UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Chris Fanini, co-founder and CTO of the San Francisco startup Weebly and a 2012 graduate of Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), has played a leading role in helping millions of people create websites easily and at minimal cost. In recognition of his accomplishments, he was recently honored with the Alumni Achievement Award by the Penn State Alumni Association.
Fanini was one of 12 prominent alumni, 35 years of age and younger, to be presented with the award. Recipients are nominated by an academic college or campus and invited by the president of the University to return to campus to share their expertise with students and the Penn State community. Alumni Achievement honorees demonstrate to students that Penn State alumni succeed in exceptional fashion at an early age.
“I really enjoy giving back and getting people excited about entrepreneurship,” Fanini said.
Since bursting onto the Silicon Valley scene in 2006, Weebly, which was founded by CEO David Rusenko (Class of 2007, IST), Fanini and COO Dan Veltri (Class of 2007, Smeal College of Business), has enabled millions of users to create their own websites at little to no cost. Weebly is a Web-hosting service that allows the user to "drag-and-drop" while using their website builder. More than 20 million people have created a website with Weebly, and 12 percent of the U.S. population visits a Weebly website every month. Weebly was named one of Time’s 50 best websites of 2007 and has been featured in Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal and Entrepreneur as well as on NBC and the BBC.
“The overwhelming majority of people who use Weebly consider themselves entrepreneurs,” Fanini said. “Whether it’s an online business, or a personal site, Weebly has allowed them to simply start something.”
Fanini grew up in Bucks County and attended Pennsbury High School. While in high school, he started a Web hosting company, followed by one of the area’s first wireless Internet service providers, which provided high-speed internet and voice services to small businesses who couldn't get access to cable or digital subscriber line (DSL).
As a student at the College of IST, Fanini continued on his path of innovation. The prototype for Weebly was conceived by Rusenko, when he was a junior, as a capstone project for Gerry Santoro’s class on data-driven Web services. The class followed an entrepreneurial model, in which student teams proposed a Web-based service with a database backend. Santoro gave Rusenko free reign with the project, and Rusenko eventually partnered up with Fanini and Veltri. They submitted the Weebly prototype into a competition sponsored by Y Combinator -- a company that provides seed money, advice and connections to startups -- and won.
The appeal of Weebly, Fanini said, lies in the intuitiveness and simplicity of its service. The sharing economy has inspired an increasing number of people to start their own businesses, which means that many of them need to create websites to support their efforts.
“People are able to use our tools and services to make the website building process affordable and easy,” Fanini said.
His advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is not to fear failure.
“It is easier (for college students) to take risks and recover at this point in life,” he said. “If you want to start a company, now is the time to try it.”
Fanini will share his experiences and insights with the Penn State community during IST Startup Week, which will be held April 13-17. During Start-up Week, successful entrepreneurs and innovators from around the country will converge at Penn State for a week-long celebration of ingenuity and inspiration. Fanini’s presentation, "Weebly: Life as the Chief Technology Officer," will be held at 11:15 a.m. April 16 in 208 IST Building.
For more information about IST Startup Week, visit http://startupweek.weebly.com/.