200: Bouncing Back from Y Combinator Rejection to Building a Strikingly Good Company… David Chen of ⚡ Strikingly ⚡

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Background on David Chen of Stringly.com:

In 2012, David Chen dropped out from the University of Chicago to start Strikingly along with his two co founders, Teng Bao and Dafeng Guo. They moved to Silicon Valley with $100 in their pocket and were accepted into Y Combinator after eating ramen noodle in their 1-bedroom apartment for 5 months. Strikingly is a Y Combinator-backed startup that allows anyone to create a gorgeous, mobile optimized website in minutes, without any coding or design work. It has raised $1.5MM seed funding from top Silicon Valley investors.

Before Strikingly, David cofounded Moneythink, a non-profit financial literacy education organization. Moneythink was the winner of the 2013 MassChallenge 100K award, and is now funded by Blackstone, recognized by the White House, and featured on Forbes, MTV, the Chicago Tribune, and U.S. News.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

  • [1:25] David just turned 31 and is currently staying in Shanghai, China. His company Strikingly, started in Silicon Valley and they are now targeting the Chinese market.
  • [4:09] The target customers of Strikingly.com are entrepreneurs and startups. David talks about the difference between Strikingly and Shopify.
  • [6:53] Strikingly.com gets a 98% satisfaction rating from their customers, which is very hard to achieve according to David.
  • [10:15] David talks about business practices and technological developments in China.
  • [15:14] Currently, Strikingly has up to 120 employees and two locations, Shanghai and Silicon Valley. They also have remote workers in different parts of the world.
  • [17:25] At 14 years old, David moved to the US without his parents. He stayed in a rural Christian town with almost no electricity.
  • [22:17] In 2011, David started creating Strikingly.
  • [24:45] David shares a story of why he had to fire his best friend.
  • [33:12] After taking a break from their part-time business, David and his co-founders tried to get an interview from Y Combinator.
  • [36:01] Having been rejected by Y Combinator, they decided to go full time with their startup business.
  • [38:00] During his college days, he did his internship at Goldman Sachs but he quickly realized that he wouldn’t go far in this industry. His parents were very much opposed to this idea.
  • [44:01] Y Combinator was one of the big turning points for David and his company, Strikingly.
  • [45:57] David offers advice on the importance of believing in yourself and not doubting your capabilities.
  • [48:05] Shanghai is a great place, according to David, and he encourages everyone to come and check it out. His plan is to spend quite some time in both the US and China.

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Fabulous 4 Questions:

  1. 📖📚 Favorite Books? The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
  2. 🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? Bought a Treadmill Machine Right Before the Pandemic
  3. 🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? Google Doc
  4. 💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Lack of Experience or Expertise in the Major Channels for User Acquisition

Key Point from the Interview:

  • “The problem with doubting yourself is that you’re going to move slow. Even though you're thinking too much, acting too little, you’re gonna be waiting, you’re gonna be hesitating, well a lot of the times failure is better than not doing anything. So I will just say, don’t doubt yourself, y’know if you fail, that’s great, embrace it and move on but just do not doubt yourself.”

Resources Mentioned:

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