The goal of Hardly Hustle is to provide inspiration, drive and motivation in a 10 minute read or less. What you see is what you get. This is hot off the press without an editing team.
John Rondi is up.
Who are you and what do you do?
My name is John Rondi and I am the founder Stunited, a social academic market place for students to barter and upload assignments. We are paving the way for the future of education technology with a simple, yet effective platform.
I started Stunited as a sophomore in college and launched the first version in 2017. Since then, we've really proved out the concept by hustling into school systems, allowing us to launch our second version in July of 2020.
Since July, we have grown from 0 to 2.6k users all through organic growth and am now looking to raise pre-seed money.
What did it take / how did you get started?
I started this in college out of a personal problem that I kept experiencing. I knew I was good at math but could not write too well or finish papers and thought to myself there has got to be a platform to help with this. Well, there wasn't. So it took some courage for me to take the leap into Stunited; however, a lot of people are waiting for the perfect moment when you can really start developing an idea with virtually nothing and that's what I did. I was and still am stubborn. I believed in this idea. I started this without really knowing what I was doing and have been learning ever since.
What does the future look like for you and your hustle?
We intend to really disrupt the industry as a disruptor in the 2021 education space. The technologies provided today to students are filtered through the school systems and nothing has really been made for the end user specifically -- students. Academically, bartering isn’t openly welcomed and is looked at as a form of cheating, but cheating in this fashion is inevitable. It’ll happen with or without Stunited as a technology so why not reshape behavior that is inevitable and that allows students to play by their strengths.
What drives / motivates you?
My motivation comes from my father who afforded me such a great life and I want to give back by giving it my all. So my motivation comes from other people and knowing what I want and what I have to do in order to get there.
What advice would you give someone interested in doing what you do?
My biggest advice would be to just do it. Don’t wait for the perfect time. Embrace failure. Not everyone will like your idea and that is completely okay. The only time you fail is when you quit. Patience is way more important than passion because it takes a lot of patience to withstand a grueling process years on end.
What has been the hardest part of the hustle?
Boredom has been the hardest part of the hustle. Some days it'll feel like I have nothing to do and that is what drives me crazy. The days I have meetings back to back, well, that inspires me and keeps me driven, but when I have a freed up schedule it makes it hard to remain passionate and hard to keep the outside voices, such as "your idea is stupid", from influencing me.
What are a few resources that you'd recommend?
Just stay away from negative people. This is a time you have to be performing and negative people are just going to be pulling you down.
I do listen to Joe Rogan and some other CEOs. So i'd recommend listening to entrepreneurs speak; helps feel a little-bit less lonely.
The STATS
Side or full-time hustle?
Stunited is my full-time hustle and Tik-Tok is my side hustle with ~630k followers.
List the founders
Myself and David Beiweiss.
How many hours a week do you work on this hustle?
This is very hard to answer. People have this assumption that when you’re working on a startup that you’re cranking out work on it 12 hours a day. That's not the case. Is it creatively coming up with new ideas or thinking about stunited or answering emails? Stunited is a constant thing that is on my mind at all times, but I am not always actively working on Stunited.
# of Employees?
6.
When did you start?
2017.
How much did it cost to launch?
$20k.
What were your funding methods and ballpark amount raised?
We've raised about $60k so far from angels. I also self-fund Stunited through my TikTok revenue.
Annual Revenue?
Not provided.
Projected Revenue?
Not provided.
Any call to action?
I am looking for people to contribute to our pre-seed round. I am accepting checks as small as $10k so if you're interested please reach out to me at rondi.john@stunitedapp.com.