UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — David Rusenko, founder of Weebly and a 2007 Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology graduate, appears on the latest episode of the "Dare to Disrupt" podcast.
"Dare to Disrupt" is a podcast from Invent Penn State about Penn State alumni who are innovators, entrepreneurs and leaders, and the stories behind their success.
The podcast is hosted by alumnus Ryan Newman, a graduate of the Smeal College of Business and Schreyer Honors College who is now a managing director at Goldman Sachs.
In the fifth episode, Newman interviews Rusenko, who describes how he went from writing lines of code, sometimes for 16 hours straight, in his Beaver Hill apartment to having Square acquire his website-building platform for $365 million.
He also discusses how he had to repeatedly convince people they could build their website themselves using Weebly and did not need to hire a professional web designer.
“As part of our YCombinator pitch, we took one of the venture capitalists and we just recreated their entire website in front of everyone in five minutes,” Rusenko said during the podcast interview. “Their eyes would get big because they presumably spent a lot of money and a lot of time to have that website be created. And so they really saw the potential.”
Listen to the interview to hear more about Rusenko’s journey.
At the end of each "Dare to Disrupt" episode, a current Penn State student is given the opportunity to speak with the successful Penn State alum and ask questions specific to the student’s startup and career goals. In Episode 5, Sydney Gibbard, a junior studying biomedical engineering and pre-medicine and founder of Girls Code the World, a nonprofit that provides resources, role models and opportunities for young girls by providing STEM educational programming, joins the conversation. She talks to Rusenko about how to expand a startup team while maintaining high-quality product delivery.
Students can apply or be nominated to be on the show here.
Past episodes of "Dare to Disrupt" include interviews with Matt Brezina, Mo Bhende and Jess Weiner.
New episodes of "Dare to Disrupt" release monthly. Learn more at invent.psu.edu/dare-to-disrupt and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play.
Invent Penn State is a commonwealth-wide initiative to spur economic development, job creation and student career success.