ClusterFlunk was founded in 2012 by Joe Dallago and AJ Nelson. At the time they were both college students and after Joe received an unsatisfactory grade on an exam, he became frustrated because he didn't know any other students who were in his lecture whom he could work with to get a better understanding of the material. He also felt alienated and thought he could turn this problem into an opportunity so e went to his friend AJ and they made the decision to start ClusterFlunk. ClusterFlunk is a website that allows users to upload past assignment, tests, and class notes and then other students can download any documents that have been uploaded.
Dallago and Nelson both have a background in business from an early age. Both took many business classes at Prairie High School in Cedar Rapids, IA, which is where they first met. They have also worked for some very prestigious companies. Nelson was previously a campus representative for Dell and also completed an internship at Maxim Management Group. Dallago has held internship positions at Rockwell Collins before moving to Palo Alto, CA for positions with Survey Monkey and Google.
The company got its start at the University of Iowa where both students were enrolled. After they started marketing the company in Iowa City and attracting registered users they decided to expand to other schools including University of Northern Iowa, Kirkwood Community College, and Cornell College. However, after meeting with investors, they were told to scale back and focus solely on the University of Iowa until they could prove that their model can work and increase the percentage of Iowa students registered. After scaling back, ClusterFlunk now has 32% of the roughly 30,000 students enrolled at University of Iowa registered on their site and they hope to grow that number to 42%. Next year their goal is to expand to 60 public schools using the same model they are currently using, only on a bigger scale. This will allow them to run the entire company from Iowa City. In order to do this, the co-founders have decided to take at least this semester off from school to focus on their business.
To make this transition from student entrepreneurs to full-time entrepreneurs easier, they were fortunate enough to attract investors to help them grow the company at this important stage of development. Possibly the most notable investor who came on board is Ben Milne who is the founder of Dwolla, an online payment network that allows any business or person to send, request, and accept money. Other investors include Josh Cramer who is the founder and CEO of Cramer Development, Brad Dwyer who is the creator of the Facebook game Hatchlings, and Anthony Marlow who is the co-founder of TMone. These investors have made further development possible and have allowed ClusterFlunk to hire their first employee who works remotely from Ontario.
After talking with Nelson about the company's history, we asked him a few questions about his journey as an entrepreneur as well as questions that will help aspiring entrepreneurs on their journey.
School Comes 2nd: What advice would you give to a student entrepreneur or a student who may be thinking about starting a company?
Nelson: The most important thing is just to go out and do something. Don't get caught up in the process of writing a formal business plan and just try things and see what works. Also, find a good partner who is your opposite. Someone who has skills that you do not and vice versa. Once you start, go out and grind because it wont work if you don't make that commitment.
School Comes 2nd: What is your major and do you think the classes you take are relevant to your success as a start-up?
Nelson: I was a business major at Truman State and the University of Iowa, while Joe was studying Computer Engineering here at Iowa. In our honest opinion, no. The rigorous structures of classes teach you the building blocks on how to manage your life, and we also believe that you learn essential life lessons in school and through the people you meet in school. On the other hand, we don't believe that the specifics are important. We believe that the educational world right now is flawed and that's why we are trying to fix it. Learning is what you make it. In today's world you have all the information you need to do anything sitting on the Internet. Becoming a life-long learner is the most important aspect of becoming an entrepreneur in our opinion.
School Comes 2nd: How are you planning to make money?
Nelson: We haven't given much thought to that at this point because the most important thing is to grow the company and gain as many users as possible and the money will take care of itself. We have been fortunate enough to have investors that believe in the company and the vision and have provided enough funding to grow the company while it is not currently bringing in money.
School Comes 2nd: What do you do when money gets tight?
Nelson: Luckily we had a great friend that believed in our vision, and gave us a couple thousand dollars to start. Once that ran out, we ended up taking out student loans and funding ClusterFlunk that way until we recently closed our round of funding. It's all about validating your ideas, and proving that you are solving real points of a lot of people. If you can do that successfully, raising money is easy. The key here, go out and do something. Make a product, do a smoke and mirrors test, get some customers, and run on a shoestring budget. Every great start-up has their crazy story on how they started in the beginning. I would like to think that this is ours.
School Comes 2nd: If there is one thing you could do right from the beginning to lay a good foundation what would that be?
Nelson: Be naive. Take that leap of faith, drop out of school, do whatever you have to do to make it happen. Become a life-long learner. Always be learning, you'd be surprised on how far picking up a couple of books can take you and your ideas/company.
School Comes 2nd: Do you have any good stories of interactions with ClusterFlunk users?
Nelson: We were out to dinner with one of our investors and I got an email from a registered user telling us how bad ClusterFlunk was and that we should be ashamed because it wasn't helping and that we should go back to the drawing board and that is exactly what we did. After that happened the website was 1000 times better and it has been the best thing that could have happened for the company.
Expect this company to continue to expand, as opportunities for growth are limitless. ClusterFlunk will more than likely be a household name throughout the United States as their service becomes available to more and more colleges and universities. This website is something that can be used by every student enrolled at a college or university and its user-friendly platform makes it attractive to students who have used it. These factors combined with the knowledge and determination of the company's co-founders will lead to success. For more information about ClusterFlunk, visit www.clusterflunk.com.
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