Daniel Ha, Disqus
From College Project to 8-Figure Startup Traction
Daniel Ha and his co-founder Jason met in algebra class at age 13. They were both computer nerds who loved online communities - forums, message boards, IRC channels. In 2006, as undergrads at the University of California, they spent five days brainstorming ideas and landed on one that would become Disqus. What started as a simple blog commenting tool gained startup traction through a strategy most founders would overlook. Daniel made a list of 130 of his favorite websites and emailed every one of them a personal, honest message: "We're building something. Don't really know if it's interesting yet, but would love it if you checked it out." Most people ignored it. But the few who responded were enough. From there, Disqus's startup traction became self-sustaining. Because the product was embedded on publisher websites, every commenter who used it on one site discovered it and brought it to others. The commenting platform spread through the exact communities it was built to serve - niche bloggers writing about strategy games, anime, lacrosse, and hundreds of other topics. The business model evolved too. Disqus initially generated $2-2.5 million from a SaaS subscription model, but the sales team couldn't keep pace with the product's organic growth. When they pivoted to an advertising revenue model, first-year revenue jumped to $10-11 million. By 2016, Disqus reached over a billion unique visitors and processed 50 million comments daily. Daniel is refreshingly honest about his weaknesses - walking into a meeting at the New York Times unprepared and 15 minutes late, not understanding his customers' language, being underdeveloped in sales and marketing. But those gaps forced him to hire people who complemented his product obsession, and the naivety that came with being a young founder meant he never considered failure as an option.
