Graphic Guru Michael Rurka’s Startup Hustle
When Michael Rurka’s artwork was published three years ago in the Applied Arts Magazine, he discovered his passion for graphic design.
“It’s my elephant piece that’s plastered everywhere in the [New Brunswick College of Craft and Design] right now,” he says. “The piece is an exploration that meshed both design and illustration. It was a new way to utilize my drawings and incorporate my graphic design practice.”
He said the artwork was pretty much an accident.
“It was the first time I’d done anything like it, and it just so happened to turn out great. And I never really realized it was so great until months later when it got published in a magazine, nominated for an award and received bunch of praise from my colleagues.”
In high school, the only class Rurka enjoyed was art. He always loved painting and drawing, but never strived to become a graphic designer until the third year of his program.
“It was only near the end that I realized I enjoyed design and wanted to make something of it,” Rurka says.
Rurka now works from Montreal for San Francisco-based startup Nurx, an app for birth control delivery. He’s a user-interface designer, front-end developer, traveler, painter, illustrator and startup enthusiast. Since 2013, the 24-year-old designer has worked for New Brunswick startups and companies like Eigen Innovations, Hotspot Parking, Ginger Design, Selective Few, College Mix, SimpTek Technologies and more.
Before graduating from NBCCD, Rurka never thought he’d enter the startup world.
“I had never heard of startups,” he says. “I had no idea what they were or that they even existed.”
That changed when he attended a New Brunswick Startup Weekend in 2013. His enthusiasm, talent and positive energy stood out to many of the potential employers in the Fredericton startup community. He then started freelancing for local companies. Right after college, he was hired full-time at Ginger Design as their junior web designer.
“The nice thing about Fredericton is that its startup community is relatively small and tight, so everyone knows each other,” says Rurka. “In a way, this made it easier to play a role in the community because your reputation goes a long way. Just do good work, be pleasant to work with and the rest is history.”
But after eight months at Ginger Design, he decided it was time to go on his own.
“I felt stagnant,” he says. “I needed something more. I needed independence at the time.”
Rurka hustled non-stop, developing his skills and finding freelance work. But like most journeys in the startup world, Rurka’s has been far from smooth. Not every single opportunity has worked out.
Shortly after leaving Ginger Design, he started working part-time for another Fredericton startup but found the workload was too much for the 20 hours per week allocated to the position. He couldn’t produce enough quality work so he was laid off.
“That was a very big hit for me,” Rurka says. “Because that was the first time I got really let go from anything.”
Undeterred, Rurka quickly started networking again and attended a Startup Weekend in Ottawa, where he found more opportunities in other startup companies. Some startups he worked with failed, but his drive never did. He doesn’t get attached. He always immediately gets up and looks for another opportunity. He’s been working full-time at Nurx since the end of 2015.
His years of working with startups have taught Rurka to be a fast-learner, a risk-taker and a hustler.
“In startups, you may not be an expert in your field, but you don’t really have a choice. You have to be one.” he says. “It is that constant pressure to learn everything as a designer. Like I learned coding. I learned the server side. I learned marketing. I learned business.”
Rurka doesn’t have a big career plan, except to be successful in any industry he’s in. He says you need to be passionate about what you do and take responsibility for your outcomes.
“It isn’t about working hard. It’s about working smart,” he says.
Rurka still freelances and offers design advice for New Brunswick startups. He is also co-founding a startup called ioTplace with his brother and a friend from Fredericton.
Rurka said New Brunswick is home to many motivated and passionate people. He believes anything can happen in the province and that jobs aren’t hard to find if you’re passionate and willing to hustle.
“It’s a challenge to keep hustling, to work hard and to keep up the energy,” he says. “But it’s worth it.”