#StartupsEverywhere profile: Alex Kuklinski, Founder, fyiio
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
A Tutorial Management Tool to Maximize Learning
Based in Lincoln, fyiio is a new tutorial management platform using its patented technology to create user-centric educational guides. By combining video and written guides into templates, the startup is working to ensure that consumers and businesses are getting the most out of their tutorial experiences. We recently spoke with fyiio’s founder, Alex Kuklinski, to learn a little more about the startup, Lincoln’s startup ecosystem, and the patent process.
Tell us a little about yourself. What is your background?
I initially got started building tutorials in high school. A friend asked for help with a video project, and because she was a girl and I was socially awkward, I made a how-to video and put it on YouTube. That video ended up getting the most views of all my videos at the time, so I kept at it. MacRumors ended up featuring a couple videos I made showing how to make phone calls on an iPod Touch (this was when the App Store just launched) and all of a sudden I got 25,000 - 50,000 views over night. It was pretty crazy. After that I was accepted into the YouTube partner program, which allowed me to start generating revenue off of my videos.
Throughout high school and college I ultimately got around 23 million views from around the world and 32,000 subscribers on YouTube. When I was featured on NPR I got a bunch of requests for the written versions of my videos, which obviously didn’t exist because YouTube is a video platform. So I saw there was a need for both video and written instructions, and I put together a website and tried to address that need.
Ultimately I shut down that website, but over the process I learned a number of key insights which became the catalyst for starting fyiio:
People don’t like to leave the platform they’re on to learn somewhere else.
The average attention span for how-tos is less than three minutes.
People generally equally prefer both video and written instructions.
Tell us more about fyiio. What is the work that you’re doing, and what makes your tutorial platform so unique?
We’re a framework for companies to build and maintain and display user guides, primarily for training, onboarding, and supporting customers. When I had the idea for this platform in 2014, I spoke with hundreds of people who watch, create and provide tutorials to customers. From a creation-standpoint, I learned that people use tons of different platforms, tools, and services just to create those tutorials. And ironically none of them assisted in helping them create tutorials that were tailored to people’s attention spans for learning purposes.
Our template takes a step-by-step approach to building tutorials with good instructional design principles baked in. Video lengths are limited to 2 ½ minutes and must have a written step-by-step guide associated with it. On the viewing side, our tutorial viewer combines the video and the written step-by-step instructions in the same location, and they interact with each other in real time. As the video plays, the step that’s being talked about automatically expands so you get the visual aspect of the video and additional details from the written side. We’ve patented our process of building tutorials, syncing written steps to a video, and how we display these two types of media together.
It’s really trying to provide content where people are going to have issues, when they run into an issue, and really provide the content in a format that they feel comfortable learning in—whether it’s video, text, or both. When I talk to a lot of companies, because they use so many tools, there’s a lot of whiplash when it comes to sending people to this location and that location and so on. What we’re trying to do is really interact with whatever tools those companies are already using.
I know that you received several patents for your templates. What was your experience like applying for—and receiving—a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office?
Even before we applied or even considered doing so, I think I was really hesitant upfront, just because software patents can be controversial. I think a lot of that is primarily driven by patent trolls, and also the costs associated with it. It’s not a cheap thing to do, and you also want to spend money on your product and sales. I’m very fortunate to have great Nebraska-based partners who are very open to just meeting a couple of different times to say “how viable is this?” or “here’s how we think this could work.” It really made it accessible and affordable for us.
We have two granted patents and one that was allowed, so it will be granted soon, and then we have a fourth one that’s currently pending. It’s just a long process. For us, it was a completely new audience to be telling what you’re doing so they can get the language and terminology right. It probably took us about a month or so with the lawyers to make sure the language was correct and that the patent drawings articulated what we were doing. Once we applied for it, it took about a year or so, maybe a year and a half.
While it was affordable, it was still expensive. Advice-wise, I would say do some research and talk to other founders who have gotten patents. Find out what it was like for them. Find out why they pursued a patent or why they didn’t, and understand the costs involved up front. While I had some hesitations up front about patent trolls and other concerns, I think when it comes to protecting what you’re doing, I think it is nice to say we have some legal protections with the patents.
I know you also previously served as the director of NMotion, a startup accelerator based in Lincoln. What did this experience teach you about the needs of Lincoln’s founders?
I was in a really unique position because I went through NMotion with fyiio back in 2017, so It was really cool to have gone through it as a startup and then run the organization. There isn’t a lot of capital available for early-stage companies here. For me, as a non-technical founder without a technical co-founder, I was kind of stuck in this loop of following Lean Startup and validating as much as I could without actually having a product available. So how do I get to that next level?
When I got into NMotion I received $20,000 of seed capital which unlocked the Nebraska Prototyping Grant, and really allowed us to go from no product, no customers, and no team, to having a team and building the product. That was a huge milestone for us to get into that program, because it really allowed us to have a product and get where we are now.
In running NMotion, one of the things I saw was this belief that a startup equals a tech company. I fully disagree with that. I think startups are any type of company just getting started, whether it’s a coffee shop or a mechanic or a tech company or a physical product company. All companies at their core have the same issues: how to talk about their product, market it, sell it, etc. If we just accept tech companies we exclude most of our local economic drivers. Accepting different types of companies and putting an emphasis on how to include as many people as possible allowed us to have much more diverse cohorts that brought different skill sets to the table.
I also disagree with the notion (or expectation from a metrics standpoint) companies should or need to accept venture capital to be successful. We should be teaching companies how to deliver value and earn revenue, not how to be attractive to an investor.
What makes Nebraska’s startup ecosystem so unique?
From an ecosystem perspective, I think what makes Nebraska really interesting is that everybody is willing to help out. You just have to ask and know what you’re asking for help with. I had a conversation with one of the co-founders of Hudl, one of the most successful startups to come out of Nebraska. You can email them and have a meeting with them which is super cool, and there are other startup founders that are willing to talk—you just have to reach out and ask.
From a government perspective and city perspective, the Nebraska Prototyping Grant has been great. We’ve pushed pretty much every startup that I know of and have worked with to apply for the grant. Basically what it is is a two-to-one matching grant. If you come in with $25,000 you can get a grant of up to $50,000, so you’d have $75,000 of capital to use. I think it’s insanely vital that this program continues to receive the necessary funding.
From a policy perspective, we should definitely increase the amount of money coming in through that program. One of the things with the prototyping grant is you have to have money in the bank in order to really use that program because it’s all refund based. You have to have money in order to receive your refund. And the refund is only 66 percent, so it’s only part of that total expense.
By far though it’s an amazing program, and most startups I know in Nebraska have utilized it for sure. It’s nice to know that policymakers here in Nebraska are at least looking at startups as an economic engine for the state. In order for it to continue though, they need to continue putting money into the program.
What are some of the startup-related policy concerns that you believe should receive more attention from state and federal lawmakers?
Immigration is an important issue. Right around the time I got into NMotion, I wanted a good friend of mine from college to co-found the fyiio with me. But I found out he couldn’t do it because of a number of immigration-related issues. For one, he’d have to take a salary—which makes sense, but in startup land it’s a bit different. He’d also have to make more than the typical worker in the city that he’d be living in. Ultimately I couldn’t bring him on because of the salary requirement and because I’d be responsible for his H1-B visa, which is a lot of pressure because I don’t want my friend to get deported if the company fails.
I feel like a lot of software companies also don’t understand how sales tax impacts them. The Wayfair decision means states can collect online sales taxes on certain firms, even if the company doesn’t have a physical presence in that state. So what happens to a normal software company if they have more than the determined number of transactions in a certain state? If you do a software subscription, and you charge on a monthly basis, now you have 12 separate transactions for one customer. So the threshold is 200 transactions, which means all of a sudden you’re paying sales tax in that state because of a small number of customers. So I think there’s a lot of confusion still around how software companies are paying sales tax.
I’m also passionate about net neutrality. I think we should treat all Internet traffic the same and not have certain companies pay more because of ISP restrictions.
What is your goal for fyiio moving forward?
We just pushed a major product release, which I'm really excited about. It brings our product to a full v1.0 both functionally and aesthetically.
Our mission is to empower you to show the world how to do anything. Right now our main focus is reaching out to as many people as possible, building relationships and seeing how we can be helpful from an onboarding, training and support perspective.
Long term vision wise I believe we can be the YouTube of tutorials by making the process of creating and viewing tutorials as accessible as possible.
What advice would you give other entrepreneurs who are launching their own startups?
I would tell other founders to make sure you’re seeking out help early and often. The best bet is to seek out fellow founders. They know what you’re going through and they’ve probably been through it themselves. They’ve probably been successful at overcoming some of those challenges. I’ve felt that confiding in other founders has been extremely therapeutic and helpful in getting over certain bumps on the road.
Burnout culture is also real. Learn when you’re getting close to burnout, and then take whatever steps that you can to avoid it at all costs, because once you hit it then it’s bad. And remember that your product will never be perfect. Be intentional about what you’re building and get as much feedback as you can. And, finally, if you lack a certain skill set, learn what you can do to overcome it.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
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