I’m feeling a deep sense of gratitude this morning, and wanted to share it with you all.
On this day in 2013, the Webflow co-founders were huddled around our usual desk that we claimed every early morning at the Hacker Dojo (a co-working space) in Mountain View, working like hell into the evenings to get something off the ground.
We had quit our jobs about 6 months prior, and totally underestimated how long it would take to build even a beta. I had personally convinced my wife that we’d only have to be income-less for 3 months – the amount of savings we had in the bank – but that time had now doubled, and those savings were long gone.
The Kickstarter campaign we had poured all of our savings into producing had fallen through, never even making it live because we hadn’t read the Terms of Service to learn that they didn’t allow SaaS subscriptions to be funded. We had high hopes about getting into YC for the winter batch, but were rejected since we only had a non-functional demo of a product and zero traction.
On top of all that, my oldest daughter (3yo then) was diagnosed with a life-threatening condition, requiring expensive surgery that didn’t get much help from our cheap “catastrophic” health insurance plan with an ultra-high deductible. Credit card cash advances became the way we were paying for rent and food.
So with all this, we started contingency planning to try to get our old jobs back. As a last ditch effort, we sold two of our cars and pulled out what equity we had in them to buy a little more runway. Then we had to come to terms that we couldn’t actually build a full product in the time we had left, and decided that the best we could do was to create a demo or playground that could hint at what the future product could be – and hope for the best.
In March of 2013, we finally finished that demo and put it up live. It’s still there: http://playground.webflow.com/
Now came the time to get users. We were targeting mostly designers and non-technical folks – so we posted it on Digg (heh, remember those days?), Reddit, and several designer-centric forums. But none of those posts got any meaningful traction. We were at a loss.
Then, with tempered expectations about how a visual development tool for designers would be received in the hacker community, we posted here to HN. The title was “Show HN: Webflow – design responsive websites visually” [1] and we crossed our fingers really hard at this last-ditch effort.
What happened next was nothing short of life-changing. The post took off like wildfire, staying at #1 for the entire day. Incredible words of encouragement were all over the comments. Over 25,000 people signed up for our beta list. VentureBeat wrote a story about us that same day. Tons of people started talking about Webflow on Twitter, Reddit, etc as a result. This led to a ton of word of mouth and even more signups.
This amazing traction helped us get into YC several months later, gave us momentum to raise some funding from some angel investors, and most importantly gave us the confidence that we were truly on to something that can be really valuable for the world.
Since then, Webflow has grown to millions of users, over a hundred thousand customers, and over 200 team members. I still have to pinch myself when I see that Webflow has somehow become one of the top YC companies of all time. Out of our customers, tens of thousands use Webflow exclusively to make a living – to run an agency, build websites and light applications, create websites for clients, or for their own startups. Tons of YC startups (e.g. lattice.com, hellosign.com, many many more) now use Webflow to run their marketing.
I’m 1000% convinced that if that HN post did not take off, we would have gone back to our jobs and that early Webflow demo would have been a mere mention on our resumes somewhere. Thousands of people wouldn’t be empowered to build for the web the way they can now. I can’t imagine what that alternate future would be like, and it hinged seemingly on just one submission to this community.
So this is a very belated, but very huge THANK YOU to HN for being kind to a trio of co-founders who wanted to make something valuable for the world, and were at the end of their rope in many ways. You gave us confidence, hope, encouragement, and a lifeline that got us through the lows of building a startup.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
Just a heads up, as a semi-happy webflow customer: your customer service chat bot / the way you hide methods to contact customer service is very frustrating. The first time I ran into a technical issue I almost considered just cancelling my account and moving elsewhere because I couldn't figure out how to speak/chat with a human. There are many services I spend less money on monthly that have infinitely better customer service. Ultimately a friend provided me with your support email and I got a response there, but was shocked that wasn't listed anywhere on your website that I could easily find..
"We provide email support Monday through Friday. ... We also might need the read-only link to your project and the email associated with your account. To contact our team, please reach out to us directly at support@webflow.com."
I've hit up Webflow support a few times this way (as a SaaS founder I actively avoid chatbots or delayed service funnels) and have found them to be amazingly fast and super detailed in their replies. It's partly what tipped me over to be a customer. In any case, I hope you get a quick reply to your query. And it did make me smile in a "very Hackernews" way that the first reply I saw to this wonderful post was a complaint :P
When I read such posts I have so many different feelings mixed up.
1. I'm envious, I won't hide this :)
2. I think that I shouldn't give up with my own product
3. I think that I don't work hard enough
4. I feel pleasure, I'm glad that it was success for you. Yep, I don't only envy but also can be happy for someone
5. Your name is Vlad, are you by the way from Russia? If so, Поздравляю от всей души! =)
These posts should be in golden collection.
Especially if someone says: "Hey, who needs another tool like this?" and you show him posts from dropbox, webflow and others
I would certainly not want to discourage anyone from building their own product. That said, for me personally, knowing when to quit/admit a mistake and pivot is a sign of maturity.
I wouldn't be surprised if one day Webflow's market share on the Web gets to be Wordpress-sized.
With the recent funding raised, I'd love to hear what your vision is for the next 5 years of Webflow as a product?
The problems with this approach are many. First, getting set up is a giant pain in the ass. And not just the fact that you have to code everything from scratch, it’s the build process headaches, fixing the shitty SEO defaults of the static site generator, fighting over whatever hot CSS framework to use(its 2021 so tailwind now!!), etc. Then hooking the site up to a headless CMS is another big nightmare—-and then training your team how to use it is another.
And that’s just the beginning. Guess what happens when your team(or you) wants to update the marketing site (happens all the time)? You have to go through the nightmare all over again, fix some inevitable build process errors, re-learn how everything works, re-hook up contentful to the new content models, retrain the team again, etc.
Contrast this to the Webflow approach. I built the entire site in a day and haven’t had to touch the marketing site since. Our designer owns it completely now and has already done 2 complete redesigns in the time it would take me to do a small update the old way.
Our copywriter logs directly into Webflow when he wants to change the copy, the designer builds new landing pages for marketing initiatives in a day, and I never get bugged by the marketing team to “update this small thing” since they own it now.
Honestly, I now think the entire static site ecosystem is designed for developers to set up a personal blog using whatever front-end framework they think is “cool” at the time and never add content to it.
I would guess 98% of gatsby/Hugo/etc sites have less than 10 posts on them. And of those sites, there’s a 78% chance the only post is “how I rebuilt this site in Gatsby”
- Select a starter template (free or paid)
- Customize text and css, add any elements, the UI is what you would expect from Photoshop or Unity
- Add forms / payment forms
- Publish on a xxxx.webflow.com domain or on a custom domain (for money) - pay extra if you are using e-commerce features
I guess the goal is to shift the market from developers who know how to code to developers who know how to use a UI (similar to what Unity did for game developers).
Potential customer here, and I have a question. I'm a programmer, very happy making backends, setting up the infra, maintaining it, and so on. I often want to make web pages, but I just hate dealing the web front-end stack.
Is this product a good fit for me? I could visually design the website, avoid getting my hands dirty with HTML/CSS/JS, then have an easy way to connect it with a backend I'd make?
If this isn't a good fit, any suggestions?
So great for MVPs or getting a business bootstrapped quickly and cheaply, but once you have enough money to afford developers without breaking the bank, your money may be better spent elsewhere.
Of course, for products deeper in the stack we should strive to implement that last 20% because the quality of the stack depends on it. I just don’t think it’s worth it for leaf/end-user projects.
The founder's story is not uncommon of most actual successful startups I personally have observed.
To those who have cush jobs, dream of startups - this is the real world life. In startups, it is not all funding and glory moments; it is your world imploding on you in numerous directions, and you have to pull yourself through sheer will; or fail.
There's a really valuable lesson here for would-be YC founders:
> We had high hopes about getting into YC for the winter batch, but were rejected since we only had a non-functional demo of a product and zero traction.
...
> This amazing traction helped us get into YC several months later...
Same founders - traction = YC rejected
Same founders + traction = YC accepted
The same thing happened with Dropbox. So don't trust what YC says about how they evaluate founders themselves, trust what they actually do. Which is evaluating startup quality largely based on traction, just like every other investor does.
I don't know what the difference was in this particular case, but you're overgeneralizing from it, and underestimating how much emphasis YC places on founders (a lot).
YC funded Dropbox before it launched, because they believed in Drew—so that's a counterexample, no?
I'm pretty sure they've said multiple times that traction is the best indicator of future success. Very rarely do they fund startups without traction (if they do, it's usually someone from within their network).
They don't say that and that doc doesn't even mention traction. And, amusingly, it points to Dropbox's application as example of how to apply. When in reality it was due to traction on HN that Dropbox got into YC, Drew Houston was a solo founder so likely would've been rejected again on the basis of being a non-great founder since he hadn't even convinced anyone to join him.
Of course, one can always claim that "great founders have traction" but that's an obvious cop out.
This isn't malicious or bad. It's just an example of the common problem where people's view of themselves is different from their actual behavior. Something all founders should learn. It applies to users just as much as investors.
Imagine if you were trying to launch right around the beginning of 2020. The HN of the 2020s is becoming a much less forgiving crowd than that of 2013.
Thank you for sharing that story! I think the first word I would use to describe, before inspiring, is "terrifying" :), but happy to hear it all worked out.
I was a little surprised to read this because I worked in the low code Web IDE space in 2013 as well, and don't remember webflow back then, but then when I go back through my old emails I see we exchanged ideas and motivation! Very cool. So so happy you all ended up making this a reality. We ended up taking an early exit, which was great too, but I felt guilty we didn't solve the problem we set out to solve. Thank you for doing that!
That sounds awful. Is she OK now?
> helped us get into YC several months later
what happened with your life and finances between posting to HN and getting the angel funding? How did you bridge the gap?
@Vlad & Bro..keep up the great work man. You are a light to all hard-working immigrant founders and who remind us all that American dream still exists! Nasdrovia Tavarish!
In fact, I read the story as a shout out to perseverence. More than 'an idea'. (Belief in) A good idea can help you persevere, sure. But execution is king. And for that, you need hard work, ability to push through, and perseverance.
I'm glad to see the news that this is providing employment opportunities for a lot of people. That's very much something we need to hear more of in a world that has long harped on how automation is taking away jobs and high unemployment is the wave of the future.
This was a good read. Thanks for posting it.
I ask that you put together a video, document, book that gives a general idea on how you did it and what it takes to continue to have a successful business. Everyone will thank you and it will makes this community that has helped to get you off the ground become better.
That said, I sorely miss proper i18n support.
Currently, we use Transifex to i18n our marketing website, but this means that our SEO is hurt, as Google does not index strings in JS.
Vlad, if you're reading this, please have a look here for a feature suggestion: https://wishlist.webflow.com/ideas/WEBFLOW-I-2218
Cheers, and thanks for the inspiring words!
Yep, fixed :)
> Crazy to think how big of a factor luck plays
Indeed! Although I think it's best to focus on the things we can affect: persistence, hard work, grit.
People bringing it up aren't naysayers, they're just being realistic.
For a 202* stack that I would want to use however, I'd like to see more flexible integration with other tech stacks. It would be THE perfect frontend for e.g. NextJS, if it would support React exports and an integration to other state management mechanisms like MOBX to drive dynamic sites.
It's nice to have a reminder and to realize the impact that comments, sharing and encouragement can have in the greater world.
Just a note, the link to report issues for experimental browsers (which was in the warning I received when opening the editor in Firefox) results in a 404.
It is an inspiring story but fair warning to others that there is a strong survivors' bias here and not all risky ventures work out this well.
I hope, though, people learn that your experience is one of many ways. And "zero to one" and "all or nothing" are not the only ways.
Congrats though!
But I can't help but think about the 9 founders of other companies that had the same resolve in the same situation, but things did not work out so well.
All you other people thinking about going for broke need to be ready to hit bottom and build yourself back up afterwards, because 9 times out of 10 that's what will happen. Or, even better, first put yourself into a situation where you don't need to go for broke to give yourself an excellent chance at success.
I think this is why a lot of crazy big startups come from younger people, they can afford to go for broke before they have a family and other obligations, because the worst that can happen is they are left with nothing, then they settle for a high-paying job at a big tech company and 2 months later they can afford a new car.
At the same time, I read this particular post as much less about "look how hard I hustled and because of that I'm a winner" and much more about gratitude towards the HN community and the appreciating the luck that enabled them to be one of the rare winners. It's more "even though we hustled we were still on track to lose until we got lucky and supported from others." I think that's an excellent sentiment to share.
Everyone on HN knows that the startup life is, in many ways, a lottery. But that doesn't mean it's not still one of the most reliable ways of exercising self-determination, working on something you're truly passionate about, taking full responsibility for your fate, and becoming financially independent (if not outright wealthy). Which is why most of us do it.
And, yeah, failing sucks, but saying "don't forget you'll most likely fail!" is just not particularly insightful in this kind of context. We already know that.
There's just no way this is true. For people with the skills needed by SV startups, working at one of the startups is almost certainly financially worse than using those skills at a large company.
but then the people work with us tell us how important our work is to them / the community and it encourages us to push through... it's kind of bittersweet
Of course 9/10 founders are going to fail, some people have more privilege to take risks, and people with families have to take measured risks.
What's the point? Should people not try, keep crying about it, keep complaining that it's easy to say this when you have privilege, keep looking at the negative side? We all recognize life's a lottery and the odds are stacked in favor of some and not others. So?
But I think the thanks here is for the community that was willing to give a new product a try, provide feedback, and help the founders build momentum towards what it ultimately became — especially when it was clear there was no traction on other sites. I think that's something to be thankful for, and shows that HN can be different from other communities in meaningful ways.
Personally, my plan is to go back to Europe if I want to launch an American startup because there is no way I would do this without a good health insurance and good social safety nets.
Interestingly, we see much more startups in the US even though the downsides of creating your startup in the US are insane. I guess we are really optimistic individuals (or start up founders tend to be crazy individuals).
My stakes are much, much smaller, so maybe this experience is very particular to me, but I'm fortunate to have bootstrapped a growing SaaS business that is now closing in on USD$2000 MRR. Before this, I have a trail of hair-brained failures.
The sense of accomplishment hasn't changed with the (modest) business success. I've felt accomplished the first day I started trying and failing. This is just our nature. Seeing material success from it only icing on the cake.
This is definitively anecdotal, though I've been at / through approximately 5 startups across 12 years, and looking back, I believe each end everyone one (except for one) was definitely helped / started by a founder or set of founders who didn't have to worry about whether they went belly up or not due to family wealth. Hell, I still know some that I've consulted for that have lived in the bay area for the past 8 years without a product that makes any money, no vc funding, and were just out of their masters 8 years ago.
Clearly looking back, nearly every founder I've worked for came from a family with $$$. Even currently, at least one of my co-ceos just up and left their 2 million dollar menlo park house and went to live in their parents vacation home in monterey right when covid began.
Taking risks becomes extremely easy when you have a large family wealth backed safety net propping you up along the way. This happens way more often than people realize, and often the founder(s) will definitely not talk about this at all / downplay it if it is brought up.
The privilege is real.
This really isn't true. The average age of a successful entrepreneur is 45.
TL;DR -- don't run out of money.
OP had a three year old daughter with a life-threatening medical condition, so I'm not sure what exactly you're talking about.
Now came the time to get users. We were targeting mostly designers and non-technical folks – so we posted it on Digg (heh, remember those days?), Reddit, and several designer-centric forums. But none of those posts got any meaningful traction. We were at a loss.
Then, with tempered expectations about how a visual development tool for designers would be received in the hacker community, we posted here to HN. The title was “Show HN: Webflow – design responsive websites visually” [1] and we crossed our fingers really hard at this last-ditch effort.
What happened next was nothing short of life-changing. The post took off like wildfire, staying at #1 for the entire day. Incredible words of encouragement were all over the comments. Over 25,000 people signed up for our beta list. VentureBeat wrote a story about us that same day. Tons of people started talking about Webflow on Twitter, Reddit, etc as a result. This led to a ton of word of mouth and even more signups.
This amazing traction helped us get into YC several months later, gave us momentum to raise some funding from some angel investors, and most importantly gave us the confidence that we were truly on to something that can be really valuable for the world.
Since then, Webflow has grown to millions of users, over a hundred thousand customers, and over 200 team members. I still have to pinch myself when I see that Webflow has somehow become one of the top YC companies of all time. Out of our customers, tens of thousands use Webflow exclusively to make a living – to run an agency, build websites and light applications, create websites for clients, or for their own startups. Tons of YC startups (e.g. lattice.com, hellosign.com, many many more) now use Webflow to run their marketing.
I’m 1000% convinced that if that HN post did not take off, we would have gone back to our jobs and that early Webflow demo would have been a mere mention on our resumes somewhere. Thousands of people wouldn’t be empowered to build for the web the way they can now. I can’t imagine what that alternate future would be like, and it hinged seemingly on just one submission to this community.
So this is a very belated, but very huge THANK YOU to HN for being kind to a trio of co-founders who wanted to make something valuable for the world, and were at the end of their rope in many ways. You gave us confidence, hope, encouragement, and a lifeline that got us through the lows of building a startup.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
Inevitably, those projects will need more functionality than visual or declarative abstractions currently allow, which raises demand for code-based developers. Code will always outpace higher-order tools in flexibility and power, and coders will always be in demand.
Think of it like what happened with spreadsheets... initially there was a lot of fear that moving e.g. financial modeling workflows from e.g. Pascal, etc to visual spreadsheets might make developers less relevant. But that's the opposite of what happened.
Sure, there might be some developers who only do very basic tasks like converting a PSD file to HTML/CSS, but that started fading out as a highly sought out skill even before Webflow was prevalent. But there will always be a need for devs, and there's a massive shortage of them in the world still, so I'm honestly a lot less worried about this.
A programmer can accurately estimate the schedule for only the repeated and the redundant. Yet,
A programmer's job is to automate the repeated and the redundant. Thus,
A programmer delivering to an estimated or predictable schedule is...
Not doing their job (or is redundant).
When we automate the boring stuff, we are free to work on harder and more important problems. This is the arc of progress, and it's in the interest of the greater good.