LOGAN: Vlad, thanks doing this.
VLAD: Thank you for having me.
LOGAN: so there's this, there's [00:02:00] called essentialism and focusing on things that bring you energy. I know this is something that you think about maybe reoriented how you operate, how you spend your day. Can you talk a little bit about what essential and essentialism is? And then also how you've, you've utilized it?
VLAD: Interesting that you started with that, because I feel like I'm in a non essentialist period right now where I sort of go in
LOGAN: because you're doing a podcast and this is a distraction.
VLAD: No this is, this is time well spent, uh, but just like the season that Webflow is in, uh, has sort of pulled me into some, uh, some...
VLAD: You know, things that feel very essential, but if I was to like really dig down and say, you know, is this what I want to be doing like every single hour of my life, there's a lot of, uh, you know, preparing for a conference.
LOGAN: and There's a dichotomy, I guess from an essentialism between what the company needs a CEO versus what you get energy from, I guess is at,
VLAD: at the core of it is like constantly, uh, [00:03:00] re evaluating is the thing that I'm doing right now is the way that I'm spending my time the most impactful for myself, for, you know, my family, my teammates, the company, um, and just really having that, um, uh, questioning mindset around, like, is this the most important work that I could be doing because our time on earth is limited.
LOGAN: Have you changed, like the types people you hire to augment things that you don't want do? Or have you ruthlessly prioritize things that kind of fall out below the water line? Like how, how you actually put it into action?
VLAD: I've created a lot of constraints where, um, especially people I work with very closely, like my chief of staff and, um, executive assistant, where they're like, Very ruthless around like, is this something you should be committing to is this something that is, you know, aligns with how you are prioritizing health family.
VLAD: Um, you know, the long term future of web flow, et cetera. So it's almost like having a, um, like, no, you can't kind of somebody hitting you with a ruler when you're like, oh, it would be fun to do this. Um, and [00:04:00] having a, um, that. Second, uh, second opinion thing. Is that really? And sometimes just asking that question makes you immediately realize like, Oh, actually, I shouldn't be spending my time that way.
LOGAN: do calendar audits or anything like that sort of back in time and see and see if you're improving every month?
VLAD: But like the way that calendars are these days, it's almost like a different exercise every month, right? Because as much as I want to create intentionality around, like, this is what my Month is gonna look like three months from now.
VLAD: Um, like at every stage of the company and every sort of like season of the month, like right now we're in this conference season, completely different than two months ago. Um, so, uh, there's a, I actually live totally by my calendar. I don't even have a to do list anymore. Um, I used to try to like convert these things, but now my, my calendar is basically my entire to do list.
VLAD: My, um, All my personal stuff, every reminder, uh, and there's, I have like an entire system with my EA that essentially, uh, as time goes, I either like accept or [00:05:00] decline whether I did things or not, uh, and it's a silent communication method that like helps prioritize pretty much like every rolling thing, and there's like rules where if I decline something twice, meaning I didn't do it, that means it's not important enough.
VLAD: Right, so it's like, comes off the list. How many people are in
LOGAN: important enough, right? So currently? Webflow,
VLAD: something, I want to say 625. Somewhere between 610 and 650.
LOGAN: And so prior to Webflow, you were, were you an individual contributor as an
VLAD: an individual contributor. Um, uh, Either a freelancer working by myself or trying something, you know, trying to start Webflow. Um, kind of as a, as a founder, as an IC. Um, but all, my entire working life was like either an intern or as an engineer or as a designer.
LOGAN: and so, so, leadership probably uh, elements that are innate in some way, but there's things you learn. And then managerial ability is something I think that's mostly learned. It's not like [00:06:00] a natural skill
VLAD: I don't think anyone's a great natural manager unless I don't know maybe it Army drill sergeant or something, um, but I never really thought of leadership as like a discreet skill, where like, oh, I need to go learn leadership. It's almost always like, hey, somebody has an idea where they want to, like, rally folks around a cause or a project or whatever.
VLAD: And then it's sort of like organically evolves management is the thing that, you know, you quickly realize, like, holy cow, this is, uh, This is a skill that takes work and, um, uh, it takes sort of understanding how other people do it to, uh, to see what works, what doesn't at like different scales. I think that's, that's been the hardest, uh, sort of like, uh, phases of adjustment to learn how even management itself is a completely, completely different beast, depending on, um, you know, the size of the team that sort of like, Uh, seniority of team members, like if you're managing individual contributors, uh, it's a lot easier than, or it's [00:07:00] a different skill set than managing managers of ICs and then managing directors who manage managers, who manage ICs, a whole different ballgame, right?
LOGAN: managing managers of ICs ICs. About that development process. I know you have a coach that you you work with. you. You have a set of board mentors, I assume, but this is like a combination of I think how most founders learn
VLAD: peers, um, you know, other founders that are slightly ahead of the curve or a couple years ahead of, uh, where we were, um, Uh, literally blogs and YouTube, um, you know, videos around, um, TED Talks that talk about, like, great management, the HBR articles, like, uh, It was like, You know, new inputs every every situation, right?
VLAD: The first time you have a performance management conversation, you try to, like, uh, learn the best practices. You learn how to, like, um, give feedback through specific [00:08:00] workshops because you just realize you suck at that. Um, and I think over the last 10 years, it's a combination of. All of these things sort of like compounding and it's a lot of trial and error, right?
VLAD: So things that work in the abstract you read a book on on management like a lot, you know You might walk away feeling pretty inspired than the first situation that you know a hard situation that you face It's like alright. Well that stuff goes out the window because in reality, it's You know some aspect is totally different and and a lot of it. I think you just learn through practice
LOGAN: What was unintuitive about the developing into a manager process? It sounds like there was a bunch of different inputs that, influenced you, but what were like the hardest learnings or things that were not obvious?
VLAD: I don't know if I would qualify this as unintuitive, but I think the hardest learning for me, or the biggest transition, um, was to go from like this sort of individualistic [00:09:00] understanding of, uh, kindness towards a, towards a single person to, um, what I would call like The aggregate of kindness to a broader set of people.
VLAD: So one example of that is early on, um, in my management journey. Um, it'd be pretty hard to have a conversation with an individual that you really care about, right? That clearly is trying, um, and, uh, you know, wants to be successful and you want to set them up for success. Um, and delivering pretty hard feedback.
VLAD: You would kind of want to protect them from that, right? Because you, you think it's kinder to them. Um, And realizing over time what net effect that has not only on potentially broader team members, but also on that person as well. Um, and and realizing that this like, uh, the scales of aggregate kindness, sometimes having something that feels unkind to a, uh, one individual might actually be The kindest thing you can do for a broader team and ultimately in the [00:10:00] business context might make the entire team more successful Therefore making this person ultimately more successful, even if they or like their stake in a company more successful, right?
LOGAN: And to give an example, I guess, would be something like, Hey, you've decided this person probably isn't going to make it long term. And so rather than saying, Hey, let's let, let them stay in the seat for six more months.
LOGAN: And then we'll have that conversation at that point, it's, it might be better to have conversation. Now you've already made up your ,have that conversation now. And then the aggregate for the company would be, Hey, there's someone that's actually could come into that seat. That's going to be better than the individual.
VLAD: Yeah. That's the more extreme example, but the more nuanced one are things like, you want to see this person grow into the next role. Like become a director, for example, uh, or become a manager, um, but you believe that, um, it's going to take them, you know, a year or two, um, and you're too afraid to tell them like that, uh, you know, that path might be closed off for you because I believe like bringing in more experience sooner is actually better [00:11:00] off for the company and the team in the shorter term.
VLAD: Right? Um, so that's a, um. That's a more nuanced one because they're not really doing a bad job at their current, uh, at their current role, but they might have ambitions that they're working towards that, um, you know, just the, their individual readiness and the company's readiness or needs at a given time, uh, misaligned.
VLAD: In terms of time, right? And, um, you kind of, you want to give them that shot. You want to give them the opportunity, but you also realize, um, you know, it could put them into a position of failure or put, put the company into a position or the team, uh, in a position of, um, you know, not doing as well as, um, if you were to like, bring in additional help or, you know, put somebody else in that position.
LOGAN: Motivating people is uh, something that you have to do as a, as a leader. And there's book uh, by Daniel Pink called Drive I've read. I know you have as well. What were some of things you took away from that? what the the learnings that might be interesting to hear for people that you've actually applied in the web flow and leadership?
VLAD: I [00:12:00] mean, the three key pillars there are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Like, people want to feel like they are in control of Um, you know, the work that they do day to day. Um, and nobody likes feeling stale and like what they're learning or what they're sort of exploring, whether in their working life or personal life.
VLAD: Um, but it's really like this last piece, the sense of purpose that I believe is the most, most important for, um, Broader motivation, like, you know, we, we all have 1 life, right? Um, and I don't believe in this concept that, you know, work has to, uh, fulfill, like, your entire sense of purpose or your passion or whatever.
VLAD: Um, uh, it is a, of course, you enjoy work a lot more when you feel like the. Uh, what you're doing actually contributes to other people in a very positive way. It makes other people's lives easier. So that that sense of purpose is what I took away as like the thing that we have to weave throughout everything we do.
VLAD: We have to make it clear why our work as a company, as individual teams, as individual team members, [00:13:00] how that actually helps. Whether it's our customers or our community have a fundamentally different, um, you know, experience, better experience in their life. So they, they can say, uh, what, what this company with this team did for me is, uh, you know, made my life better, made it easier.
VLAD: Um, and that led to that book actually led me to, uh, I don't know if you've ever heard of the Sinek, where it's all about, Um, you know, finding a just cause, which is essentially a shared purpose as a team and one that actually brings 10 times more value to the world and it does to you as a team member.
VLAD: Um, and that in itself is like such a fulfilling sense of experience. Right? Um, and, you know, company just happens to be like a social vehicle for completing that purpose. Um, and to me, nothing because work is always going to be like, have ebbs and flows of like. Stuff's hard or stuff is like. Through the roof exciting, right?
VLAD: Or we're innovating or we're fixing bugs or we're like, you know, getting our servers from [00:14:00] melting down. Um, that might not be the most exciting if everybody can see, like, what ultimately we're working towards, like, that sense of purpose overrides everything. Um, and I think there's like, um, to autonomy itself.
VLAD: I had a very sort of hard line definition understanding of it at 1st, even after Daniel Pink's book where, uh, there's a way to understand it of like, you know, Well, just empower me to do anything I want to do. Right. But I think a very, um, uh, a different way of looking at autonomy now is, uh, I think of it as like.
VLAD: Autonomy and alignment where you want to make sure that you get on the same page with, um, you know, the team that you're working with the person that you're working with, where you have, like, a shared vision and direction and perspective. Um, and then, like. Go run with it, right? You, you have to solve this problem or like you're empowered to solve this problem versus like this, like, really kind of hard line definition of autonomy of like, you know, just bring people onto a team and let them do whatever they want.
VLAD: Ultimately, it doesn't even serve that [00:15:00] person. Right?
LOGAN: So there's a concept called the Freedman Doctrine, which is named after Milton Freedman and basically says that if you solve for shareholder value, everything else falls into place under, uh, after that. Uh, Milton Freedman, I think, wrote an op ed or something about it in 1970. I think most companies kind of follow that because you brought up infinite game, kind of bouncing around here, but, uh, my understanding is you reject that.
LOGAN: Concept or or it as an absolute. Can you talk a little bit about the Freedman doctrine and how you think about infinite game and how that fits
VLAD: I don't reject the concept altogether. I think it, um, you know, ultimately, if you solve for shareholder value, like in the, in a perfect world, that would, um, you know, essentially solve for the needs of everyone else. Because, uh, especially in today's construct of like tech companies, for example, um, your shareholders are your employees.
VLAD: Uh, sometimes they're your customers. A lot. It's not just investors. Um, however. What I don't believe [00:16:00] is, um, in practice, what, what happens, it's just like, you know, communism, you know, I came from a communist country where, like, in principle, great, it works on paper, uh, but in reality, like, human nature comes into play, right?
VLAD: And, uh, with the Friedman Doctrine, short term incentives come into play, that when you're solely focused on shareholder value, uh, that starts to, uh, potentially destroy all kinds of long term value. Um, so I, I think of it as, like, shareholder value plus plus, right? So the way the infinite game frames it is the most important thing is to find a just cause or just mission that brings 10 times more value to the world.
VLAD: And second is, uh, prioritize real human beings and people, uh, in your business decisions. That doesn't mean like just people working at a company or, uh, your customers. But literally like, Are the things that you're doing as a company, um, you know, with the support of your shareholders, uh, let's say damaging the environment or, um, contributing to, uh, some, uh, you know, negative [00:17:00] externality that, um, starts to, you know, might increase your shareholder value, but might decrease like the net value to the world.
VLAD: It's good for you, but it's not good for, um, you know, The, you know, real human beings that are impacted by the work that you do as a company. Um, and, and only third is, uh, the third responsibility is to generate revenue, specifically to do, not to like make a bunch of investors richer or to return dividends, um, but to do the first two things for as long as possible.
VLAD: Uh, to advance your just mission and to, uh, prioritize people in your business decisions. Um, and. Uh, I happen to believe just like some people believe in like trickle down economics. If you solve for those, those two things, like, naturally, you build a much more valuable thing for the world because you're making something that people really love and they're willing to pay for and then that naturally creates a lot of, um, you know, makes the pie bigger that then you can, like, Split however you want with whether it's shareholders, investors, or, you know, the typical shareholder value kind of like argument.
VLAD: Um, so I, I [00:18:00] think it, you know, I don't fully reject it because I think it has value, uh, and it does drive, like, the majority of capitalism, right? Um, uh, but I do think that it's a shorter term, um, point of view that sometimes, like, makes it easier to justify doing some, like, net harmful things.
LOGAN: what is one of the, um...Nice elements of the Friedman doctrine is it gives you kind of a singular focus to solve for, and there's not competing constituencies tradeoffs that you need to do this three dimensional against, right? Uh, when you're solving for customers versus employees versus whoever else, right? flat an versus, your Excel Cap G and Meritech and the folks that own some percentage of the company. How do you actually about those trade offs? and what is the North [00:19:00] Star? Do things have different weightings? blend to some, uh, like just gut the end of the day. I
VLAD: instinct. Um, and, you know, you can, like, you can call it sort of, uh, grown intuition, right? And a lot of relationships with all of those parties that that helps you make this, um, kind of. What is the. Kindness and best thing for the vast majority of, uh, all constituents, um, it, it almost never ends up in a situation where you're like, not hurting some, uh, or benefiting some person less than another.
VLAD: Um, so there's always nuance and it's always like, at the end of the day, some sort of gut call. Um, but it's a, um. But I think even something as clear as the Friedman Doctrine still has a lot of nuance to it, right? Because like, there's different types of shareholders and etc. So you still have those same dynamics.
VLAD: The things [00:20:00] that helped us in, um, Uh, in or help me make decisions in this sort of trifecta of, you know, investors, shareholders, employees, customers, um, kind of our community, the environment, um, is trying to align as possible, like people coming into the fold, like who we partner with, right? Um, a, we. Talk about this a lot.
VLAD: Um, in terms of like leaders that come into the company whenever I interview execs like I want to make sure they're really aligned with like this longer term perspective of like what's important for them. Like they should want to care about this stuff. And when we pick investors, um, I actually have this, um, social contract that that they signed that https: otter.ai
VLAD: I call it investing on principle based on this like video that inspired Webflow called inventing on principle, but that specifically says that we're Like this partnership is meant to be long term oriented. Um, there [00:21:00] are going to be trade offs that will feel like as a, as a direct V. C. shareholder, you might see trade offs that are, um, like, don't feel like totally in your favor.
VLAD: Um, and, and. That turns a lot of people off initially, right? That, um, doesn't lead to further like partnership conversations, but for for the partners that we've brought on, there's been like this long term alignment around, um, even if it's not a perfect rule that we always solve for X, uh, that there's a more holistic sort of consideration around what's most important in the long term.
LOGAN: you have investors actually disqualify themselves from, no, I I want to be focused only on shareholder value at some point?
VLAD: It was never as explicit as that, but, but that, uh, which, by the way, lots of credit goes to, uh, Arun at Excel for, um, because I was really hesitant to, uh, go the VC route, um, because this was like many years into the life of the company, um, and like we developed this contract together, uh, that then served as [00:22:00] the, Uh, you know, the basis of all new relationships, what usually happens is there's like a lot of excitement from investors, uh, like potential new investors or like, you know, reaching out and then literally before the first conversation.
VLAD: Um, I will share this like, Hey, this is really important for me. Um, just so you know, like where, how I think about, uh, investor type of partnerships and you can usually tell with like, Okay. You know, there's like, uh, it was nice to chat or whatever. Like maybe let's connect next year or whatever you can, you can just tell that it didn't resonate, um, which just saves everybody a lot of time.
VLAD: Um, there's never been like a, I'm going to fight for shareholder value. I think you're wrong. I think it's just like a philosophical people can see like culturally.
LOGAN: So you have a core set of behaviors and not core values. Can you talk about the, the distinction between the two?
VLAD: Yeah, that was, uh, honestly something we stole from, uh, stole or got heavily inspired by Patreon, um, in the early days. And [00:23:00] the distinction is very, like, values are things that you can say you value, um, uh, but then behave completely differently. Behaviors are, like, the... values lived out in practice, right?
VLAD: Yeah, you can say that you value, you know, customers, etc. It really only shows up when you, when you act on those values, um, and how you behave when, you know, no one's looking, etc. So, um, that's just like a, um, a slight terminology shift, but for us really meaningful because it's, um, even in the way you think about it, it's like...
VLAD: Okay, am I behaving in a way that, like, if somebody was observing this, would they say I am behaving in a way that, um, demonstrates that I value this thing?
LOGAN: And what are your four behaviors?
VLAD: We obsess over customer experience, which means that... Uh, like everyone in the company is expected to like, not just assume that there's something that that customers want, uh, but like, live and breathe their, their experience.
VLAD: Um, we move with [00:24:00] heartfelt urgency, like heartfelt means, uh, and we went through multiple iterations of this one, that's where we landed, uh, is having the sense of, um, dreaming big. Uh, and have like, uh, really understanding why we're building the thing that we're building, but also seeing the value that comes with getting something to, uh, to our users hands or to our team members hands, like helping out somebody faster like that.
VLAD: Um, it's, it's not meant to, you know, often urgency is, um, translated as like you're working day and night for us. It's like, it's, it's actually has a lot of elements. of essentialism, of inspiration, like constantly question whether the, the way that we're spending our time is on the most important thing. Um, and constantly question whether, uh, the way that we're working and what we're doing is the most important thing.
VLAD: And can we, can we, um, like, do what we want to do in less time. Um, The hardest one for us, uh, also has the word hard in it, is say the hard thing with care, which is kind of like a rebranding of radical candor, um, but that is, um, you know, what I mentioned earlier, one of [00:25:00] my hardest, uh, kind of management, um, growth journeys, um, have been like, how do you, how do you Get to the truth of the matter.
VLAD: How do you build the best possible, like, company and, um, and product and team, um, and, and innovate like hell if you are afraid to tell each other, like, what a better idea it might be or why something, um, might not be, like, its best version, et cetera. That one has been probably the hardest for people to transition from.
VLAD: You know, uh, we used to have a core behavior called practice extraordinary kindness. Um, and, and that one was like heavily translated as like don't do anything unkind. Right? And, and this is, um, this core behavior is one where we like rallied as a team. We're like, how do we come together to make sure that we can get to the best ideas and Be able to do that with like a sense of humanity and, and feel like that the person who wants you to improve in a certain area or like show up differently, uh, is [00:26:00] you feel that.
LOGAN: this core behavior is You, you mentioned your, your second uh, move heartfelt
VLAD: with heartfelt urgency, yeah.
LOGAN: Uh, Once upon a time was move uncomfortably
VLAD: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it became move intentionally fast. Uh, and then, uh, we combined them with, uh, with another one.
Two sides to any coin
LOGAN: When codify these, uh, these behaviors, how do you think through the, the positive? There's two sides to every coin and any decision you make could have, is going to have some negative downstream implications around it. How do you go about actually making these
VLAD: Well, one thing I learned is that there's a lot of, um, you're never going to have a perfect, right? You're not going to put things on a wall or in a dock or in your onboarding that, um, is going to, like, drive the behavior of the company, right? So there's a lot of nuance to all of these. Um, and, and, um, we try not to overthink it anymore, right?
VLAD: Like, where, uh, now it's more around, like, how do you How Give a lot more examples. So one thing we do is we have [00:27:00] this ritual around giving props and sharing gratitude, and they're usually framed around core behaviors. Um, and, uh, through examples, you see, like, what's celebrated and what's encouraged and what's discouraged.
VLAD: Um, and, and that is instead of like trying to wordsmith or, Change these even more right now. Our last one that I didn't mention earlier is make your mark, right? Which sometimes Could get translated by some people's like oh as long as I make my mark individually everything else can you know if I I'm seen as like the savior, like the hero, uh, to like, you know, bring our servers back online or something like that, um, then that's the most important.
VLAD: It could be perceived as individualistic, right? So instead of trying to version it and adding, like, make you, uh, you know, make your mark and work as a team or whatever. We just, um, when we see, Sort of a different translation of it in practice where people start to celebrate, um, uh, you know, different things that don't feel like in the ethos of what we're trying to encourage here, which is also, um, kind of making your mark as a team [00:28:00] member, not not just in this like individualistic sense.
VLAD: Uh, we just, you know. um, work our way through, um, just talking about that. Like, hey, it doesn't actually mean this, it means that. Um, so just by giving, we have this internal, um, kind of living doc that gives a bunch of examples and counter examples of these behaviors and action. And sometimes when we see a lot of, like, repeated, uh, sort of, uh, you know, like in the previous sense, people start to, weaponize is a very strong term, but sometimes it's, uh, it's start to like, um, Say things like, Oh, I'm just, uh, trying to say the hard thing, uh, trying to say the hard thing with care, whatever, just to justify, you know, like sometimes being an asshole, right?
VLAD: And just, just saying things without a level of care, um, you like those make it as like examples that we talk about. And a lot of behavioral norms emerge outside of these, uh, things that you might have codified, um, that require, uh, different sort of application or, whatever. Um, a different approach [00:29:00] to shaping the culture that that you want as a team,
LOGAN: I get the feeling, um, your culture, you're very thoughtful and purposeful about it. We’ve seen over course of the last. two years, 18 months, we've seen examples of, um, I think most notably Coinbase and Shopify Hey, we're going to keep certain elements of stuff out of the workforce. I don't know there’s a spectrum, but I get the feeling you're more or much more on the side like, Bring your whole self to work. I don't want to put words in your in there, um, how do you think about, like, the, that come as we live in a world of social issues coming up all time how fits into your cultural values and keeping some semblance of, uh, slack, normalcy, and do work and not debate, know, the latest Supreme Court decision?
VLAD: we haven't had to move into like mandate territory. Um, but [00:30:00] like the examples you cited, uh, but we are closer to, um, you know, in, in living to our obsess over customer experience. Like that is, uh, you know, our mission to bring development superpowers to people. Like, that's what we're all about.
VLAD: Our just cause as a company is to, um, empower so many more people to. Like capture the economic and creative power of the Internet, right? Like that's our unique advantage in the world. Um, and over the last three years, we definitely have gone to where like, I don't even remember the last sort of, uh, more broadly social conversation we've had internally as a company.
VLAD: Um, and, and that just happens organically. Not by banning certain things, but by just like, Celebrating and focusing our attention on on the things that collectively unite us, right? We have a worldwide team across so many different, you know, countries and cultures, um, that has in the past created a lot of friction when, um, you know, folks expected, uh, like the [00:31:00] entire company to have a specific position on something that is, you know, in many ways, like untenable, like you can't make everyone happy in that in that sense that just can't be, um, uh, It's not a scalable application of, like, a company as a social construct.
VLAD: That said, uh, we have been more progressive on, like, um, making, um, decisions around, like, who we do business with or not, and creating frameworks, uh, around, um, You know, where we'll go, uh, actually like seek business and where we'll actually, um, like things that we don't want to be, uh, associated with, um, but we also have like a lot of nuance where like, you know, a lot of politicians that we disagree with, for example, host their stuff on Webflow and we.
VLAD: We want to have a very principled stance on even when we disagree, as long as they're not breaking, um, you know, our direct policies, um, we want to make sure like we're applying the same exact rules to to everyone. And that's been a, again, [00:32:00] not directly intentional focus, but it's, you know, when, when people are.
VLAD: Uh, focused on a single mission that just like organically starts to show that that like that is the context of, you know, us working together. That said, we, um, we don't want to stop anyone from, like, being a full person at work. Just, uh, the expectation is not that, um, the entire company will become sort of a representation of, um, kind of distinct values that an individual might hold.
LOGAN: I mean, I guess you guys sit in an interesting point in an ecosystem, probably similar to Stripe or Amazon Web Services, that you need to make some decisions about who you're going to do business with, with bigger implications. I mean, you're actually the, the hosting framework that they're actually developing the stuff on.
LOGAN: And so have you, uh, Come up with some doctrine that that everyone has, and we'll do business with XYZ politicians. But if they cross the line into QRS, that's [00:33:00] just not something we want to. We want to work with,
VLAD: Yeah, it's essentially public. Uh, we've made it public in our terms of service, like the, you know, what kind of we actually base it on content, uh, versus individuals, right? So an individual might hold a view that they're talking about somewhere else. But as long as we're not amplifying content, um, that it, you know, breaks our policies, whether it's, um, I mean, there's the whole, Range of things that, um, that we prohibit on our platform.
VLAD: Um, and we make very principled decisions around, like, does this content break, um, the policies that they agree to? If it does, we take down, um, That content, but it's, we're not quite in a cloudflare like position where it's like infrastructure. Uh, we, um, you know, there is a lot of, um, nuance to deciding on that policy, but I think we, we've come up with a pretty reasonable one where, um, broadly the, the content that's [00:34:00] published on Webflow is not going to be like hurting, um, like broad populations or sending a lot of misinformation out there.
LOGAN: have interesting philosophy around compensation, uh, that...
VLAD: You might have to remind me.
LOGAN: once upon a time I had heard you say that, uh, you, but Lee, if you're going to be in the 75th percentile of a ban for engineers, you're also going to hold consistent that for HR and salespeople and marketing and not prioritize, Hey, we're going to have world class, we're going to pay 99th percentile for engineering, but we're, our HR department, we're going to pay, you know, whatever, 25th percentile, I guess.
LOGAN: Is that still consistent?
VLAD: is still consistent, uh, broadly in the sense that we just don't want to treat anyone as a, uh, second class citizen or basically divide the company into different tiers of, like, importance. Um, that doesn't necessarily mean that specialized roles aren't going to be well, you know, like, well [00:35:00] differentiated, uh, between roles that are, like, easier to find talent for and those that are harder.
VLAD: So, for example. You know, engineering talent that, uh, is, um, somebody that is really, really experienced in, um, AI, for example, uh, where we're not going to, we're not going to say, like, everything needs to fit into this, like, one software engineering band, um, because otherwise, like, you would not be able to get that type of talent at all.
VLAD: Um, nor does it make sense from, um, A business or fairness or like any sort of perspective to just say, well, if, um, like everyone gets paid exactly the same thing, um, regardless of just by virtue of a job title. Um, so I mean, this is 1 of those things that, um. I, I think when I might have, uh, referenced that, that was also before we expanded internationally, uh, where that adds a lot of nuance, right?
VLAD: Like when you, uh, have to like create entities across many [00:36:00] different countries and figure out, uh, uh, um, sort of the norms and expectations and, uh, regulations across many different places. Yeah, then you start to get into things that were like
LOGAN: worldwide
VLAD: hardline principles around For example, everyone gets the same amount of equity, um, wherever you happen to live in the world.
VLAD: That might land completely differently in some countries. It's actually negative, uh, because it's, like, so heavily taxed in other countries, it's completely not valued. And in other countries, it's, uh, you know, uh, you need to have, like, way differentiated sort of bands to attract talent in, in that area. So this is kind of a ever evolving, um, you know, space, but ultimately...
VLAD: I think it's a, um, from that Daniel Pink drive perspective, um, compensation is one of those things that you have to make sure you, like, people aren't thinking about all the time, but it's not in the top three list [00:37:00] of, uh, the things that are like the reasons people join our company, for example, and most companies, I think, um,
LOGAN: And it becomes an issue when people that they're not treatedfairly. And That's People lose their mind no How much people make? how much? How Like, fairness is single thing, and so having level of around What about, so, have you guys been ish from start?
VLAD: I would say, 90 percent, 90...85 to 90 percent remote from the beginning. Um, kind of by necessity initially, because three of us, the three co founders were in the Bay Area, uh, but in different places. And then the first person we hired was Sacramento. The second person we hired was Finland are, um And then, like, Europe, and then the East Coast.
VLAD: Um, and, but we still had, uh, decided to get an office here. So it had, like, this, you know, central base where people could travel, etc. Now we're probably, [00:38:00] like, 95 percent remote, moving closer to, like, full, just because the size of the company where we, where we've hired, um, has gone more and more. I wouldn't even call it hybrid, because it's a, the people that do make it into the office sometimes, or in a physical location.
VLAD: They're, like, calling in from Zoom, uh, just like everybody else, and, uh, um, there's actually way more time spent in person on company off sites or team off sites, which we heavily encourage and fund, um, than in, um, like the one office that we have here in San Francisco.
LOGAN: The tactics of executing on remote. Um, so, so I think you guys do the thing where everyone needs to be on zoom. You, you, you can't do shared meetings together. Even if we're in the same room, we're going to go to our own rooms and take the zoom. So everyone feels like an equal first class citizen around this.
VLAD: Yeah, that's a, um, I don't think we've ever made that like a hard requirement. We've always, like, encouraged it. It sort of became culturally [00:39:00] normal, um, that that's what was expected because everyone could see that it was, like, really awkward for three people to be in a room and one to be remote. Or most often, two people to be in a room and, like, ten being remote, right?
VLAD: And those two people having, like, a side conversation that the people on Zoom are like, what is this? I mean, this is like, you know, Five years ago. Right now, it's, uh, we have the vast, vast majority of people, uh, that even if you're in an office, you're, you don't have that many people around you, so you're like dialing in, um, uh, I can't think of a situation where, uh, when there was the last time where we had kind of the need to like enforce this or like remind somebody that it's like more inclusive to, to just have everyone kind of represented the same.
LOGAN: There's a lot of accidentally hybrid companies now that sort of COVID let the genie out of the bottle and came back in. What, what, what are some of the other things? And maybe it's hard to think of just because it's, you know, you've been a fish [00:40:00] in water for so long. And so you don't totally appreciate that.
LOGAN: What's normal. But are there other things that you would say to CEOs, founders, executives of companies that have found themselves now in a more hybrid world? And Thank you. They didn't want to end up there, but COVID happened, and they hired people all over, and now they're trying to figure out how to make it work.
LOGAN: Are there any other, like, tactics that, that you guys have, have done that might be unique or interesting?
VLAD: I think the biggest one is, um, it's less, I guess it is a tactic is having some sort of structured way for people to and teams to feel like they can Um, whether it's for planning or, uh, even sometimes we used to do just purely social offsites as well. And now we try to mix them to where, you know, there's social time, but it's like focused on on something work related.
VLAD: Um, that is. Been the biggest unlock in terms of, um, getting that sense of like camaraderie and human connection. Um, and honestly, like, sometimes you get you, you do in 1 week, [00:41:00] you make way more progress, especially when, when it's like higher level thinking or like planning, um, or sort of planning innovation or just brainstorming.
VLAD: Um, that is probably the biggest delta in terms of, um, if you're not, if you're. Trying to stay hybrid, uh, or fully remote and not having something like that. I just don't, like I can't see looking back in the last 10 years how we would have, um, as much connection or as much like camaraderie or teamwork.
LOGAN: 10 years that actually works. So, so the marketing team wants to plan for 2024 and is there a set budget aside? Like how does
VLAD: there's basically a yearly budget for each person, um, that can be used in any different way.
LOGAN: yearly the manager decides how it
VLAD: So, well, it's actually company wide. We have a system where it's because a lot of people on cross functional team. So you might have a product team that is like. A product manager and like 5 engineers and a designer, uh, and maybe a data person, right?
VLAD: And maybe a PMM, uh, or product marketing managers supporting them. [00:42:00] Um, like planning this big release, right? Uh, and, uh, the usually, um, they can like that. Whoever is like the lead driver, usually the PM, um, we can just see, like, how much budget is available across all these folks, whether, um, they're essentially and it's not hard line, right?
VLAD: Like, you can, um, our, our ops team helps, like, understand whether, like, that that person's like, way over budget or whatever. Um, and they just, you know, there's a process for finding, you know, whether hotel or Airbnb or coming to our office, uh, for like, uh, basically what we call an onsite day, uh, or set of days.
VLAD: Um, and. You know, there's some like light approval process. We kind of had to put in some rules around like, yeah, don't go to, uh, you know, the Bahamas, even if it's cheaper, just because, like, optically, that doesn't always look great. Um, but there's a pretty standard process around it. It gets more complicated.
VLAD: The larger the team is. So, for example, if it's the entire marketing team or the entire engineering team, [00:43:00] typically, that doesn't happen unless we do like a, um, All company retreat, which we only that we used to do them every year, but we've only done 1 after the pandemic. So last year, trying to decide what to do next as a team has gotten bigger.
VLAD: But what will happen is instead of an all team, like a. You know, an exec will get all of their direct reports, um, uh, and kind of like their first team into, uh, into an offsite. And then each of those people will decide independently, do they need to do like a separate offsite, uh, for, you know, their sub teams, et cetera.
VLAD: Um, the other thing, I think we're not, uh, super great at this, uh, yet, but like, um, we're, because we are, Mostly remote, sometimes, uh, in person, a lot of off sites, um, we need to get much better, like, centralized documentation, almost like the GitLab style, like, everything is transparent, everything is visible, um, like, that's one area where we've, we've been, like, diving into more, like, can we do a lot better on that front [00:44:00] so that, Um, everyone in the company, uh, potentially even externally can sort of like see how, how we operate.
VLAD: And I know, you know, Zapier and GitLab have like set a lot of like great examples there. We're sort of in the middle between somebody who's like newly hybrid, uh, who kind of had to be, um, uh, and kind of where those companies are.
LOGAN: and you guidance of how often teams should together? Like should people on team try see their reports once a year, once a six months? or is it not?
VLAD: Our current guidance is somewhere between quarterly and every half, um, and it depends on how often that happens, um, like some, some people will see each other quarterly, um, because you might have a team that's like in the same time zone and like travel is cheaper, uh, and they just have like norms where, um, they've, they've figured out ways to get together without like disrupting other dependencies, um, and others who might go on like one offset a year.
LOGAN: All right. I want to go to the early days of Webflow. You [00:45:00] tried to start Webflow in 2000 5, 7, 8, and then finally in 2012, were they the same idea, uh,
VLAD: Exact same idea, exact same name. Um, I wouldn't say exact same idea. It had like, you know, shifted from, um, you know, shifted with the times, right? I didn't know about responsive design. Uh, and browsers weren't such a big, you know, not a lot of things were built, um, in the browser in 2005. It was sort of like more back endy oriented.
VLAD: Uh, but it was the same exact idea of how do you make software and website creation. Um, Much
LOGAN: Is there a version of Webflow that could worked in any those prior iterations? Or was 2012, like the first time that it actually could have?
VLAD: think each of those could have worked, like the 2005 version was actually what Heroku wanted to be, um, they sort of like built the infrastructure, but they had, um, aspects of a visual builder, um, that I think would have been, um, and then at that time, like, the things like Dreamweaver were already kind of dropping off, but you [00:46:00] could see that there's a lot of market opportunity there, and if we had enough, um, you know, enough will and innovation horsepower, we, like, it could have been, um, could have been huge.
VLAD: I think 2000, like 2007, 2008, it was a, um, you know, I didn't have enough confidence in myself. Like 2008 specific, actually 2007, um, I think Weebly was just coming out, uh, where, like, Oh, the idea is close enough to it, but not quite that, um, you know, I, I imagine that they would like pivot into that space. Uh, and at the time, I didn't think it could be, you know, I thought they had like won the market.
VLAD: Um, but the 2008, um, iteration, I think could have been huge, right? That was the age of web 2. 0, like Ajax was emerging. Um, you know, you had like a lot of, Um, a lot of companies that were like realizing the potential of what you could do on the web, you [00:47:00] still didn't have the maturity of, uh, web browsers as a web platform.
VLAD: Uh, things like, you know, Safari, Chrome, um, and kind of like dev tools and programmatic access to sort of browser APIs were like really immature. Uh, so you would have still had to build it more on the back end, but you, uh, we could have... Uh, sort of augmented that with more front end tools.
LOGAN: I've talked to entrepreneurs that their first idea didn't succeed. I don't know if I've ever spoken to an entrepreneur that had the same idea and tried four different times. What, what did you learn about like entrepreneurship from the three times that it succeeded? Didn't work.
LOGAN: Like, were you all in, or was the 2012, I know you you had to go into credit card like, you sold your car and leased did all these things that were like, 100 percent committed to it. Were you all in at each of those prior points?
VLAD: I felt all in at various aspects. So the first time, um, in 2005, I felt all in.
VLAD: Like, I went in to, just to buy the domain name. Like, I thought it was, I [00:48:00] couldn't believe it was even on sale. It was like, yeah, it was one of those, um, uh, com sort of crashes that was a big company. I think, like, Eric Schmidt was, um, one of the executives there. Um, and, I, like, Leverage all the debt I had to get that name, uh, that I paid off maybe like six years later, uh, the second and, and then I thought like even the money I don't have, I'm willing to put into this.
VLAD: I work like day and night on it. Um, when it, and then it sort of tapered off, um, because it's not that I stopped believing. It's just like life took over, right? I got married. I had to like get a job. It wasn't making any money. Um, I had to, um, Quote unquote, provide, right? Indeed.
LOGAN: I don't like that. Not making money thing. Yeah,
VLAD: Um, and different factors like led to sort of temporary, uh, demotivation at different times, right?
VLAD: Like the third time in 2008, it was like a trademark lawsuit, um, and just running out of money. That was like, [00:49:00] Ooh, okay. I have like bills to pay for. I have a family. It's a, um, uh, it's not worth like leveraging everything, uh, to, uh, chase like. You know, and I was so attached to the name, like, irrationally attached to the name.
VLAD: I'm like, at some point I thought I'd rather not have a company, uh, than just name a company. Like, we had all these iterations for, like, really silly names that would have been replacements. Um, uh, and I sort of got, like, demotivated, demotivated that way. But in the back of my mind, I was always thinking that, um, you know, this is something I have to try before I, before I die.
VLAD: Um, but honestly, I did kind of give up. From that 2008 to 2000, uh, 11 era where, uh, you know, I had, uh, two kids in that time. I, you know, had a pretty stable job at Intuit and I had just come to terms with, alright, this is sort of like move past, um,
LOGAN: uh,
VLAD: The industry has moved past the [00:50:00] opportunity. It's too late, right?
VLAD: It's too late to start something here. And there was like this series of totally random and fortuitous events that, um, like re energized me. Like, okay, the universe is telling me I have to do this.
LOGAN: Well, and, and so what were the big, I I know the IP lawsuit was dropped. You got a thing in the mail saying, hey, by the way, Webflow's name you can now go with.
VLAD: short story there is, uh, we had applied for a trademark. Um, this other company in Florida was like, you can't use it. Um, and we're like cease and desist essentially. Um, and I totally forgot about it. And then four years later, I had moved like two or three times at that point. Like an actual trademark certificate. Uh, arrives like, all right, this has after I already gotten a rejection, like a formal rejection that, you know, your, your application is denied with the USPTO or whatever.
VLAD: Um, so that was like, okay, you know, I like brought it to my wife and like, yeah, what, what is this? But even that wasn't enough. Uh, it was like that, that, um, I think like 4 or 5 months later, I saw this video inventing on principle, which [00:51:00] is like. Literally, the next morning I called my boss and said, I'm going to be leaving, um, because it was so.
VLAD: It was shared at the exact, exactly the right time. It had, um, it's like this, this conference talk about visual direct manipulation. Basically doing visually what you can do with code. What was it shoutouts? Absolutely life changing talk. Like, um, I think multiple companies have been started because of it, Figma included.
VLAD: Um, like I know Dylan's a big fan. Um, so that was like a clear sign that, and right at that time is when, Browser started to become way more powerful. It was like Chrome 1. 0, I think. Um, where you could actually, like, go build something, um, that now resembles Webflow. And, like, responsive design became a thing.
VLAD: Uh, and you could already see that, like, you know, Weebly wasn't going in that direction. Squarespace wasn't going in that direction. Um, and, and I could... See this like massive opportunity, even though Adobe is already playing in that space was like, all right, it's it's time to to try
LOGAN: And [00:52:00] was your wife, uh, totally on board and like, Hey, I don't want to be married to a version of you that doesn't least try You've been talking it And was she
LOGAN: encouraging?
VLAD: She was very encouraging, but it was a combination of like, um, it was like, you, I don't want to, I don't want you to resent yourself or me, uh, if, uh, this is, Something that you're going to look back on and say, I should, I should have tried, um, the thing that helped with that is that we had, I think it was like three months of savings at that point, because I sold all my Intuit stock, um, like whatever I had at that point and say, like, look, in three months, of course, we're going to get like revenue.
VLAD: We're going to do this Kickstarter. Um, and we're going to be back to back to being able to, yeah, Um, kind of get income, et cetera. So that started. So we had, like, full buying and that started to get harder and harder. The, like, the closer we got to running out of money, then totally running out of money, then, like, going, like, heavily into debt.Uh, but it was a, we still had a we were always clear around like, okay, when, when do we call it? [00:53:00] And it always made it like, it always felt like a partnership of like, okay, by this date if we don't have any sort of traction, then, you know, I go back to get my job.
LOGAN: to get my job. Was there you had of like, any traction is a little...
VLAD: Yeah, initially it was, um, you know, uh, the, the carrot was like, oh, if we get into YC, then it's like, you know, all up into the right after that, because we'll have some validation. Then we got, we applied, got rejected, um, like late 20, 2012. Then, uh, to like, uh, convince each other that it was, uh, you know, we'll try for the next time, six months later.
LOGAN: Each other at this time was your brother and one other co
VLAD: Yeah, this is my brother and my ex co worker from Intuit, Brian. Um, uh, and we'll try, we'll try next time. But at that point, like, next time was in March. Uh, so it went from, you know, rejection in November to March would be the next opportunity. Uh, but at that point, the constraint became my brother.
VLAD: Uh, where we were both like, [00:54:00] You know, running out of money. He's like, I, I need to, you just graduated. Uh, he was, uh, dating his now wife and, um, you know, we're like, all right, where is this leading where we gave ourselves a deadline of the end of January 2013 to like build something and put it up, um, on the web on like Reddit or Packer news or whatever.
VLAD: Um, and that was going to be our like, milestone. If, if that doesn't get traction, then we, you know, uh, uh, cut bait and, um, And that ended up being actually, you know, we, we got close to that date and we're like, Oh, we're so close, but we don't, we're not ready to launch. And it ended up being late February. Uh, but, um, it was always like something we're like, ah, let's try this thing and see if, if it takes off.
LOGAN: And you guys were waiting for a big, uh, unlock.And I think for, for a company that has been, um, It has balanced growth and profitability and cost conscious throughout your, your journey a efficiency Uh, [00:55:00] in those days, you may be, uh, safe to say, wasted some money on things that didn't work. Is that, is that a fair characterization of the Kickstarter campaign, and
VLAD: so many things. The first, the first purchase I ever made, uh, it was like company funds, uh, which was like personal savings that went into, you know, a company bank account, was like new laptops. Why do we need them? Like, it totally felt like a, um, you know, Hey, start a new thing.
VLAD: Might as well have the best of the best or whatever. And there was this Kickstarter campaign that took us two months and didn't pan out into anything.
LOGAN: totally. Kickstarter doesn't take SaaS. Maybe they do today.
VLAD: Yeah, maybe they do today, but it was basically, uh, the vast majority of our remaining savings. Um, then we had some missteps later on because what happened was we, uh, were self funded until YC, and then we got a little bit of a, of a seed round.
VLAD: Um, and then we were like, when, when that happened, we were still in the mindset of like, we're going to raise a Series A next year. We're just going to do what, [00:56:00] um, you know, the typical startup does. Um, and, uh, that's when we invested into like this. Expensive sandwich video, uh, production, uh, which is like...
VLAD: You know, probably 20 percent of our fund funding at the
LOGAN: Was it a marketing
VLAD: It was a marketing video to, like, launch our CMS, I think, where it just, it just felt like, hey, every startup is doing this. Um, and we're gonna get a bunch of traction by, by making this thing. Uh, but it was the combination of that and seeing our.
VLAD: Uh, you know, our cash balance like drop and then not having enough traction to go raise a new round and getting like that kind of feedback from, uh, you know, from investors. They were like, you just don't have the numbers to raise more money. Um, we just had to force ourselves into all right, like, we kind of have to, we have to be default alive no matter what.
VLAD: Um, and that forces to make, like, different decisions and how fast we hired and, uh, how we actually, like, started monetizing, uh, much better and just focused on building. A product that people bought and used and [00:57:00] loved, uh, and we sort of rode that wave for the next, I think, seven years before we did our actual Series
LOGAN: Is the takeaway from that you were looking for silver bullets and it was actually lead bullets. You just needed to not think we're right around the corner from all these things working out. And instead we need to assume this is the status quo and just keep chopping wood to get there.
VLAD: Almost all of these decisions were driven by Irrational optimism like we'll build this thing and they'll come or we'll do this thing and we'll get distribution. Um, and 95 percent of them didn't pan out that way. Right? Uh, and the takeaway is like, we just got a lot more, you know. By making more of these mistakes, uh, more data that was like, we have to be more disciplined, right?
VLAD: These, these, uh, wild, uninformed bets don't, don't lead to, like, easy, easy money, so. Now, you did have, though,
LOGAN: like, one thing that there was [00:58:00] a Hacker News post or launch that went viral kind of pre product and led to 50, 000 ish people signing up or something. Can you take through like that one?
VLAD: was the, that was the pre YC, um, um, when I, um, when Sergi and Brian and I set this deadline of end of January of like we're running out of money, um, that we were working on this demo, it's still online, it's called CSS Playground, playground. webflow. com, which is essentially like, The we knew we didn't have enough time to build a full product, but it was like, let's just ship the U.
VLAD: I. Part of it to show people like what this new visual abstraction of editing C. S. S. and H. T. M. L. would be, um, and that was our last ditch. Like, let's get this out into the world and show. Um, it's almost like a fancier marketing site, like, what is it going to be if we have a chance to build the whole thing?
VLAD: Um, and that's the thing that took off. Um, and, and it took off in surprising ways because we initially wanted to post it, we posted it on like Designer News, which was a thing back then. Um, to read it [00:59:00] to dig, I think was still a thing and all of them were duds. And then as a last ditch thing, we're like, all right, we'll put it up on hacker news, which is like exactly the audience we thought was going to feel like threatened by the thing we're trying to create.
LOGAN: Because you're abstracting away some of the work
VLAD: code, no code tool. But because of the way that we. Uh, the way it resonated was like, Oh, actually, like respecting the medium. Like, we're actually creating almost like a visual programming language. Um, it, um, it took off like crazy. And we actually, there was one thing that we did that, um, uh, I think led to a lot of that.
VLAD: It's, uh, it wasn't purely the Hacker News crowd. It was the fact that we put in on our marketing page at the time, like, in order to get into the beta, you, you could like, Increase your place in line if you were to share are, you know, like your referral link. Um, and I think. Maybe 10, 000 of, like, the initial signups came in, like, purely through, uh, Hacker News, but the remainder, uh, came in through, like, [01:00:00] these referral links, because people were just, like, uh, giddy to get access to it first, um, and that was a, uh, that was a huge sort of, like, vote of confidence, um, for us and for, like, I think that's what eventually got us into YC to see that kind of traction.
VLAD: Uh, it turns out that out of those, like, 40, 000 plus people, Maybe 40 converted to paying users in the, um, you know, the initial launch that we did. Uh, so, like, the expectation and the reality of, uh, you know, were those the right people are like people motivated to, like, actually use this product. Um, but it was enough to give us like that.
LOGAN: validation and then YC care with, with, with those 40, 40 customers, you did a bunch of, uh, not scalable things to make them work and make them happy, I guess.
LOGAN: And instead of being focused on automation and perfection and all that, you were fairly handholdy with them. Can you talk through what some of those non scalable things were?
VLAD: Yeah, this is almost, um, not intentional, but, uh, [01:01:00] initially came from a place of fear, to be honest, where we're like, whoa, 40, 000 signups on a waiting list, converting to like, almost no one is using the product, but people who are. They're in there like eight hours a day, uh, so we're like, all right, we can't lose this.
VLAD: We can't, um, there's something special here. So let's wrap our arms around them to at least understand what's working for them, uh, and keep improving their, their life. So we would, you know, it was just the three of us. Then, um, we were all, we created a forum. We were like in Skype calls. Uh, we're like maniacally, uh, trying to make sure that the things that those few users, uh, who are like, In it every single day, like whatever was blocking them, we prioritize first, um, to essentially make them, uh, make them see that we're like fanatical about improving the experience because we just didn't want to lose them.
LOGAN: Were there shared commonalities between what they were liking in the product or were you kind of disparately solving different[01:02:00]
VLAD: Thankfully, there were. Um, so the overlap was the product was so limited initially, right? You literally build one single static page. Um, so it was so limited in its use case. But the fact that the vast majority of those folks were designers or somehow designer oriented people that came from an environment where they had to rely on a developer.
VLAD: To to build, you know, pro like more pro
LOGAN: websites.
VLAD: websites. Um, they had that commonality. Everyone's like, I know the power of, um, you know, uh, being able to build a site for a client and how much they're willing to pay. And now I can do that myself without relying on a developer like that for them was like, deeply
LOGAN: empowering,
VLAD: right?
VLAD: Like now they can make a living or at least start to like, build a practice or make a living through this. Um, Uh, uh, through this tool that otherwise would require them to go pay some developer, give them like Photoshop files and have them translated to JavaScript. Um, so it was that commonality. I'm building things for clients or I'm building, like, my own portfolio.
VLAD: Uh, so [01:03:00] it was all within a surface area that was like, broadly cohesive where we could pick out like, okay, this big thing is actually going to address 90%, um, of, you know, the folks here. Some people have like wild use cases that were like,
LOGAN: Yeah, we don't want to
VLAD: yeah, we want to, we want to solve it, but we don't want to like solve it at the expense of these 90 other
LOGAN: So it's three of you. You're using Skype calls. What are some of the like, uh, non scalable things that you you did beyond just talking to, to them and hearing their use case and prioritizing their problems?
LOGAN: Is there anything that stands out or that you remember? It was like, all right, this isn't going to work for a long time, but
VLAD: yeah, the thing that didn't feel scalable was, you know, every support ticket because we were.
VLAD: Essentially doing support 7 hours a day and, like, coding 3 hours a day or something like that, because there's just so much, so much handholding through, like, the early, um, customer cohort. Then, um, what that created. Uh, thankfully is that like those people then started supporting other [01:04:00] people in the community like they'd get together like through a forum or whatever, uh, but that definitely didn't feel
LOGAN: scalable.
VLAD: Well, at that point. Yeah, at that point, uh, we were so there wasn't even this. Um, everyone knew there was three guys in a garage basically working on this stuff. So there wasn't even a, like, I would expect you to respond to this cause you just like,
LOGAN: beasted
VLAD: uh, released it to the world and it kind of sucks and it's buggy.
VLAD: Uh, so of course I would expect the people building it to be responding. Uh, but to us, it felt like it was months and months of like, okay, we're not building anything. Like we're, we're understanding more about our customers, but we're also like so tired from like constantly doing support. And that's when we started to.
VLAD: Create more and more systems for like our community to be part of like that story so that people can support each other and like Kind of build up ambassadors build up You know people who are like really passionate knowledgeable about the product to be like that Yeah,
LOGAN: I want to come back to the community because I think you guys have done that [01:05:00] uniquely well. But, uh, so, so you apply to YC, there's this big launch, 40, people sign up. You have, uh, some path to paying customers and some sign that there's something people want. Uh, they call you and say, you get accepted and then they email you and you're rejected.
VLAD: that was a probably the biggest roller coaster
LOGAN: Cause YC was going to be the validation of whether or not to keep or not,
VLAD: yeah, yeah, I mean this there's a I don't know how much time we have for the story but it was basically
LOGAN: Much time as you
VLAD: Yeah, we, um, you know, the three of us were so nervous after our interview there, like, we thought we bombed it because there was, um, uh, interviewer there, Kevin Hale, who, like, started WUFU. Um, it was like this form builder thing that he knew everything about web design, right?
VLAD: Because he's like a designer. And, uh, It wasn't even on the website, um, and, and, uh, we go in and we get grilled by this guy who, like, knows the ins and outs of, like, WordPress, HTML, CSS, etc.
LOGAN: And a YC interview at that time was how [01:06:00] long?
VLAD: Uh, ten minutes. Ten minutes. Yeah.
LOGAN: So, you have
LOGAN: Wufoo, someone that's built form
LOGAN: understands like how web design actually works, in ten minutes grilling the three
VLAD: three like with extreme precision and skepticism around like, this is where, you know, have you thought about this?
VLAD: We're like, no, have you? Um, uh, you know, do you understand how like agency? Sort of monetization works. Uh, so we, we walked out feeling completely dejected. Like, all right, we, we bomb this thing. So just to pass time, we go to watch this, this movie, uh, oblivion with Tom cruise. Uh, and that's when I get the phone call now, and it's from, uh, public, uh, who's like the creator of Gmail.
VLAD: Um, and he's like, You're, uh, you're in. Would you, uh, like to accept it? And I'm like, of course. Um, and we go back to watch, watch the movie. And I'm like, still, for whatever reason, like, religiously checking my email. Cause they, they tell you, like, expect an email if it's a rejection. Or expect a phone call if, um, uh, if it's a, [01:07:00] uh, If they accept you, and this rejection comes through that says exactly what I would say if, um, you know, an investment opportunity like Webflow came along.
VLAD: It was like the product that you have is not sophisticated enough for pros like developers, and it's too hard for, you know, everyone else to figure out because Webflow is sort of if you think of Squarespace and Wix, those are like iMovie were like After Effects or Final Cut Pro. It's like a super pro version that Bring gives you the power, but it has a learning curve.
VLAD: Um, and what that is. The most specific reason, of course, that's the like the rejection is the correct one. I think back to the conversation I just had over the phone. Um, you know, not like 20 minutes ago, and it was very generic, like, didn't even say web flow. Didn't call me by name is more like a hey, you guys are in type of thing.
VLAD: Um. And I immediately assumed that the phone call was a mistake, and we try to reach, uh, you know, call Paul back, try to respond to the email, uh, we don't get any [01:08:00] responses back, and by the way, at this time, before we went in to, uh, went in to watch the movie, we called, you know, I called my wife and kids, they're like, uh, got a restaurant, and they're like, already driving to like, book a table, um, Uh, you know, my brother Sergei's, uh, girlfriend was on the way and, um, uh, co founder Brian's girlfriend was also driving from San Francisco to Almeida.
VLAD: So we're like, you know, excited we're going to finish this movie, going to have a celebration dinner. Um, and for two hours, we don't hear anything back. And, um, we're like calling our family saying like, Hey,
LOGAN: Did you guys step out of the movie?
VLAD: We stepped out of the movie. It was like, I, you know, showed the guys the, um, the email and we're like.
VLAD: You know, we went from
LOGAN: it's a good movie. It's not that good of a movie.
VLAD: Yeah. Um, uh, and oblivion is kind of a oddly appropriate name for how we felt then. Um, so, and it's already getting dark. So, at that point, we're like, well. We can't get in touch. Might as well just go try to drive to where we had the interview and see, um, see if somebody will open the [01:09:00] door.
VLAD: Um, and as we're driving, we get a phone call that says like, hey, the, um, the email was a mistake.
LOGAN: did you ever get to root of what happened? I mean, clearly someone was against you joining it was that specific in the right?
VLAD: The... What I understand so far is that they had a pretty rudimentary process on a whiteboard.
VLAD: Um, and once there's a, and it was sort of, um, uh, someone saw the wrong line, uh, that, that were rejected and had to come up with a reason. So it was sort of, uh, um,
LOGAN: like
VLAD: Like, they were responsible for writing the email, so they came up with the reason, uh, because they were in the room, et cetera. So, uh, I think it was just an honest mistake.
VLAD: Um, uh, you know, there was a part of me that, that thought initially that, you know, they were sort of, um, kind of meant to reject us and then, uh,
LOGAN: anyway,
VLAD: us anyway because of the mistake. But, uh, I think ultimately, um, what was described to me was just like, it was just a, you know, they changed their process after that to make it more, like, [01:10:00] Spreadsheet
LOGAN: yeah, yeah.
LOGAN: so so now you join YC. How big were cohorts at the time?
VLAD: This was the last batch I think that was all together. So there were 45 companies
LOGAN: So was Paul Graham still leading
VLAD: yep, I think it was his last
LOGAN: Got So 40 companies all together.
VLAD: Across different office hours. So I think we were in four different groups.
LOGAN: Got it.
VLAD: I believe, yeah.
LOGAN: Uh, and so you, how long is YC?
VLAD: Two and a half months, three
LOGAN: Two and a half, months.
LOGAN: And so, uh, you have this very ambitious roadmap of that you're going to go
LOGAN: after. And we want to build this
LOGAN: perfect product. Because know what good looks right? You were designer, CS, know what you want to build. And, uh, the roadmap to get there was probably,
LOGAN: Years. Not, not weeks.
VLAD: What I thought back then, because I was thinking more as a client, because I did a lot of website, uh, sort of jobs for smaller businesses. Um, and I was a web designer, [01:11:00] so it was like, no way I would. pay for something that only lets you build a single page or I can't do a blog.
VLAD: So in my mind, like the, the bare minimum was like, you have to match what WordPress has for anybody to be willing to pay for it.
LOGAN: because you know what good looks like. And so doing something less than that just feels unbecoming or not. a real,
VLAD: wasn't just unbecoming. It was like, I literally didn't believe in my heart of hearts that people would be willing to pay for a limited product.
VLAD: Like I thought people would just like laugh at us. Uh, uh, because that's what I thought. I would probably do if I saw like a really limited product compared to what I'm used to as a web designer, you know, being able to do in code or in Dreamweaver or whatever. So I really thought that like the bare minimum of product market fit that we would be able to like reasonably charge for had to have like all of this breadth.
VLAD: I think in my mind, I thought that, you know, we could build all that stuff in six months. Uh, um, you know, just given the momentum we had back then. Um, but even with that momentum, it took us like. Almost two years to build what I [01:12:00] imagine it was like the bare minimum of, uh, wanting to charge for.
LOGAN: And so YC actually threatened to kick you out for not shipping a product?
VLAD: One of the, uh, one of the, we were like struggling with this, like, well, we're definitely not going to monetize cause we just don't have, we'll like get users and we'll get, uh, let them like play with what we have.
VLAD: Uh, but we're not actually going to add, uh, any sort of like paid plans because it's not good enough yet. Um, and one of the partners, um, Essentially, it was a visiting partner, um, who was like, look, you if you don't actually charge for it, it means that people don't value it enough. Um, that means you're not creating a good product.
VLAD: Like, so I, uh, if you're actually going to demo day and you tell investors that you're afraid to charge for your product, it means that you believe it's not good enough. Right? And, and you're not going to have any traction to show them. Um, and it felt. Yeah. We felt enough of, like, I don't know, fire in our bellies, like, I might as well do what YC says, because they [01:13:00] know, you know, they've sort of been around the block, and I've seen companies make this mistake before, and it was absolutely the right call, like, it felt deep in our bones that we weren't ready for monetization, and the initial, like, I initially had some Um, some of these, these sort of like regrets when we went from like 40, 000 people to just, you know, a handful or like 40, 50 actually converting, uh, you know, I was thinking to myself, well, that must be because we're like overcharging or we're charging for something that's not ready for prime time yet.
VLAD: But ultimately, that was the best decision because it like. A, it really elevated like who we should be listening to, like, um, you know, people who value what we had at the time enough, uh, that they're willing to pay for it. And it brought them so much, like seeing what they were actually able to build with it, even with what I imagined was like a limited product, uh, because I was a developer and I could see how I could do, um, you know, Webflow plus development.
VLAD: Um, you know, I, [01:14:00] I sort of saw it as like a, well, it kind of empowers me a little bit, but not like Uh, you know, uh, to a 10 X degree when we saw that early cohort of users, they were like, this is a 100 X superpower for me because I'm coming from be like creating a design and relying on somebody else to do it and paying, you know, and if they're working with a client, usually like 90 percent of, uh, the entire service feed to developers because that was a hard part for them.
VLAD: It was like life changing, right? Sometimes they were making Thousands, tens of thousands of dollars for, uh, like sites and landing pages that they were selling, that they were paying Webflow like 20 bucks a month, um, to develop on. Uh, at that point, the community started to get helped out. Yeah. You touched on this a I would say a fanatical or supportive community, uh, that's very passionate, and I'm sure that's mostly a good thing, but at times,
LOGAN: a month,
VLAD: absolutely, uh, a great
LOGAN: Yeah, I'm sure there's [01:15:00] some underbelly to at, points in time. How did you think about getting like that point in the journey where it went from Skype calls, and you were just handholding dealing with all the support tickets to the point that it was a little bit more scalable and there was some community there and you mentioned, I forget if you call brand ambassadors or people that were doing first line support work and helping answer other people's questions and all that. Can you? Can you take us from that initial point to, like, when it became a little bit more automated?
VLAD: I don't think it ever became automated, um, but it definitely became organically more scalable, um, through, especially that first year where... We, um, identified by spending a lot of time with like early users. Um, we kind of by necessity, we knew we had to set up a forum. We had to set up a place where people collect, ask questions, um, [01:16:00] and, um, kind of document how they were doing things, et cetera.
VLAD: Like, we had to, by necessity say, hey, this is what we're You know, we're not going to get back to your ticket for like 24 hours, just because we're overwhelmed or whatever. But in the meantime, please check out the form. Um, and as we were talking to more and more people, like in these live sessions, um, we literally like ask them, uh, to like, can you, can you also jump into the forum and help the thing that we just walked through?
VLAD: Can you maybe like create a video or tutorial? Uh, and, and that started creating a. Yeah. Um, kind of organic flywheel where those people would do that once or twice, and they would see the reaction to like, thank you. I was trying to figure this out. Um, and that created, I don't know, a different sense of purpose for them.
VLAD: I think where they were. Um, I think the thing that's unique about Webflow as a product is that, like, it unlocks the ability for people to truly make a living, right? They go from, um, uh, kind of being a not a cognitive machine, but [01:17:00] maybe part of a process to now, like, Potentially driving the entire like creative, creative and production process for them.
VLAD: So when, um, it was actually surprising to see that. Uh, a lot of freelancers or people who were like learning this tool, who theoretically would be competing for the same clients, um, so enthusiastically jump into the forum and, and, um, like offer to jump on a call and say, here's how I did this, or here's how I like I pitch this to my clients, or here's how I built this layout or whatever.
VLAD: Um, I think in that case, the. Sort of benefit to others and like this, uh, you know, feeling of like, I'm providing value. I'm supporting others. I'm like creating the sense of community. Um, like one out over potential like fears of, okay, am I, you know, kind of disclosing that this is my secret weapon? Um, that feels like a secret weapon compared to what I had before.
VLAD: But it was honestly like more organic than like, yeah, Intentionally super structured.
LOGAN: You weren't doing the Reddit thing that you were populating like in the early days of Reddit? I think they [01:18:00] submitted like the first whatever, every single day. I think it took like a couple weeks before it was
VLAD: we, we did a little bit of that in our forum, like we created some accounts that would like Encourage other people.
VLAD: We have this thing where, hey, if you're, um, if you are posting a site that you want some help on, but it's like read only link. So other people can go in, including, you know, us from a support perspective to see how they built something and say, like, oh, hey, you got this wrong, et cetera. So we, uh, we created some fake accounts where we just, um, like, Try to encourage the behavior of like, Hey, can you please post your, uh, you know, read only link.
VLAD: So it wasn't just like us reminding that sort of built a little bit of a norm, uh, that other people like real people who would respond would start with that, even if they don't know how to solve a problem, they'd be like, first to jump in, which actually created the sense of like, Hey, my problems don't solve yet.
VLAD: But somebody cares. Somebody is like engaging in this thread. Um, what? Usually, like you post something in a form, which like goes to die. Um, so I think all those things [01:19:00] combined kind of led to the sense of momentum that like self free. Was self reinforcing. Um, we, we absolutely had to still, like, scale a support team and start and figure out how do we actually, uh, create like, you know, frontline support that doesn't just rely on, um, community members, uh, but the, the community relationships that started happening from that I have, like, absolutely blossomed, right?
VLAD: Like, people in competing agencies will, like, get together, uh, um, you know, every few months or every year and, like, share tips around how to, like, leverage the platform or how to get clients. Um, and that, that has just been, like, Really awesome to see, um, and, and kind of this pay it forward mentality where you have, like, larger agencies who have, like, figured it out, uh, creating programs for, like, freelancers to grow into agencies or, like, hiring from that community base, um, I think that's just been, like, probably Webflow's biggest superpower, um, in that it's, [01:20:00] I don't know, so much about the people, it's not just a tool.
LOGAN: the people. If, if you're trying to get there or even capture a fraction of Webflow's community as a, as another company or B2B or maybe just a founder, like what the lesson of all this, uh, is, is there any thing you can extrapolate from it or was it just such a unique moment in time that recreating it might, might just be survivorship bias?
VLAD: Well, I know that recreating it, especially in, um, companies or products that actually have this direct correlation to income. So I think of WordPress, right? They have a massive community that we were inspired by, uh, Shopify, Salesforce through like their Trailblazer program. Um, uh, Figma, et cetera, where you have, Um, there are a lot of things you can learn.
VLAD: [01:21:00] They're, they're probably, um, startups and, uh, sort of services or offerings or products that are not quite, they don't have, they're not conducive to, um, uh, you know, community as a, uh, whether support mechanism or distribution mechanism, because there's no, uh, there's not much value to people supporting each other.
VLAD: So, like, I don't know, I'm just randomly thinking, like, pick, Pick a fast growing startup, um, like ramp, like, you know, we both love ramp. Uh, ramp uses web flow. Um, 1 of my favorite companies. I don't know if ramp has a. You know, ambassador program, uh, I'm sure they have, like, a referral program, but I don't know if there's like a huge community.
VLAD: Like, I don't I'm not drawn to go. Okay, what other companies are using ramp? Let's go have hangouts. Um, and not a knock on ramp, but it,
LOGAN: you think the distinction is that that income element
LOGAN: of like building your
VLAD: that income element or something is hard enough to learn that, uh, there is a group learning and group support dynamic that is [01:22:00] required. Um, so usually something that needs like training, like I think of you, I pass, for example. Big community, right? Because you, um, like it takes a while, anything that you might put on a resume and say, like, this is a skill, exactly like this is a certification or a set of experience that actually qualifies me for, uh, a certain type of like knowledge work or whatever.
VLAD: I think that is more conducive to, um, community. And the other, um, aspect to which, like, our community has been super powerful is not just the support aspect, but in this, like, customer driven. Way of seeing what's possible. Uh, because what flows like, um, in the category of tools that have a pretty low barrier to entry, but extremely high ceiling of what's possible, right?
VLAD: Like, because it's essentially an abstraction over HTML, CSS, JavaScript, databases, et cetera. The kinds of things you can create are so long. Um, you know, diverse that, um, just by seeing what another community member has created can [01:23:00] inspire, like, Oh, whoa, how did how did you do that? And we had, you know, and still have all of these sort of like structured programs around how do you with this concept of cloneables and like experts where you can showcase the things that you've built and then So Others can sort of like remix and copy paste or like clone those things and like build on top of them or just learn from how you did that.
VLAD: But just the the the, fact of seeing it's kind of like what's happening with AI right now. Seeing what's possible, like inspires a Um, uh, you know, okay, now that I know that this is a sort of tool in my toolbox, I can imagine doing this in a fundamentally, like, I can now, uh, try to explore, like, the kind of possibilities of this medium or whatever, which was a pretty big factor in, um, not just like that support angle, but people actually just being blown away of like, whoa, you did that and you did that in like a visual tool.
VLAD: Maybe I should check it out. Uh, maybe I, you know, can like [01:24:00] dive in and see. Thank you.
LOGAN: As you think about product roadmap and development, is there a single archetype that you're solving for? How do you think about, like, you have the spectrum of customer size, you have the spectrum of user technical capabilities and all that. How do you think about the trade offs of product roadmap?
VLAD: uh, it's a great question. And by answer answer would probably change, uh, um, year to year, right? Because you like, learn more,
LOGAN: kind of whack a mole.
VLAD: uh, not quite whack a mole, thankfully. Um, but it is such a diverse set of customers, uh, like, across business sizes, individuals, use cases, et cetera. What we found, um, that is, uh, kind of most centering is to build at the intersection of.
VLAD: Okay. Uh, where it benefits, uh, the most people, but that still benefits from, uh, defining a pretty concrete, like, ideal customer profile that, um, you know, in our case, it happens to [01:25:00] be companies that are getting towards a larger scale into, like, the corporate realm of, you know, 50 employees and up, maybe all the way to like 2000, um, that Have, you know, they, they really value a professional website.
VLAD: They like it drives their entire funnel. Right. And they have, um, the, the need to express. They need the kind of customization that Webflow provides, because it provides a similar level of customization as if you were coding, right? Um, and that means that it's probably not the best solution for like a mom and pop shop to go like, uh, learn all of that complexity, or learn how to build a super pro website.
VLAD: But, A, um, a company at that stage is willing to pay for a service provider that might be an individual, right? That needs the same level of capabilities because they're ultimately serving that kind of company. So then all of a sudden you're like serving the needs of a individual freelancer or small agency.
VLAD: But the ultimate goal is that they're building a pro website for a [01:26:00] business that really values it and is willing to pay for not only the, um, you know, the initial build cost, but the ongoing like maintenance and because it. Okay. Provides them a lot of business value. So that has like this really, even by focusing on that one ICP, it gives you a pretty wide halo effect, even into larger enterprises, because you might have, you know, like we're building for, let's say, 1000 person team and their needs.
VLAD: And then we're looking at something like, um, I don't know, Procter and Gamble, massive enterprise, right? Uh, they have such Disparate requirements to, like, try to rebuild, uh, their main website, but they have a bunch of subsidiaries like Pampers. com runs on Webflow because it's a smaller team. It's more than that size, and it introduces that concept of building completely differently into a much larger company, uh, which then, like, uh, grows and kind of, uh, like, spreads to other departments.
VLAD: Um, so, you know. The vast majority of the things that we do, like, even if we say, Hey, there's this primary target, [01:27:00] it has this, like, very wide applicable surface area. Um, it's still, there's still a lot of nuance and like, how do you price this stuff? Uh, when, you know, the willingness to pay for, for a company that's like 500 employees, uh, uh, is so drastically different from a small business or a small startup that will be 500 employees three years from now.
VLAD: Um, but it's like. Two founders in a, in a garage today.
LOGAN: I want to talk about pricing in a second, but one of the things like a feature of your product is graduation, right?
LOGAN: And the negative term for it would be churn. But uh, has it been hard at different points in time to say, Hey, we have this customer and they've grown up with us and now they're at a scale where they're going to go do something else? It's like. I assume now you've come to peace with like, that's actually a feature and we'll go get get a different department within them.
LOGAN: But did you, did you ever feel the pull of like, well, if we reprioritize our [01:28:00] product roadmap, then we could keep them around for longer or is that just that long term focus that you do? Inevitably people will graduate and therefore ICP.
VLAD: The graduation for us has become less and less of an issue, uh, the more powerful the platform has become. Um, so it's usually, there's a lot more friction on initial adoption, especially with enterprises, uh, when they're coming from a much more complex, uh, you know, platform like this. Adobe experience manager or something like that.
VLAD: Uh, so that is much more of a, um, you lose a lot more people on the way in, um, to, like, convince them that you can actually replatform and have the vast majority of the benefits that they have, uh, in the other platform. In in the areas that really matter where we differentiate, which is like visual development.
VLAD: You can move 10 times faster. Marketing totally owns the production of the website without relying on engineering. Engineering actually loves it because they get to go work on the hard parts of the product, which is like where innovation lives anyway. And, uh, [01:29:00] once you get them, websites don't change so dramatically, even at these like fast growing companies that it like you, uh, you grow out of what's possible, right?
VLAD: Given the flexibility that we have in the platform right now, because even if, uh, you, we might not have a specific feature, we have all these escape hatches with like our developer ecosystem with custom code with different ways through, um, like plugins and extensions to augment that power. Um, the, the more, the, Historically, the tougher turn has been more on the, you know, somebody comes in, tries to learn, uh, or tries to like start a business, um, as a freelancer and like, uh, kind of struggles to get clients, right?
VLAD: Um, and then they, you know, kind of fall off or try to come back or they don't, don't, uh, make enough to make a living and they, you know, start to do this on the side or whatever. That is a much more, um, you know, historically has been more of a challenge, uh, than a graduation. Um, I, and I think the. Um, but there is a to answer your like, I guess [01:30:00] the last question was there were times in the life of the company.
VLAD: I think it was 2015 where we got this opportunity to work with under armor. Uh, they're like 1st biggest enterprise customer. And like, we're like anything they asked for. Let's just build it. We just don't, you know, uh, anything to get the deal done. Um, and we pretty quickly learned that, um, you know, like companies have such.
VLAD: Uh, the companies at that scale have such wildly different needs that something that works for them doesn't work for 99 percent of our customer base. So we just had to like, deprioritize that opportunity.
LOGAN: You touched on something earlier about once there's this tension, Adobe Experience Manager, much more complex, uh, products that there's, there's elements increasingly, sounds like you can do the same with as can, but certainly in the early days, probably there were, um, there were lack of features or, or capabilities that that you didn't have. Uh, but, but that it was actually engineers were. [01:31:00] Ultimately relieved to not have to to empower the marketing department. It's an interesting, uh, uh, tangent or, uh, don't know, example for A. I. And the debate of Hey, there were definitely people that whole job was probably centered around managing Adobe experience within these big enterprises.Right? And Webflow comes in and they say, uh, well, no, I don't want to do because we can't do these And, uh, but ultimately they, they found their way to being more empowered because they could go work on. More impactful, uh, interesting problems than that. How do you think about, uh, that I guess as it relates to artificial intelligence? And I know you're embedding AI your product as well. Is that a analogy in your mind?
VLAD: Yeah, I think the, um, historically what I've seen, [01:32:00] there's like The fears of that kind of displacement, um, and I know I could be a whole different level, uh, but historically, like, the fears of that kind of technological displacement, um, have actually paradoxically led to more. Opportunity, um, than displacement of certain skills.
VLAD: So, you know, I think of, um, of Webflow itself when we first launched a lot. There are a lot of, um, people who are just like doing purely Photoshop to HTML and CSS translation, right? There are mostly coders. Um, and none of those coders lost jobs, right? They're just like coding more complex things. They like learn jQuery that do front end stuff.
VLAD: Um, sure. Like, they might have, uh, might have had to, like, retool, uh, to where they. Can't run a business anymore, like, give me a photoshop file and translate it, but it broadly led to, um, way more opportunity, including for those folks who might have been displaced. I think it may be a different story [01:33:00] for in general.
VLAD: Right? Like, I, um, there might be some, some roles that are. Uh, like overly manual today that that could, um, could be more or less fully automated, especially around the things that are, like, so directly aligned to large language models that are, um, you know, literally had people like Mechanical Turk style summarizing things that might not be viable anymore.
VLAD: But to me, it's a it still feels like a bicycle for the mind type of situation where the vast majority of the time, the added benefit of this new assistive technology actually creates a lot more avenues for new knowledge work to emerge, like new products to be created. Um, you know, paradoxically would like the entire no code and local movement has created More demand for coders because there's now more shots on goal, like more people creating, uh, things that published to the web that become like web app like [01:34:00] experiences, um, that then inevitably reach some limit of like the initial sort of like no code or automation tools where you have to bring in, uh, additional engineers because now you have, like, 10 startups trying to, uh, do the same thing that as they scale, maybe, you know, six of them fail, but the, the three net additive ones that wouldn't have been created if it wasn't for no code tools just mean that there's, like, would have been less demand, uh, for coders.
VLAD: And we have, like, the biggest, uh, software engineering gap, um, than we've ever had today, right? Even with, like, even with AI, even with Copilot, even with every single, you know, university trying to train more people to become developers. Um. I think it's gonna be true for AI, right? Like, um, Especially for things that are really complex, uh, Even with generative AI right now, like, as well as it understands code, You have to, like, it generates code into an editor that you have to, like, Know how to connect to everything else.
VLAD: And when we're [01:35:00] still in a world where the vast majority of like fully, uh, generated things that are not, uh, edited in. It's like source code in whatever generated. Um, there's still so, so limited, right there. Um, we don't have line of sight to where, um, like the entire software engineering process is completely problem driven.
VLAD: It's just sometimes it's not even like the most efficient way to do things, right? Because it's. Um, like, trying to describe, hey, on this element, in this, uh, you know, column, in the third button, uh, make it blue or whatever. Um, there's a, even the act of describing something is, like, so much slower than, like, direct manipulation.
LOGAN: At some point we moved from, uh, prompts to a mouse and that, that empowered a lot of different, I mean, sure, some people still use the keyboard to get around in Excel and that's faster, but like there's at times visual elements that are just quicker to do things for the masses.
VLAD: me, it's just like the equivalent of a [01:36:00] calculator or maybe the equivalent of Excel, right? When Excel first came onto the scene, there was like all these massive fears around You know, financial modelers are displaced, like every, um, every computer scientist that's working like Fortran and Pascal to, like, build these charts or whatever. And lo and behold, we now have, like, completely transformational, like, entire businesses sometimes run their, uh, you know, I started my career investment bankers I talked to in the 80s work 18 hour days investment bankers I talked to in 2023 work 18 hour
LOGAN: years
VLAD: I'm pretty sure, um, you know, this sucks to say, but. Ten years from now, like, uh, even with all the enablement, um, uh, and assistive technology that we'll get, we'll still figure out ways to work 18 hour days, um, in investment banking. Not at Webflow.
LOGAN: Yeah people, people are very imaginative in their to make up work, especially at investment
VLAD: Right. And you always like new opportunities, [01:37:00] like new innovations that you're just like building, you know, you just now have more Lego blocks to, to combine and you're standing on like taller giants, but you're still standing on the shoulders of giants to create something new.
Taking your time raising money
LOGAN: So you waited a long time to raise or you raised initially after YC and then took...seven years from, from raising money. Maybe take me through, uh, why didn't you raise more initially and then ultimately what was the decision to raise?
VLAD: I think we, um, there was a genuine desire to, uh, initially, but we just weren't growing fast enough.
LOGAN: And what was the constraint of growth for you? Was it product fullness?
VLAD: was product, uh, it was essentially, we didn't have, um, many distribution channels. Like it was primarily word of mouth and community. Uh, there, uh, you know, there wasn't a place outside of the WordPress ecosystem where you could like find a lot of web designers at one place. Like it was so disparate, [01:38:00] right.
LOGAN: Was the market ready at that point? Had you had all the distribution channels, would it have worked or did the market need to mature more?
VLAD: It's hard to say. I think if we if we were able to get in front of every potential web designer somehow, uh, we would have had Way, um, faster growth and, um, we would have inflected earlier, uh, so it was mostly like we weren't able to reach the folks that we needed to reach. We know that now from, you know, when people discover Webflow, they're like, I wish I knew about this, you know, many, many years ago.
VLAD: Uh, or like, we, we heard that a lot. Once we actually got to them, we just didn't have, they're, they're not, there's not a place. There's no like web designer news dot com or whatever, uh, where people hang out. And it's usually like, yeah. The person in the neighborhood was like the web person or like the website person who like knows the thing.
VLAD: Um, so yes, it was a version of, uh, not having distribution, but also I think once we, once we saw this sort of existential [01:39:00] moment or like crap, we're running out of cash, we, we have to, uh, get to default alive and actually like live on revenue. Once you cross, once you see that, like, The chart turnaround where your revenue and your expenses, uh, like your expenses start to grow or your revenue starts to grow at the same, you know, they're parallel, uh, if not like revenues faster, it's just like such a magical moment because you like feel in control of your own destiny.
VLAD: You're like, why would we mess this up? Like, why would we create a situation where like we, Um, put ourselves in danger of running out of cash, which I, at, uh, at the time, I thought that, you know, all, um, or most VCs were kind of oriented around, you know, growth at all costs. Um, you know, this entire, um, infinite game type of thinking, I thought it would be like a hard sell for a lot of folks.
VLAD: And it was only, you know, after years and years of, you know, Dating, um, and finding the right partner that was like, okay, I actually believe that somebody [01:40:00] is, um, like a very philosophically, uh, aligned, uh, you know, from like a values perspective, also so excited about like seeing, um, you know, where we can head 20 years from now, uh, and like had all the assurances that not, not only is it them who are like all in, uh, but also like even the LPs that they have, um, are more long term oriented.
VLAD: So even if they had to like wait, 15 years, like there's mechanics to make sure that there's not like, um, you know, undue pressure that the company's not ready for to, um, kind of go public or whatever. So that's a, um, it's just a combination of those things where, uh, once we became profitable or break even, it just kind of, Left our minds for a while, um, and just focused on building product when it became more of a, um, uh, more top of mind was where we saw, holy crap.
VLAD: We have so much more opportunity. Like, we could be buildings where, you know, every time we would [01:41:00] make another 10 K and revenue, we'd like, go hire another person. Um, so it's like, very constrained by by revenue, but we had, like, these. Larger and larger ambitions around like if we had if we had more people, we would be able to, like, take these bigger bets.
VLAD: Um, and and that's when you know, this is like 2019 where it was like the math started to make sense around if we actually have a very long term oriented partner, our set of partners and are able to actually build much sooner. Um, because now we have, like, all these customers are like, I want you to, um, like your platform is great, but I'm now basing my entire business on it.
VLAD: Um, We need XYZ and we're just like not building fast enough. Um, and that's where it made sense to like forward invest and actually take, take these big swings, but always from the perspective like this is the last money we're going to raise. Uh, so let's not, uh, let's still always be thinking of, um, you know, this is, we have to remain default alive.
VLAD: Of course, we had our moments where like, you kind of start to forget about discipline, [01:42:00] uh, when, um, you know, yeah. When you're hiring really quickly and, uh, you start to feel less and less constrained, but then you, um, you know, having that previous experience always reminds you of like, alright, we're getting a little too far away from our, um, more disciplined roots.
LOGAN: Were there points in that journey up till you, you raised that there were big product market fit unlocks where you got to a fullness of feature set that it really growth accelerated because of the product being there? Was it really just compounding throughout and incrementally making the product better?
VLAD: We had, uh, pretty marked inflections of growth that were almost always product driven. So we released our interactions engine, which was like, to a ton of growth. Um, and then, you know,
LOGAN: which interactions engine?
VLAD: so it's basically making, uh, like all the animations and [01:43:00] interactions that it's essentially the JavaScript abstraction, uh, where you can, without code, say, Hey, when I scroll this page, something appears, or when I click this, um, what, there's like an animation, et cetera.
VLAD: Um, that was our first big bet. Uh, and actually that came from, It was our first employee's idea. He was kind of working on the side. We were like, I don't know if it's going to be a big thing. It ended up being like one of our biggest growth drivers.
LOGAN: Was there a lesson there like, empowering people within the team to make those?
VLAD: After that, we started doing like more hackathons, more, um, more ways to encourage, you know, people to bring their ideas forward. Like that's when we learned, right? Like maybe just founder intuition is not the, um, like You know, your gut, gut sense is not always right. Um, neither is like, you know, purely data driven sort of decisions always right.
VLAD: I was right. Um, and then our CMS was probably the biggest inflection point where it was really unlocked the ability for, um, you know, going from [01:44:00] static to dynamic sites. Um, and then e commerce was a big inflection point as well. Since then, it's sort of been like growing. It's more like this enterprise bed where it's actually the same core product, but expanding into, um, Like the, you know, sometimes people call it like the user and chooser, uh, sort of features where it's, you know, the things that are important to like larger teams, like compliance, security and enterprise grade kind of roles and permissions and things like that, which were kind of like a slower unlock, but not a, like you launch something and all of a sudden things take off.
VLAD: Um, we have some big bets coming that I think will, uh, will be an even bigger. Acceleration, uh, because we're going, uh, from one product to, uh, potentially multiple. Um, depending on how you want to look at it.
LOGAN: you took money from Arun at Excel in 2019?
VLAD: 2019.
LOGAN: And it was
VLAD: a 72 million
LOGAN: a 72 million Series A?
VLAD: like that, yeah.
Pros and cons of venture capital
LOGAN: [01:45:00] Now, looking back on it, um, and for people that are listening, how do you think about the pros and cons? Clearly, constraint was a... Uh, a benefit to you. I think it sounds like it was fair to say. How do you think about, um, the venture capital as a product, venture capitalists? Like, what advice would you have on, uh, on all of that?
VLAD: Honestly, our experience has been stellar, um, in terms of both Arun and Ben at Excel, like they essentially became like extended team members, right? Um, uh, and then Leila from Capital G and then, uh, most recently, um, uh, Ali from YC Continuity, which unfortunately they, they shut down, uh, but the, the journey has always been like, like pretty much like adding another co founder.
VLAD: That's what it's felt like, you know, somebody that is so, um, yeah. Uh, so inspired and motivated by the overall [01:46:00] mission, but also is there for like, all right, how do we make this better? Um, so for us, it's always been a, a really positive, um, uh, type of relationship, but I think it's also a byproduct of, again, some survivorship bias in the sense that we were able to get to a certain scale, um, that, uh, we had the optionality to, to be able to say, Hey, actually, I'm, you know, like literally asking you to like, It sounds overly formal, but like agree to this social contract
LOGAN: social not getting signed at the seed stage you don't have any
VLAD: Exactly. That we're like, just trying to get any any money in to survive. Um, so I think it's a like everything else. It's a tool. Right? But I think it's a. Uh, could be an especially dangerous tool, if not well understood or not well respected. Um, in the sense that you are bringing a co founder or starting a company with somebody that you don't trust.
VLAD: Uh, or somebody that you don't know well. [01:47:00] Um, that could have really negative, uh, side effects. Um, not only personally, but like for the entire company, like, um, strategically, financially, etc. So... Uh, it is something kind of like sometimes people say it's more like a marriage, uh, where you, you have to go in eyes wide open with like both the, the pros, um, of what, uh, that partnership brings because any great partnership should have, uh, benefits to everybody, uh, to everybody.
VLAD: Right. And, um, any toxic partnership is, uh, you know, harmful in every sense of the word. Right. Uh, and if you are intentional around, like, creating the conditions where you can, like, keep each other accountable and honest and actually have that, uh, forward alignment around, like, what's most important. That's, you know, for us, it's given us wings and superpowers, so it just feels like more people rowing us [01:48:00] more people that are rolling towards our mission.
LOGAN: Is there a rate of absorption that your market has, and so you want to go as fast as you possibly can so that XYZ competitor doesn't take it, or is it, hey, we want to stay within the bounds of controlling our own destiny, and so therefore we can go as fast as, or is it, hey, we can only hire so many people a year, and therefore, like, what are the constraints as you think about growing?
VLAD: The main constraint has always been default alive. Uh, are we does our mission survive in the way that we want if we don't raise additional capital. So that's always like, you know, the first line in any financial model, right? Like, when do we run on money? What's our runway? Um, then there's a lot of like, optionality and nuance there, right? Like, there's [01:49:00] a big difference between, um, uh, you know, you forward invest for a year or two where you're burning faster, but then you still have, like, every option is like, if you stop hiring or, like, slow down your pace of hiring, then you're essentially, like, keep the same runway forever. Right?
LOGAN: Because you’re like your revenue and your expenses are the same.
VLAD: Um, that's where the nuance comes in and how we've planned every year since then. Um, but it's always been like, we can never run out of money. We can never be in a place where, uh, we are having to, we're, we're investing so fast or having to grow so fast, uh, um, or be upside down in terms of like our expenses and revenue that the only way out is if like this 2 percent chance.
VLAD: Uh, of like everything works out and we build exactly the right product and it finds the right, uh, like product market fit and like nothing else happens in the business or the world or macroeconomically. Uh, either that happens or we [01:50:00] have to raise another round. Um, and I've just never been like super comfortable with that, like uncertainty.
VLAD: Um, and it kind of goes to the entire like infinite game sort of structure where, uh, you know, you are chasing this process. Just mission or just cause that helps more people. Uh, and ultimately, like you're, you're, uh, generating more revenue to fund that for as long as possible. It's like that as long as possible.
VLAD: Peace that for me has been most important because I think we're even though honestly, I thought that right before we launched, I'm like, okay, maybe we built 80 percent of Like this front end piece, sure, we still have to build this entire CMS to match WordPress. But I thought we're like nearly done with the piece that we like launched initially with like the front end editor.
VLAD: Now I realize we're maybe like 8 percent of the way 10 years later. Uh, and I see even more now that we've seen how much impact Webflow has had, how many people have like transformed how they live and operate, how they run their business, how they run their [01:51:00] marketing teams, what kind of people have built like.
VLAD: Really incredible products with Webflow. I mean, yeah, they have to augment it with other NoCode tools and code itself, but, like, there's a ton of stuff that goes up on Product Hunt that you never know. You look at the source code, and it's like, uh, hosted on Webflow. Um, uh, you know, never imagined it getting to that place, and I want to continue that for as long as possible, because I think we're still in the, in the world where, uh, similar to where the printing press was, like, 400 years ago, where, like, a tiny percentage of the population has the, The, the skills at their fingertips to be able to leverage the power of software and especially leverage the power of software on the Internet, which has like broad economic potential.
VLAD: We've all seen it. You've seen it through like companies that have been created that you funded that you partner with so much of that is a direct result of like the tools that were put into those people's hands. Right? And we're nowhere near the democratization that I think we like the world deserves.
LOGAN: We haven't seen our best ideas yet.
VLAD: Um, so that to me is like. Yeah. whatever puts [01:52:00] that in danger of us maybe like going too fast and like, ah, crap, we like, uh, bet wrong. And now we have to like sell the company or wind things down. Like, I don't want to risk any of
Not a zero sum
LOGAN: It helps that you have your eyes afield, one, the market's as big as it is, and two, that you're building towards some inevitability of democratizing this, that sometimes the seam opens up in the market and you have a year to run through it or five years to run through it. And I guess you feel like, especially your market, it seems that you're not in a zero sum game with, Excel's also in Squarespace, Presumably there's some companies at times that might evaluate you versus Squarespace, but I sounds like you don't think about it as a zero sum
VLAD: definitely not zero sum. Uh, look, like, 40 percent of the internet is still not online, even. Um, and the vast, vast majority of people who are developing, like, really pro like, code level, um, uh, sort of web properties, websites, web applications, are [01:53:00] primarily English speaking. Right, or have access to, you know, code tutorials, um, resources, platforms, et cetera, like the kind of enablement to, uh, create the types of things that, like, businesses in, uh, you know, in the U.
VLAD: S. and in Europe, et cetera, have, like, are table stakes. So, like, that, sure, it might, like, the Internet might not be a... Growing at a similar rate as it was before, but the, the, the amount of things that are yet to be built, I really do feel like we're like, in the early typewriter age where people are just like, Uh, or the early, uh, personal computer age where people are kind of like trying to figure out, still figuring out what's, what's still possible on the internet. Um, like the sky seems to be the limit still.
LOGAN: I assume you think that these constraints and the forced prioritization of capital, uh, made Webflow into a better business would have been otherwise. What is that element of, if you look at there's so many [01:54:00] companies that been very efficient that created a ton of equity value and capital abundance doesn't lead to more value creation. What you think? Are there specific things you can think about that, where that's manifested itself of, of Just being more focused.
VLAD: Most of the capital we raise, we still have, um, in the bank, uh, which kind of is a reflection of, um, like, we want to, we're not, we don't necessarily feel constrained there, um, and I think for us, it's always been, um, where, where do we see a lot of, like, customer pain or customer opportunity that we can, like, solve faster?
VLAD: And, uh, to your previous question, like, we have made bets before where, like, we see You know, either competitor or new opportunity that might be emerging where we concentrate our efforts right and like build faster or like get more focused where time becomes like such an important factor and maybe investing [01:55:00] more like more than what we budgeted for the year before or whatever, uh, in a way that might not be profitable in the short term.
VLAD: Uh, but those are like having more constraints broadly gives you the flexibility to do that because then you're just like not scared to go deploy capital because like you're going to run out. but I think it's a, uh, for us, it's like a combination of a lot of things like luck in terms of like right market timing.The fact that so much of our, um, uh, so much of our
LOGAN: business
VLAD: like product like in a good way. like sticky because you like running a website, but also in kind of a bad way, you only build a new website like every four years or something like that. So it's kind of a long term game. You only have, uh, even if you catch somebody who was like, Oh, that's an awesome product.
VLAD: We're like, I just rebuilt my website, you know, eight months ago. Like, why would I go invest a bunch of time to like reply from again? I might, you know, check you out two [01:56:00] years from now. Uh, so there's like all these dynamics where, um, you know, for us, it's just been. Uh, every quarter, every month is a different decision around, like, does it make sense to, uh, like step on the gas, uh, or does it make sense to, like, be more, uh, disciplined and, um, more structured or more constrained, however you want to call it.
VLAD: Uh, but I think the broad theme is that we always want to make sure that we have essentially infinite runway, um, even if it's not, like, literally on paper, infinite runway, right? It's, but it's, like, Uh, we can see a path towards, uh, never running out of money, uh, in being, uh, self funded, uh, funded by. The revenue that that we collect from customers.
LOGAN: I get the feeling you've evolved pricing and packaging a bit over the years and you have, you this weird problem. I mean, every company deals with pricing and packaging
VLAD: did you know I have a weird problem?
LOGAN: Yeah, yeah, you, you have this, uh, this, this [01:57:00] unusual
VLAD: business problem
LOGAN: can talk about your a minute. But, uh, this unusual business problem that B2C versus B2B, right? Like, the amount of website traffic something gets might not be commiserate with the, the value that the Customer finds from it. You're abstracting away could be the scarcest resource in the company, which provides a ton of leverage internally. There's also a bunch of precedents of we mentioned Squarespace or Wix or Weebly or, you know, WordPress.
LOGAN: There's open source stuff out there. Adobe. How have you thought about, like, Iterating on pricing and trying to find the key kernel of value, because I, I swear it's every board meeting I have, we talk pricing way, shape or form. Anything that you've, you've done in terms of the process of making decisions pricing?
VLAD: Well, our biggest challenge has been to convince the market and convince customers that, uh, like what the value of the product is because it's not, it's not like any of those other tools, right?
VLAD: You pick [01:58:00] a Template and like change some content and you're off to the races basically never touched it again. It is literally, uh, like replacing what a front end engineer does. Um, that is writing HTML, CSS, PHP, whatever so, uh, moving more of our kind of value and pricing conversations to what is this?
VLAD: Make what is this replaced in terms of what you're already doing, right? And what is the cost of that? Um, which which really has worked, especially on the kind of more upmarket, more contract driven sales conversations because it's such a clear sort of night and day of. You can have this exact same outcome of a, like, super pro level production website that, you know, like, you can rebuild apple.
VLAD: com, stripe. com, et cetera, and Webflow, uh, sites of, of that order, um, and, and not have to rely on, like, this whole IT chain or developer chain or, like, submit a ticket, convert this thing to whatever CMS, uh, whatever code base and, like, deploy to production, Production, so that's been like more [01:59:00] straightforward on the, um, kind of self serve side.
VLAD: That's where it becomes more complex because we have our. It's called service providers who, like, really realize the value of the platform, uh, but they think of it as a, as a, they're essentially like a channel or a, uh, they're a way to, uh, they use it as a platform to serve the needs of, uh, businesses.
VLAD: Right? And a lot of times those are like. Very small businesses, um, or like medium sized businesses that are, you know, willing to pay for, you know, um, some sort of. Contract labor to get that done for them, like a professional to do that. But they're so price anchored to, you know, previously we were, you know, whether it's like Squarespace or like HostGator or some developer, um, you know, FTP'd up a, you know, a code bundle to, uh, kind of GoDaddy or something like that, where they were used to paying 10 a year, uh, as opposed to like 20 a month or 100 a month or whatever, uh, so it's, it's more of a, has [02:00:00] been a burden on our Customers to explain the value to their customers because they're almost agnostic of like, they, they just want to website build.
VLAD: Right. Um, and, and we've, um, that's 1 of the reasons why over time we started to shift our, our pricing and messaging and, uh, our overall narrative to like, hey, this is a, a platform to build really, really powerful professional websites that run main dot coms that generate it. Okay. That power like, you know, billions now, tens of billions of like visits a month or like a massive scale, um, protected against like DDoS attacks, whether you're up on Reddit or Hacker News or whatever, or you're doing like a, um, you know, a conference launch, like it's that level of scale.
LOGAN: And what do you typically, you typically, uh, use to solve that level of scale?
VLAD: Usually a bunch of engineering, a bunch of, you know, in house, um, uh, kind of like, Talent platforms, but, uh, you know, sometimes like really expensive agencies [02:01:00] that are building on, uh, you know, with their own internal frameworks or on these, like, more, um, kind of more traditional.
VLAD: The Drupal's of the world, et cetera. And those are typically like hundreds of thousands of dollars and not millions of dollars. So then that becomes like an easier comparison. But we still have like a massive like product led or like community base that, um. You know, you still want to empower them. Like our mission is to, uh, put these development superpowers into the hands of everyone.
VLAD: So we don't want to just say, just because there's like a higher willingness to pay here, like, good luck to everybody else. Uh, we still want to make sure that there's, uh, like those tools are, um, maybe not universally accessible, but broadly accessible for those who need them. So, so that, um, if you are a service provider who's like trying to start an agency and you have to start with like smaller businesses before you get into these like 500, um, Two thousand person startups are willing to pay like hundreds of thousands of dollars for a website build.
VLAD: Um, you're not going to be able to afford, you know, like a 50k [02:02:00] contract or whatever.
LOGAN: Is the lesson in all of that tied to value and not precedent or try to up level the, the, the message so that you're making sure you capture the fair value?
VLAD: I think the lesson is ever moving, right? Because, uh, three years ago, you might have, um, uh, Been able to price on things like consumption, like bandwidth, et cetera. Now that's becoming kind of a race to the bottom, right? Like, people just like, look at a pricing sheet for AWS or whatever, um, for S3 and like.
VLAD: Here's what this traffic costs. Here's what, uh, you know, you're trying to charge me. Um, so that shifts over time, but I think broadly it has been more around like, Hey, what is the what is the end result of the, um, asset and the workflows that you get that fundamentally make the way that you do marketing?
VLAD: Uh, and then you bring your business and it's like, it's image. It's front door. It's main, uh, kind of funnel driver the way your customers discover you. Uh, how do you. [02:03:00] What is the before and what is the after, and what is that worth to you? Um, and I think that that's a, um, even for like service providers and like smaller companies, that starts to become more and more obvious where, uh, um, like the flexibility and the customization power that Webflow provides is like, that's when you graduate to like, okay, now you're at this pro level of like customization.
Immigrating from Russia
LOGAN: I want to go back to you as a, uh, as a kid and your family immigrated from Russia at what age?
VLAD: I was, uh, nine years old. This is 91. Um, and it was for four more days, the USSR for like four days after we landed here, it's like the USSR
LOGAN: where did your family come to Sacramento. How did that journey, uh, how did that impact you today? I'm sure in so many different ways, but what was any, any entrepreneurial elements of that
VLAD: I think to me, the biggest, so a couple, a couple [02:04:00] ways, uh, by the way, little side note, the only, uh, word that I knew, I just remember repeating it on the plane was cloud, um, which kind of, uh, yeah, somebody, um, somebody on the plane, we were watching like Prince, Prince of Thieves, which was the first time I was on a plane, uh, and first time seeing like, you know, ended a movie in a different language, we didn't even have a TV in Russia.
VLAD: Um, but, uh, I just remember that pretty viscerally that somebody taught me the word cloud, uh, because there's like another Russian guy sitting next to me. Um, I think the biggest thing is that it just kind of gave me the sense of like, holy crap, I've, I've already been, my life would have been so much worse or so much different.
VLAD: Like, I have nothing else to prove really. Like, I, um, life is already so much better than it would have been that everything else is kind of like the cherry on top, right? So I have like no chip on my shoulder, like, uh, something that, you know, some drive to create, yeah. you know, a certain type of [02:05:00] company or outcome or whatever.
VLAD: It just feels like I've been given so much of a, um, in every sense of the word, like this kind of free opportunity, right? It was just, my family got super lucky to be, you know, considered in this, like, refugee quota. And we just happened to be of, like, the, um, you know, the, it was a basic Protestant religion that was being persecuted that, um, people happened to, You know, lobby Congress to, uh, kind of open up the refugee quota.
VLAD: There's so much, you know, privilege in that. And that, like, it just happened to be the same kind of religion that people here in Congress, uh, happen to practice. So that's why they cared, right? Uh, so I feel like we, um, I was lucky for so many reasons to end up here in almost like an undeserved type of way that, um, it just always made me realize that, you know, I'm already content with.
VLAD: What I have here. So it's, um, uh, I don't just provide some long term [02:06:00] peace around like life would have been so much worse. And then the other thing is, I think it created a pretty hard, not hard driving, but a necessary work ethic that through the 1st, like, 7 or 8 years, like, we. You know, I had to, like, learn graphic design because my dad was trying to create a business to make ends meet, um, so I had to learn how to, like, use curl draw that kind of led me to, um, you know, Uh, in some ways to three D that led to web flow.
VLAD: Um, and, you know, our family would like pack up in a van every night and go clean like these dental offices. Um, and we never even questioned like why, uh, you know, like, you know, why us or whatever. We're just like, Hey, this is what we need to do to support the family.
LOGAN: You were were in middle school and high school
VLAD: Yeah, but that was end of middle school and uh, most of high school. Um,
Growing up on welfare
LOGAN: And your family was on welfare first couple years coming first two and a half years or so?
VLAD: Yeah. Um, Uh, and that was, like, you know, as my parents were, like, studying English and, um, uh, that was another thing, like, you know, why would a country, like, accept [02:07:00] us and just give us, like, a way to live and survive and pay for rent, uh, um, where we're not, like, not bringing any value in return, right?
VLAD: I mean, obviously, I can see now, like, what the value of that is, um, in terms of, um, what generally, like, so many immigrants have been able to, like, um, uh, build in this country. And.
VLAD: I think we have a pretty, uh, short term immigration policy to this day, um, that I wish was, you know, more open. But I think that those two things of just, you know, even if everything else fails, Life is already a thousand percent better than what it would have been.
VLAD: You know, I lived in Russia and like on the border of Georgia, right where like the Chechen conflict is. And like all of my family that's left there is, you know, it's just like a terrible existence. I um,
LOGAN: You went to school for CS, then design, then CS, and then you had this sort of circuitous route to being an [02:08:00] entrepreneur, working for Intuit for a while. Sounds like you did some agency work on the side throughout. If you were giving advice to people that are trying to find what their career is, Fulfillment is, um, I, I assume copying the path that you trotted down was a little, a little random, and you wouldn't exactly recommend that that walk and all the debt you went into to make web flow.
LOGAN: Um, anything you can take away from, from the journey of following your passions or, or finding fulfillment and work that you'd recommend for people?
VLAD: Uh, it came pretty naturally when I was trying to solve a problem for myself that I understood pretty well. And then like, I learned so many skills through that, um, just by necessity. So, you know, the first, the first my, um, you know, you had mentioned I went to computer science school. Like that was, uh, so I went to Cal [02:09:00] Poly because my brother was going there.
VLAD: I hated computer science. Um, and I dropped out after the first year because it was like, I was terrible at it. I didn't, um, you know, almost failed some of my classes. And then I, um, moved to San Francisco to go to the Academy of Art to study, like, 3D animation because I, like, I wanted to make movies. But right then, this startup that I was using, it was called QuickDot, that had just crashed in, like, 2001, that I was using to communicate with my friends, it cra it, it went down.
VLAD: And that was, like, my way of, it's sort of like WhatsApp, um, but it was in a browser. Uh, and I was like, Oh, shoot. I kind of want to keep talking to my friends. So I, like, picked up a book on ASP. net, um, and very clumsily built this sort of hacked together tool that, but it worked enough that people could log in and like recreate most of that experience.
VLAD: And through that, I, like, learned to fall in love with programming because it was like, okay, now I have, I'm trying to build this thing that I need that I can see solving a problem in my life, um, or somebody really close to me that then like a super, you know, [02:10:00] like all these other things. You sort of learn how to do them out of necessity because you like care so much about creating that thing and same thing with Webflow like it was it was the like seeing so many people struggling like designers, um, and myself like seeing going through this like translation phase and then like ultimately working with my brother where he would see like all of these limitations of, you know, He's so much more creative than me, and then I'm like the, um, the, the, you know, the cog in the machine that says that that's not possible, or I can't translate this, or I can't do this fast enough, um, and then, like, realizing that we can create something that, like, it can empower him, like, then that became the driving force, like, we know that this is possible, it's just like, and that's where you learn.
LOGAN: Front end engineering
VLAD: and management by necessity over over time is like the team goes grows bigger. So I think it just feels like it's a cheat code when you're trying to create for yourself because you're almost like your initial first customer and you have like this intuition like, Hey, I think it would [02:11:00] help others because I can see how it helps me.
VLAD: Um, and I think that's the foundation of most products, right? Like most founders start from that lens. Um, so I don't know if it's like Good advice or anything, but I just, that's the through line for me where the most hurdles I've ever, um, gotten past was when I was excited about creating something that I was pretty convicted would make the world a better place for myself and for others.
LOGAN: How has Pixar influenced you?
VLAD: Very deeply, um, but temporarily. Um, I, so the reason I went to, uh, dropped out of, um, Cal Poly and moved to, uh, San Francisco was because I wanted to work at Pixar because I saw. Um, uh, Toy Story 2. Initially Toy Story 1, but it was Toy Story 2. And, um, like, when I was really like, Holy crap, this doesn't look like a toy anymore.
VLAD: Um, I want to be part of putting these, like, stories online. And at that time I was... You know, a couple years before and sort of through that period, I was already [02:12:00] doing a lot of graphic design just to make ends meet. I was working at this place called the Russian Yellow Pages, and then I was making websites for folks where it was, uh, I saw the creative potential of like, you build something, you get it out there, but, but it was like, you know, uh, For lack of a better word, like, one dimensional or two dimensional versus like 3D, which is like, whoa, you can do so much with it.
VLAD: So I went to the Academy of Art to, to study that, but then the combination of this other startup failing and me doing this, uh, sort of ASP. net thing and like falling in love with it and the fact that the school was primarily oriented around like. Classical art, you know, like sculpture, painting, like you didn't get into 3D until like year three, um, and seeing sort of the financial opportunities, like everybody who was graduating from the school was like either getting temporary jobs, like one movie at a time, and it was like a, you know, pretty miserable life unless you're so good that you get into Pixar, in which case you have like, um, you know, it's still hard, but like, you [02:13:00] know, Then you're kind of at the best studio in the world and creating like these amazing movies.
VLAD: Um, I think I just got convinced that like, I don't have what it takes on the 3d, um, kind of artistic level to make it to that level. But the 2nd, I got back to, um, Cal Poly. I had to get, you know, an internship and a job to try to start to pay back student loans. And that was at a web design agency where it was like, uh, Cal A designer creating stuff in Photoshop, giving it to me as an intern to translate to HTML, CSS and like their custom sort of CMS that had some like sequel, et cetera.
VLAD: And immediately, like the spark came around. Like, wait a second, they're using a visual tool, but then they're like, trying to describe it to me to make it happen. I just came from, you know, like seeing Pixar is a huge inspiration, sort of like learning 3D tools on the side, which are like. So much more complex technically, and it's all driven by creatives.
VLAD: Yeah, there's some technical directors in the background creating the tools. Uh, but the things you see on screen [02:14:00] are like 95 percent driven by the creative work is being done here I am, by of the creative work is being done by the design team. And I'm translating it as like this intern. Uh, and then I happened to see like the invoice that the agency was charging for that kind of work.
VLAD: You know, the design team and myself were getting like. 5 percent of what the actual value was to the business, um, and like all these things sort of came together. Like, why doesn't a platform exist? Why does, why is every other creative discipline, film editing, 3D animation, special effects, um, you name it, game design, all in this like direct manipulation.
VLAD: Like really, really sophisticated tools that, um, uh, you know, you press a button and it goes to the rendered server, or there's like, there's not this barrier in the middle that says like, oh, I have to go translate this to code. Like, that has to exist for a medium that is like so much larger than, um, you know, that's used by, Every single person, every [02:15:00] single day that's online, uh, you know, through the web.
VLAD: Um, so, that was like, you know, how do we make Pixar, the tools that Pixar uses happen for web design.
LOGAN: What's your best interview question or favorite interview question?
VLAD: Oh man, this changed, I used to have like some, of trick ones that I like, like tell me your story. Um, that led to... Really amazing conversations, um, but they diverge so much that sometimes it's like more good for relationship building rather than like learning something.
VLAD: Um, uh, I typically like to lean into a lot of situations, like trying to understand how people, um, uh, what they did in specific, like, Hard areas that I know like we have as potential challenges that are like the things that they need to solve but by far my Actually, my favorite one the most revealing one is what brings you a sense of impact and fulfillment in the work that you do because That usually [02:16:00] opens up so many Um, so many avenues towards, like, what they, what they really care about, what they, um, are seeking in not only their role, but in their future as a professional, uh, what matters to them personally.
VLAD: Um, like a lot of times it leads to conversations around, like, values and, and principles and...
LOGAN: Where do you keep a gratitude journal?
VLAD: Why do I keep one? Yeah. It, it feels like it's, um, I don't know, it's a habit at this point, but...
LOGAN: What started it? What, uh, what do you put into it? How frequently are you
VLAD: Honestly, it was stress initially that started it and it's suggestion from, uh, um, I think a coach or a therapist, uh, that was like, Hey, this is, uh, uh, you know, practice that, that helps them. And it's just like just a way to ground yourself.
LOGAN: and you write down what you're thankful for.
VLAD: Uh, morning and evening.
LOGAN: Oh, you do it every day?
LOGAN: yeah. Twice a day.
VLAD: Yeah. It's just like three things and sometimes the same things.
VLAD: Um, and a lot of times it's, you know. family oriented. A lot of times it's, [02:17:00] um, you know, health oriented. A lot of times it's like work oriented.
LOGAN: you can put me in it.
VLAD: You're, you're going to be, uh, number two and three today.
LOGAN: good. That's what I like to hear. Uh, how long have you been doing it?
VLAD: Uh, I've had fits and stops, but probably three years.
LOGAN: and it's, and it's something you would recommend for people, uh, to,
VLAD: If it works, I've never really been able to, um, like I've tried meditating, I've tried all sorts of like rituals, um, it's just one that's like, so, you know, low impact in terms of low commitment, but also, but the reward is, I don't know, just tricks your brain into seeing the positive a lot more often.
LOGAN: Do You go back and revisit?
VLAD: know, that's a good question. I have not for the last year. Like I think even the practice of, but I probably will tonight, um, when I have two, um, it's like, it's not a special one, it's basically like I have a, um, it's like a page per, [02:18:00] um, I just have a regular notebook, um, where I do this stuff, but I haven't, I haven't gone back. That's a, I wonder if that says anything about
LOGAN: Does that mean this year's been good or bad, I guess, if you haven't thought about revisiting it?
VLAD: I do this thing, oh I, this is my favorite ritual actually. So for seven years now, uh, six or seven years now, I do this, uh, actually, I hope you don't mind.
LOGAN: no, no, do it.
VLAD: I do it right now. can do interactive. Um, uh, so I record, uh, a, A few sec say hi. Hi.
LOGAN: Hey. Yeah.
VLAD: Um, I record a bunch of seconds every day of video. Um, and then there's this app called One Second Every Day. And then at the end of the month, you just like, choose a second from every day. Um, and it just reminds you, and then you basically can review it.
LOGAN: So it stitches this together like a video?
VLAD: it stitches this together a video. Um, I can show you after, kind of what it looks like. Uh, but, I've had, you just like relive the entire year, and I've, you know, uh, over and over, like, we'll watch it with my kids or my family, or even, you know, send it to [02:19:00] friends, cause a lot of them, like, make it as part of that.
VLAD: A lot of people at work know that there's like, that's just my ritual, and like, hey, you just made my one second. Um, and, it's just something that, uh, helps you appreciate how, um, And it's not always, it's almost never highlights, uh, where it's like, Oh, I just went to some basketball game or like some unique thing.
VLAD: This will definitely be a highlight. Um, uh, sometimes it's like me driving. Sometimes it's, uh, you know, uh, me walking my dog. Uh, but it's just a, a way to reflect, um, and see how, like, rich and multifaceted life can be even in its, uh, uh, you know, day to day routines. Um... And sometimes I go through, you know, you can see my kids growing up, you can see, like, the company changing, you can see, you know, people around you, um, uh, like, it reminds you when different people enter your life and sometimes exit your life, and, um, it's, I don't know, to me, that's [02:20:00] kind of been, like, a habit I've picked up that I saw somebody else do that has just been really meaningful.
LOGAN: Huh, that’s cool.
VLAD: Well, thanks for having me.
LOGAN: It’s been a pleasure.