Kyle Bragger

Bio:

I'm a pretty boring person, really. I'm a developer and founder of Forrst, a neat community for developers and designers.

• Title: Founder/Lead developer of Forrst
• Age: 24
• Location: Park Slope
• Contact: @kylebragger

In your personal opinion, what is it about Forrst that has allowed it to succeed the way that it has? In other words, what's its secret sauce?

I think a few things:

• Invite only to keep the community growth scalable from both a technical perspective, but also from a standpoint of intimacy. Also helps to keep out the social media gurus and "idea people"
• People are seriously passionate about the community, which isn't something anyone can really force. Your first users need to be people you know personally and trust, as that core group of 50-100 will in many ways define the product as it grows
• A combination of blind luck, and me making a concerted effort to keep a human feel to the site as it grows (trying to be my self, interacting with users early and often)

Please tell us something about yourself that we can't find on the Internet.

I own socks with moustaches on them.

Saw on Twitter the other day that you're going to be doing a bit of traveling. Airline of choice?

JetBlue or Virgin America, most definitely.

Gary and AJ Vaynerchuk are investors and work with you on Forrst, correct? What's the single best piece of advice they've given to you as you've been developing Forrst?

That is correct. I think the best thing they've told me is probably to trust my gut. As a founder I think you absolutely need to have an extraordinary amount of confidence in yourself and the idea, perhaps to a fault. If you don't trust the decisions you're making, it's hard to instill confidence in others.