Robert Kalin

“I had a bi-weekly lunch with Fred, you know, one of the investors. Fred Wilson. Yeah, Fred Wilson. I thought I was just going to uh lunch to chat about Etsy and and went to their office and met him and he told me that I was fired, but he didn't tell me why. And he just said, 'We have to do this.' And I remember saying...”

— From Etsy: Rob Kalin, DeepSignal Studios (December 18, 2017)

“I think that shift started happening then. And is that wrong? I don't think so. No, I mean I I I it sounds like there was a there the tension came from I mean you're the you were the founder and then you brought in a professional COO who becomes a CEO, but you're still there. And in some ways, I think you would even ad...”

— From Etsy: Rob Kalin, DeepSignal Studios (December 18, 2017)

“I don't think an economical slump will hurt good ideas.”

— From Does a bad economy hurt entrepreneur's ideas? Rob Kalin, The Adventures of Hsuperman (November 30, 2017)

“Some of the greatest ideas come from an economic slump, whether we're talking about big businesses or the economy itself where no one's making money.”

— From Does a bad economy hurt entrepreneur's ideas? Rob Kalin, The Adventures of Hsuperman (November 30, 2017)

“Sometimes it's during those times where we're so broke we don't have anything good going on, so we really start to brainstorm — we look for answers.”

— From Does a bad economy hurt entrepreneur's ideas? Rob Kalin, The Adventures of Hsuperman (November 30, 2017)

“When we're balling out of control and comfortable, we're no longer hungry, and if we're not hungry we're not gonna go out there and try to look for solutions.”

— From Does a bad economy hurt entrepreneur's ideas? Rob Kalin, The Adventures of Hsuperman (November 30, 2017)

“If you're watching this and you're broke right now, this could be the greatest time for you to start thinking and brainstorming some of your greatest ideas.”

— From Does a bad economy hurt entrepreneur's ideas? Rob Kalin, The Adventures of Hsuperman (November 30, 2017)

“I started a marketplace called Etsy which is a handmade marketplace — everything on Etsy that's sold is sold by the person who makes it so there's no reselling.”

— From Davos 2009 - IdeasLab - Robert Kalin, World Economic Forum (February 02, 2009)

“You can see in November of last year alone over $12 million worth of handmade goods was sold on the site.”

— From Davos 2009 - IdeasLab - Robert Kalin, World Economic Forum (February 02, 2009)

“Our business model is that we take a 20 cent listing fee, there's a three and a half percent sales fee and then we run our own in-house advertising program as well.”

— From Davos 2009 - IdeasLab - Robert Kalin, World Economic Forum (February 02, 2009)

“The biggest goal is to enable people to make their living with what they're doing, but this is really difficult to get to the tipping point beyond just doing this as a hobby to the point of really being able to make a living.”

— From Davos 2009 - IdeasLab - Robert Kalin, World Economic Forum (February 02, 2009)

“If you don't have diversity you don't have resiliency, and I think that a key part of democracy is having many owners.”

— From Davos 2009 - IdeasLab - Robert Kalin, World Economic Forum (February 02, 2009)

“The educational model out there right now is totally backwards — the more I interact with the textbook the lower it's valued, especially if I'm selling it back; the more I interact with the web page the higher it's valued.”

— From Davos 2009 - IdeasLab - Robert Kalin, World Economic Forum (February 02, 2009)

“The web is probably the most beautiful and in some cases very subversive tool to be able to do this — I've been focusing all my resources on figuring out essentially how to leverage the web to organize all these people.”

— From Davos 2009 - IdeasLab - Robert Kalin, World Economic Forum (February 02, 2009)

“I launched Etsy in June 2005.”

— From TechCrunch Interview With Etsy Founder Robert Kalin, TechCrunch (January 30, 2009)