Seen Quizlet yet?
It’s the ultimate flashcard replacement. I’ve mentioned Quizlet before; it launched to the general public a couple weeks ago.
Andrew Sutherland, the one-man band behind Quizlet, says:
My mission for Quizlet is to make learning vocabulary not a chore. I know a lot of teachers assign vocabulary to students, but few students actually “absorb” words into their vocabularies after they take their test. Which kind of defeats the purpose, right?
When Andrew was ten, he made the typical Geocities first-stab website—his dad promised to upgrade their net connection if he pulled it off. Six years later, Andrew helms the company Brainflare, poised to bring Web 2.0-style disruption to the world of educational software. Here’s his story.
Tell us a bit about yourself—where you’re located, what you do, when you got into web development?
Hey Firas, thanks for setting this up. I live in the Yay Area. I’m in a little town called Albany, right next to Berkeley. It’s a nice place to live, because I’m close enough to the Valley that I can go down there whenever I like, but I’m far enough to not be (overly) affected by Valley fever.
I’m a high school junior by day. That takes up a lot of time, but less time than you might think. I used to do a lot of freelance web development and contracting, but these days I’ve got my own startup and I’m focusing on that. It takes a lot of energy to stay on top of everything.
I got into web development when I was about 10. I’m very lucky in the sense that I had the chance to grow up on computers and the Internet. I made a deal with my dad that if I could build my own website and do it to some specifications, he’d upgrade us from our 28k modem. So I built my first Geocities site, complete with black starry background, green text, and <marquee>s, and I guess I got addicted to the business. I’m pretty sure my dad thinks it was a good long term investment, as he now has shares in Quizlet 
What’s the Quizlet Story? Where did you get the notion, what made you decide to take it on as a major project, and what kind of time/work has gone into it?
Quizlet got started in the beginning of my sophomore year in high school—about 16 months ago. I had a list of vocab terms I needed to know for my French class, and I was fumbling with flash cards. I had already built some big WordPress plugins and some freelance sites, so I knew the beginnings of programming fairly well. I just hacked away and eventually arrived at what you now see at Quizlet.com. It wasn’t fast or easy, but the journey was a lot of fun. I’ve worked on it so much, I’ve completely lost track of any notions of time I’ve spent on it. Right now I’d say I work on it 15-25 hours a week, after school and on weekends.
Where do you see Quizlet and Brainflare going in the next few months, and (say) an year from now? Are there any revenue models you’re mulling for Quizlet, and are you planning to seek angel investment?
I think I’m in a really good situation right now. Quizlet isn’t exactly making any money yet, but the only thing it’s costing me for is hosting. That’s one of the benefits of a one-man team. And so now I can take it in any direction I want, as I’m not tied down by any VCs or project managers or anything.
I expect Quizlet will continue growing a lot. I’ve gotten 3700 new signups since it launched 13 days ago. Last night, I was at 3000. I’m hoping it will just keep spreading. Once I reach a nice hunk of users, say 30,000, I’ll start actively seeking out advertisements. The target market for Quizlet is very focused on motivated high school and college students, and I could run some very relevant ads for study-aid books and test-prep stuff. I always have to remind myself that I am my target market, so I won’t do any sort of advertising that I’m not interested in myself. I’m also exploring possibilities in licensing the technology. As far as investment, I’m undecided. I like being on my own timeline and owning all of Quizlet, but there will be some aspects of its general development I won’t be able to realize myself. We’ll see about that one.
As far as Quizlet itself, there are tons of features and enhancements I’ve got coming. Image sets, wiki-editing, internationalization, and an API are all at the top of my list.
OMG, an API? Tell me more.
Yup, everyone has an API these days, so why not Quizlet? An API could bring about all sorts of cool ideas in memorization. The great thing about APIs is you have no idea what people will do with it. There are so many possibilities! Right now I’m in the beginning stages of planning it and deciding its capabilities, so I’ve asked for feedback on the Quizlet blog. At the most basic level, I want to open up its data and let people embed lists of sets or terms in their own sites. Beyond that, I think developing some sort of memory game would be great. I just spent the last 3 AP Bio classes diagramming and planning one, and I’m just sitting down to code it now. Perhaps we’ll see that soon
What are your favorite tech blogs? Are there any major software companies, people, or just ‘movements’ you’d count among your influences?
Favorite blogs, let’s see. The usual stuff, TechCrunch, Signal vs. Noise, they’re all very good. But the ones I really love seeing pop up in my newsreader are:
- Cabel Sasser’s blog—Anything that comes out of
this guy is pure gold. He convinced me to get Nike+… - Brand New—a fascinating blog about corporate branding.
- Dreamhost’s blog—Their CEO comes off as a total amateur, but I always laugh at everything he writes.
- Shaun Inman’s blog—Is there anything this guy can’t do?
Among my influences, I might say WordPress and its whole community. It was my gateway to programming addiction. One day I found this website that had a live AJAX chat room and my jaw dropped. Instant chat in a website, with no Flash or Java! So I downloaded the source code and just tore it apart. I didn’t know anything about javascript, PHP, or MySQL. I just fumbled around till I got it to do what I wanted, and I developed a WordPress plugin for it. That plugin has since received 30k+ downloads…
That got me hooked, and with Quizlet I just got the idea and ran with it.
[Ed. Note: The plugin in question is Wordspew Ajax Shoutbox]
Are there any other projects that’ve struck your fancy in the pipeline?
None that I can talk about —I’m focusing on Quizlet right now and developing the business aspects of the site. Coming from a background as a developer/designer, it’s a whole new world to explore. Business isn’t nearly as cool as programming, that’s all I have to say.
Alright, that’s all. Thanks for the interview! I’m sure I’ll see you around Boston some time soon.
Thanks for your time, Andrew!
You can follow developments at the Quizlet Blog, his personal blog at Jalenack, or his development blog, Jalecode.
