point were left with less than $100 in our bank account. We just paid rent. We’d just done a big trip to Costco. Interviewer: How many people were on your team at that point? David Rusenko: Just the three founders. Interviewer: Okay. David Rusenko: So we had food for a couple of weeks and we had rent due in another two to three weeks. So we basically only had a couple of weeks left and we weren’t really sure how we were going to make it through. But demo day was coming up and we were sort of cautiously optimistic. So it was 20k from Y Combinator in January. We made that stretch about four months. Interviewer: That was your first round, essentially. 20k. David Rusenko: Effectively, that was the first round. Interviewer: What have you raised to date? David Rusenko: To date, we’ve raised just a little over 35 million in primary capital. Interviewer: When you say primary, why do you make that delineation? Have you done secondary stuff or venture debt or what? David Rusenko: Yeah, we’ve done a little bit. I think primary capital is the best way to look at the business basically is like how much we actually taken in. Just to skip through to the story really quickly, 650k was in April of 2007. Kind of just continued scaling the business from there. In 2014, we raised 35 million from Sequoia and Tencent. Today we actually have more cash in the bank than we’ve raised. Interviewer: Now, how have you managed? I mean, once you raise capital, you essentially put yourself on a timeline. So I imagine you are fighting… Your board meetings might sound something like this. These guys are going, “David, spend more money, acquire more customers, drive growth, growth, growth, growth.” And you’re going, “I don’t want to growth at the sake of the bottom line. I want to be cashflow positive.” How do you keep pushing off the board’s drive and desire for growth with keeping cashflow? David Rusenko: You would be actually surprised that’s not how our board meetings go at all. I think the key is having the right investors and we’ve been super, super lucky to have investors who are the best of the best. So it starts off with Y Combinator. You then have Ron Conway, Steve Anderson, Mike Maples, Eden, these sort of best known angels. Then of course, Sequoia and then most recently also Tencent. I think having just a fantastic set of investors around the table means that they’re also longterm focused. There is no pressure for driving towards an exit or driving towards an outcome that isn’t in the longterm. As far as how we think about growth, I think there’s… What I’ve witnessed is a lot of very suboptimal decision making as far as spending goes. Very common to get ahead of your [inaudible 00:09:59]. Interviewer: You mean amongst your peers, David? David Rusenko: Exactly. Yeah. Very common to just hire too many people. I think just being deliberate about how you grow the team is just critically important. Very common to just go spend money in a very undisciplined way, and we’ve always wanted to spend money smartly. Look, we’ve always said we’re going to use this money to invest in growth where it makes sense, but we’re not going to go and spend the money in a very undisciplined sort of foolish way just because we feel like we need to. Interviewer: Yep. That makes sense. Now walk me through some of the growth. You’ve driven incredible growth. I’m sure a lot of it is free because you have a freemium model, but when you do spend money to drive new customer growth, where do you tend to spend that money? How are you getting new customers? David Rusenko: Yeah. I’ll start by saying that we’ve had substantially all of our growth has been via word of mouth. I think at the end of the day, if you build a fantastic product, it’s not that you build it and they will come. But the core of all success of any company does come down to the product and does come down to having just a fantastic experience with the product. For us, a lot of that is driven by the freemium model that drives basically word of mouth. I think the freemium model only works if… There’s a couple of things that has to work. It only works, number one, if it is driving word of mouth. It only works, number two, if your marginal cost per additional user is low enough to sort of support the freemium model. Interviewer: David, do you mind me asking, can you quantify that in a given month? What percent of your new customers will come from someone that clicks powered by Weebly on a free account? David Rusenko: There’s a ton of different ways that people come. I will say that for the most part, it’s never been a simple sort of growth hacking trick. There hasn’t been a single sort of trick that’s caused… I would say the very large majority of our growth has just come from to the best that we can tell, dinner table conversations, conversations over a cocktail at the bar, just people who were saying, “Hey, here’s where I am,” talking to their friends about their needs. Someone saying, “Hey, have you tried Weebly?” So the very large majority of our growth has come from effectively, untrackable either hits our home page directly or searches Weebly on Google. That’s where the large majority of it comes from. Interviewer: When you look at on an $8 per month average plan, you said maybe up to 15, what are you spending on… I mean, what’s your CAC? What’s your all in CAC on these guys? David Rusenko: Yeah, I mean, so that’s obviously something that we look at very carefully. I’ll say that the specific numbers for our business obviously are proprietary being a private company. But the things that we do really look at… I think the freemium model is really interesting because not only do you have your traditional sort of cohort cashflows over time that you would see in a SaaS business, you also have this additional layer on top, which is your premium conversion over time from a signup cohort perspective. That adds like a really interesting layer. But what it does is it adds a lot of sort of historical momentum in the business. For us, it’s quite predictable how many of the… The patterns are basically pretty consistent of how many people come to the door and how they’ll convert over time. Interviewer: On average, how long does a free user use you until they’re converting? Are we talking like six months, 12 months, or even longer? Or you have to be more patient, two, three years? David Rusenko: It entirely depends what you’re looking at in terms of cohorts or seasonality in the business. It also depends on the customer type. Are you looking at someone who’s doing more commerce? Are you looking at someone who’s doing maybe a website for their classroom and their teacher? Interviewer: Can you give us a general range though? I mean, less than a year or more than three, four? I mean, I’m curious how patient you have to be. David Rusenko: I think that again, those numbers are fairly proprietary for us, but in general, these are patterns that we see. We see people converting six years later for the first time. Someone who’s signed up for the first time who has been consistently using the service, who’s paying us for the first time six years later. Interviewer: David, is that an outlier though? I mean, are you giving me an extreme example or is that pretty average? David Rusenko: That’s not average, but we do see those patterns that people do. A lot of people convert upfront. A lot of people will be converting over time as well. Interviewer: Yep. Okay. So 2006 to today, you’ve got a lot of growth coming from freemium. You have a board who’s patient, which is wonderful. You’ve got nice core analytics in terms of being able to predict things like growth and conversion rates. What have you scaled to today in terms of total customers using the platform? David Rusenko: Yeah. We’re over 50 million people that are using Weebly. The vast majority just are entrepreneurs. They have an idea. They’re trying to get this online. They’re trying to get access to the digital economy and the economy more broadly. Of those 50 million people, the coolest stat for me is about 325 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 that represents about half of the US population.Yeah. I think that’s our coolest metric because that’s a reflection of the success of the people on our platform. Interviewer: To be clear though, David, with 50 million users, you specifically have the user number, which I understand because it’s the biggest number. But from a paid customer count, are you guys north of a million paid accounts at this point? David Rusenko: Yeah. I mean, that’s another stat that we just don’t disclose. We’re a private company, but there’s a large number of paying customers as well. I think what we see in terms of conversion is maybe slightly better, not totally out of line with the ranges that you see in a lot of premium businesses. Interviewer: I mean, obviously we just saw Drew’s because the S1 came out, but when you say average based off the knowledge I have, I would say average is anywhere between like 4% and 8% on a freemium model. I mean, when you look at averages and you use the word we’re like other people, is that a fair average or am I off by a little? David Rusenko: Yeah. I mean like again, specific stats are going to be really tough for us to disclose, but again, I would say we’re a bit above average in terms of [inaudible 00:15:50]. Interviewer: Yeah. All I’m trying to say, ignore your numbers for a second. Educate us real quick on… I mean, you know a lot of people in the Valley, you’re well educated here. What do you see as the average in a freemium model typically from free to paid? David Rusenko: I’ll tell you where we started when we first… Because I think this is really important. When we first started, introduced our first paying subscription, which was Weebly Pro. When we first introduced that, I think it was in June of 2008, we saw a conversion rate of just under 0.5%. For someone getting started who was looking to start a premium business, I think you absolutely have to keep in mind that these numbers that you see in terms of what’s average for freemium businesses, first of all, what’s the mean and the median are very, very different in freemium models. But number two, where you start with is going to be very different than where you end up when you’re mature. David Rusenko: So I think it’s really worth taking that into account. If you’re looking at introducing either a freemium or just a SaaS model on top of your business and you’re expecting to get the average on day one, I would say lower your expectations because it takes a lot of time to get there, a lot of optimization, a lot of price testing and a lot of funnel optimization to get to the point where you’re even at average. But then again, for some businesses you may start day one above average, right. But I think in general, it’s fair to say lower your expectations at least in terms of your planning and what you’re planning for. Interviewer: David, once you hit maturity though, and again, I’m not asking you to reveal your numbers, but the reason I love this show is because I get people on who know more than I do. Right? When you talk to other friends in the freemium model space, are they typically able to mature to a point where it’s 4% or 5%, 6% free to paid? Is that an average or is it too low or high? David Rusenko: Again, it’s really hard. I mean, some businesses are able to do four or five, six. Some businesses are never able to get there. Some businesses are able to do 10% plus, right? I think freemium and free trial, it’s not binary, it’s more of a continuum. So you have freemium on one end, and I think the really important thing to understand as far as conversion rates go for businesses in freemium is that you have to have something that makes sense for your customers in terms of how you delineate between free and paid. A lot of people think, look, I’m just going to slap a freemium model on top of something and I’m just going to get that 4%. That’s just not how it works. David Rusenko: I think going back to the Dropbox example, in some ways I’ve envied Drew. By the way we started, when we were in Y Combinator in 2007, we were in this building that we called the Y Scraper because there’s so many Y Combinator companies there. Drew and Niraj were there too about two floors down from us. So it was this kind of really fun moment in time in 2007 when a lot of those companies were starting. One thing I always envied about the Dropbox model is that your model has to resonate with your customers in a way that they understand why they have to pay more for something or they just won’t do it. If it comes off as sort of fake, it comes off as this like artificial constraint, it’s not going to work. For them, it’s always made sense because people get that you have to pay more for storage, right? People are completely trained and attuned to that. Interviewer: David, just because we’re running out of time here, what’s your similar metric? Is it like number of page views, number of sites? David Rusenko: For us, it’s the features. Interviewer: Which one though? Which feature? David Rusenko: There’s a whole bunch of features. I think, broadly speaking in the earlier packages, it’s really about branding and making sure that you’re set up for success from that perspective. Interviewer: You mean to remove the powered by Weebly so you look more professional. David Rusenko: No, it’s not necessarily removing the powered by Weebly. It’s your own domain. It’s sort of like several things all together that add up. In the later features, it’s some of this professional sort of functionality that you might get maybe if you’re a freelancer and you need to get leads or you’re looking for high quality video player. Kind of some of this functionality to really look very professional. In the later features, the later packages, it’s all about e-commerce. Interviewer: Last few quick questions here on economics, David. Then we’ll wrap up with the famous five. Payback period. How quick do you like to get paid back on these folks? Is it average around a year like other SaaS companies, or are you more or less? David Rusenko: Yeah, I don’t think we’re particularly unusual compared to other SaaS companies. Interviewer: Okay. Churn is obviously critical in this kind of company. Constant contact for whatever reason when it was public was valued at way lower in terms of P/E multiple than other folks, because their churn was just insane. And there’s SMB space, similar ARPUs to you. What’s your churn today, and how do you manage it? David Rusenko: Yeah. Personally, I do not like looking at churn as is defined. I know churn is sort of both a concept and sort of a defined metric. I prefer to look at renewal rates by cohort because churn is sort of this sort of composite measure that I’m not as much of a fan of. So our renewal rates are one of the steadiest metrics in our business. I think if you have a product that doesn’t have product market fit, you’re going to see really low renewal rates. If you have a product that has really great product market fit, you’re going to see really high renewal rates. I think that is a key sign for business on whether the product market fit is healthy. Interviewer: I mean, are you north annually of 90% in terms of gross logo retention and it’s pretty steady of that? David Rusenko: Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of a different measure for us. We don’t look at logo retention. There’s 50 million people that come to sign up. There’s a certain number of those that have converted to paid. Interviewer: Well, tell me how you think about it. You have an interesting perspective. How do you measure it? David Rusenko: The way I think about it is basically looking at our cohorts and understanding their renewal rates by term. Let’s just say you look at a cohort that paid us for the first time in January of 2009, and let’s say it’s an annual package, right? Not a monthly. What I like to look at is, say, of that cohort, what percentage of them will either have renewed or upgraded or extended? Those are kind of three things that you can do within the first term. Then within the second term. So T1 would basically be in January 2010, T2 would be in January 2011. And looking at those renewal rates by term, and then effectively comparing cohorts. Looking at the January 2009 cohort versus the January 2010 versus ’11 versus ’12 versus ’13, and looking apples to apples to make sure we kept the seasonality and just looking at the trends in those cohorts and making sure that those are remaining really consistent or improving. In our case, they’re improving, which is great. And it gives you sort of predictability into the out years. Interviewer: You’re not going to give me a minimum in terms of retention annually, are you? David Rusenko: Unfortunately, I can’t do that. Interviewer: You’re similar to other SaaS companies playing in this space though. Nothing crazy and you do cohort analysis like everybody else. David Rusenko: Exactly. Interviewer: All right. Last question here. You mentioned when you first put up the Pro account, it was a 0.5% conversion rate from free to paid. Can I pin you down on this one thing? You’ve gotten better since then, not worse. David Rusenko: Yes. We’ve gotten significantly better since then. Interviewer: Guys, there we go. We have a floor, right? With 50 million paying people, if you only are converting 0.5%, he’s north of this, but only 0.5%. That’s 250,000 paying customers. If you’ve got an $8 ARPU, which again could be up to 15, but I’ll do minimums. That’s two million a month in revenue or north of a $24 million annual run rate. David, fair to say you’re North of that, right? Just multiplying your numbers. David Rusenko: You know, it’s fun to watch you try to work it out. Interviewer: You guys can watch his face on the YouTube to see if I’m accurate or not. But fair to say, David, those are numbers from you, minimums at least. I think you’re doing well north of that. I want to give you credit for that. Let’s wrap up here with the famous five. One word answers. Number one, what’s your last business book that you read? David Rusenko: Last business book. Not the last one, my favorite one is the one on Admiral Rickover, The Rickover Effect. Interviewer: The Rickover Effect. Number two, is there a CEO you’re following or studying right now? David Rusenko: CEO I’m following or studying? I mean, no one in particular comes to mind. One person who has been helpful is Pete Flint of Trulia. Interviewer: Number three. Besides your own, what’s your favorite online tool for building your business? David Rusenko: This is like a really cheap answer, but I’m obsessed with Boomerang for Gmail. I would not be able to do what I do if not for that product. Interviewer: Number four. How many hours of sleep do you get every night? David Rusenko: Between eight and nine. Interviewer: Okay, that’s pretty good. What’s your situation? Married, single, and just one kid or more? David Rusenko: Married with one kid. Interviewer: Okay. Good. Married, one kiddo. And how old are you, David? David Rusenko: I am 32. Interviewer: David Rusenko: What do I wish my 20 year old self knew? For the most part, I think that the thing I wish I knew was to make sure to keep the business and the company on the same level. A lot of people make the mistake on the other side of hiring too quickly. Earlier on we made the mistake of hiring too slowly, and I think both are mistakes. Interviewer: Guys, there you have it. David from Weebly. When he’s not getting his butt kicked by his mother-in-law in bridge, he’s building Weebly. Launched back in 2006. Made the trek across the country to get into YC where he raised his first capital. They’ve now raised over 35 million bucks. Last raise really was back in 2014. He’s managed now to keep the company profitable with more cash in the bank today than all the money they’ve raised. So more than 35 million bucks in the bank. When they first launched the Pro account, they were converting just 0.5% of those users, don’t expect to do more than that. That’s a good lesson for everybody. Generally gotten better than that. Today we’re 50 million paid accounts, if you assume some of the numbers he gave us, you can maybe back into a minimum of about 24 million bucks in ARR. Growing fast and profitably in the Valley. It’s rare. David, thank you so much for taking us to the top. David Rusenko: Thanks for having me.