Andrew Sutherland is a 17 year old high school Junior from Albany, California. In addition to creating Quizlet, Andrew has created Brainflare to manage the business aspects of his new startup. Read more about Andrew, Quizlet, and Brainflare by visting the company blog here.

What drove you to create Quizlet?

I had the typical inventor's "a-ha moment" when I realized I could make my studying time more effective by turning it digital. I was studying a giant list of French animal vocabulary words, 111 of the them to be precise, and I decided I could learn them so much more efficiently if I had a program that would track my progress. So that's what I've built. Of course, Quizlet as it is now is nothing like my original vision, but that's just how things work.

How long did it take? How did you manage your time while still studying? What impact did it have on your life / relationships?

The site took 455 days from conception to launch day. I just built it on my own time, after school and on weekends. That extended period of development also allowed me to get a lot of testers on board and nail out a lot of bugs before the launch. That way, I comfortable launching as a full 1.0 product. Quizlet is a tool designed to save you time on studying, but I've found working on it takes up more of my time than I ever used to spend studying before. Sort of ironic, I guess. Personally, Quizlet has changed me quite a bit. It's just become such a big part of my life that some other aspects have been put on hold for awhile, and my social life has changed. In the babe-magnet department, Quizlet has only just recently begun to pay off :)

What kind of growth has Quizlet seen? What direction do you see the
site going?

Quizlet has grown faster than anyone could have expected. Without any major press and just a couple mentions on big blogs, I'm up to 8,600 users in the 45 days since it launched. It grows about 150 users per day, but the number of vocabulary sets per day is increasing all the time (about 185/day right now). Direction-wise, I'm in a really sweet position. I don't have to answer to any investors or deadlines. I add features at my own pace and work whatever hours I please. So that gives me a lot of freedom to decide what I want to do next. There are a lot of monetization possibilities I'm toying with, including licensing and advertising. I won't say any more...

How much money did it take to develop Quizlet and keep it running?

Being my own programmer, designer, and copywriter saved me tons of money. Quizlet never would have happened if I hadn't had the skills to build it myself. The biggest expenses were purchasing the Quizlet.com domain from squatters and paying lawyers to set up the Brainflare corporation. So far I've been able to fund everything myself (and a little bit from the 'rents). Doing client work on the side helps with that as well. The only continuing maintenance costs is running hosting, which is manageable.

How have you marketed Quizlet and gotten the word out about your product?

$0 has been spent on marketing. All growth has been completely word-of-mouth, which is, you know, convenient. It's growing at about 150 users per day, which I'm quite satisfied with. When I feel like I want to accelerate that, I might put some real effort into marketing, but right now I need to get a lot of other things handled before that happens.

What is the most important thing that you have learned during this process?

How to treat my users. They're Quizlet's biggest asset. Recently, I've made a point to personally respond (and with no message templates) to each private message and feedback item that comes in. It's important to me to be an actual member of the Quizlet community, not just some executive looking down at a bunch of growth statistics. That means actually using the site for my homework and being very candid on the Quizlet blog about direction and ideas. I think people really feel a connection when the site's owner is also one of its biggest users. Of course, as the site gets bigger it's tough to keep up on everything that happens, but that's a worthwhile tradeoff for me.