[HN Gopher] Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps ...
___________________________________________________________________
Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make
a living
Dear HN, 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!!! [1]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5407499
Author : callmevlad
Score : 644 points
Date : 2021-01-15 16:36 UTC (6 hours ago)
| egorfine wrote:
| Absolutely thank you for sharing this. It is very encouraging!
|
| > 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?
| shafyy wrote:
| Thanks for making Webflow and pulling through. Even though I'm
| software engineer and could have built a ecommerce store myself,
| we decided to use Webflow and it's just been a delight.
| darepublic wrote:
| On an ironic note, your company is part of a trend that threatens
| the livelihood of devs everywhere
| callmevlad wrote:
| I absolutely don't think this is the case, and paradoxically
| something like Webflow actually creates more demand for coders
| and software engineers. Today, only 0.25% of the world knows
| how to write code, meaning the amount of software being created
| is limited to that subset of the population. No-code tools
| potentially will raise that percentage to 25% or even higher,
| meaning 2 orders of magnitude more people are potentially
| starting new software projects - however small initially.
|
| 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.
| jsherwani wrote:
| Additionally, I think that tools like Webflow empower devs as
| well. Why spend hours writing a custom piece of code when it
| can be done in Webflow in a fraction of the time, and
| potentially even handed off to a non-dev to manage/maintain.
| exolymph wrote:
| This is like thinking that WordPress is bad for developers. No,
| it just helps people get to the point where they need + can
| afford a developer.
| pembrook wrote:
| Fighting to keep the world complicated and inefficient, so that
| you can keep the same job forever and never have to learn
| anything new, is not looked upon favorably by history:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
|
| 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.
| darepublic wrote:
| Well, I didn't say to keep the world complicated and
| inefficient, I just thought it was funny to write a thank you
| to devs for saving their company when by some considerations
| their company could potentially hurt the employability of
| certain devs. But yeah, I am not trying to be a luddite, (not
| that I care about how history would judge me)
| tornato7 wrote:
| To me it's ironic to say that greater automation is threatening
| the livelihood of devs. That's what good devs should do,
| automate themselves out of their job and move up one tier of
| abstraction. Maybe those devs who feel threatened should start
| writing webflow extensions
| composer wrote:
| ReRe's Law of _Re_ petition and _Re_ dundancy [3] agrees with
| you: 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).
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192
| grecy wrote:
| > _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_
|
| How can this kind of thing be day-to-day for people in the
| richest country that has ever existed?
|
| What a nightmare.
| jldugger wrote:
| Because we _let_ people choose cheap plans, and don't use
| federal taxation to shift the costs to the wealthy. And we tie
| health insurance to employment, so all those fringe benefits
| you were unaware of suddenly cost real money when you start
| your own biz.
|
| If OP had been required to carry a stronger insurance policy,
| their runway would have been even shorter. And if the tax
| regime gifted Americans universal health care, it would likely
| mean OP would have a smaller savings, if any at all.
|
| Perhaps it's a testament to how healthy the jobs market is in
| SV that 'I'll just get a job' as a fall back plan if you run
| out of cash is plausible.
| grecy wrote:
| Your mental gymnastics are impressive, if not a little scary.
|
| Having lived decades in both Canada and Australia, I can tell
| you there is a _much_ better way, that works extremely well.
| Imagine nobody ever worrying about medical bills, ever again.
|
| It's like the future.
| Akcium wrote:
| This is indeed incredible.
|
| 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,
| Pozdravliaiu ot vsei dushi! =)
|
| 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
| tarask wrote:
| This is exactly what I thought, especially 2 & 3. his LinkedIn
| does mention that he speaks Russian, so you're guess is correct
| :)
| ATS22 wrote:
| this story is a happy end one and it makes you feel that you can
| also succeed in your dreams. bravo for your perseverance and for
| not quitting at the first obstacle.
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| HN is a community of people that want to do what you did, develop
| an idea to a successful business. One thing the differentiates
| this community over others is that many here are willing to learn
| and do the work.
|
| 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.
| artur_makly wrote:
| Any other startup founders here who were on the brink of death
| and then got their asses saved by HN? Would love to hear your
| story too.
|
| @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!
| dumbfounder wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about this story. I applaud your resolve,
| and you have certainly had a tremendous amount of success that
| should be celebrated!
|
| 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.
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| Not only did I run out of money, I ended up homeless!
|
| TL;DR -- don't run out of money.
| TAForObvReasons wrote:
| *younger people with family wealth. Some of my friends were
| unable to take risks because they needed to support their
| parents as well, and that puts a huge pressure to go with the
| safe money
| Techonomicon wrote:
| I love this comment. I don't think this notion gets
| highlighted enough.
|
| 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.
| WD-42 wrote:
| It's no surprise that the largest predictor of wealth is...
| wealth. Lots of founders might not be directly funded by
| family wealth, but the various safety nets and conveniences
| (even op said they sold 2 of their cars) are a major
| factor, if not the largest factor, of success.
|
| It's an ugly truth of life that I've come to accept: the
| rich stay rich and the poor stay poor.
| notatrumper wrote:
| Unless they bought Bitcoin for 1$ in 2009.
|
| Another tried and proven way is to marry somebody who is
| rich. Mostly just an option for women, though.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| People who bought Bitcoin for $1 in 2009 won the lottery.
| There was no rational basis for expecting any significant
| payout from that.
|
| Marrying into money is an option for some, but you have
| to make a big emotional sacrifice (at least in Western
| culture) if you opt for going by wallet instead of going
| by heart. It's doable, but GP's point here is that a rich
| person _doesn 't have to make that choice_.
| artur_makly wrote:
| in sports at least the old saying was:
|
| "A ball player's got to be kept hungry to become a big
| leaguer. That's why no boy from a rich family ever made the
| big leagues.
|
| - Joe Dimaggio
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I'm seeing quite a lot of athletes whose parents were
| athletes, or had the means to pay for elite training.
|
| I don't expect the hungriest kids to have any chance in
| most pro sports unless they're above average, at least in
| size for the major US sports.
| notatrumper wrote:
| Yes, having money is good. That's why many people strive to
| have money.
|
| I personally also don't think it is unfair if kids of rich
| parents inherit their money (or their support). After all,
| being able to take care of one's children is a major
| motivation of many people for trying to make money.
|
| It's also well known that money is an important factor in
| mate choice for women.
|
| Even without money, biology would be at work and people
| would be striving to find attractive mates to conceive
| "fit" children.
|
| You could then also say those "fit" children are
| "privileged" compared to "less fit" children.
|
| --
|
| Anyway, as your own anecdotes highlight, if you are not
| rich, find another way, for example a rich person who gives
| you money.
| Techonomicon wrote:
| Don't think there was any weighing in on fairness going
| on as much as it not being acknowledged enough.
|
| I believe, from experience seeing it, many founders who
| succeed will quote literally everything but their
| background, upbringing, and privilege as a factor, even
| though the fact that they had little to worry about while
| building their empire with respect to you know, the
| things everyone else has to care about on a daily basis
| (bills, debt, what happens if I fail) is an extremely
| large factor.
|
| The barrier to entry of them taking a risk is so much
| lower that it is (in my opinion) directly correlated to
| their success at the end of the day.
|
| Anyway, that's all. Less about fairness, and more about
| wish this was really highlighted more.
| notatrumper wrote:
| My impression is that "privilege" has by now taken on
| that meaning of "unfairness". It seems to be the most
| common modern use ("check your privilege" and so on). It
| sounds as if those people don't deserve it.
|
| It's a shame, because I think it used to mean exactly the
| opposite, having a privilege was an honor. Is the phrase
| "it was a privilege to have known you" still being used?
| warent wrote:
| I think a large portion of entrepreneurs and founders don't do
| it because it's a get-rich-quick scheme or a normal path to
| retirement. It's because it's in their (our?) nature.
|
| 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.
| dvt wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| we've been at this for two+ years and making a ton of
| progress but it's been a continuous, unfunded slog, and we
| continuously think "maybe it's better to just shut things
| down and join an already funded startup?"
|
| 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
| solidasparagus wrote:
| > still one of the most reliable ways of [...] becoming
| financially independent (if not outright wealthy)
|
| 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.
| dvt wrote:
| I was specifically talking about _founders_ (but even early
| stage engineers can do extremely well if the startup takes
| off). The upside is _much_ higher doing your own thing
| rather than working at BigCorp (the two aren 't even
| remotely comparable, but neither is the risk). Not to
| mention the end goals/QOL of working on what you want,
| commanding your own ship, being financially independent,
| etc.
|
| Virtually all self-made millionaires+ started companies[1].
| There's really no other way to get there.
|
| [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2019/10/02/
| self-...
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| You can also get to millions by investing while working a
| regular job
| dvt wrote:
| Again, the upside is significantly higher if you start a
| company (financial independence is just _one_ piece). It
| can be risky (see OP), but it 's pretty rational to be a
| founder, especially if you can weather the adversity. I'm
| not even sure how my claims are controversial (especially
| here on HN, of all places).
| Drdrdrq wrote:
| If only Mark Zuckerberg knew this back then... /s
| Kranar wrote:
| The comment said "one of the most reliable ways", not the
| only reliable way. Furthermore the two are not mutually
| exclusive. I worked at Microsoft and Google before starting
| my own company, mostly as a way to pay off student debt. A
| few of my co-workers at Google also left to start their own
| companies as well. There's no reason why you can't put in a
| couple of years at a large company to make some early cash,
| then leave to start your own company.
|
| If it fails you can almost certainly go back to working at
| a big company and heck even try again later on in life.
| blizkreeg wrote:
| What is it with every post on HN having an almost 50/50 split
| along the cynical line.
|
| 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?
| dumbfounder wrote:
| I am not cynical, I am a 3 time founder and looking to start
| another company. I am the opposite of cynical. It is simply
| cautionary advice. I think we have a tendency to glorify
| startup life and I think people should be grounded in reality
| when making massive decisions like this.
| blizkreeg wrote:
| There is also something called dealing with the
| consequences. People figure it out. It's not a joy ride,
| but it's not the end of the world.
|
| At least most people in tech have the skills to fall back
| on a career if their company fails. Needless caution advice
| coated in a cynical tone just creates negativity around the
| whole topic.
|
| Can't we just celebrate that the founder of Webflow managed
| to rescue his company from the brink of fail (even if it
| was dumb luck - it wasn't) and has built a life for
| himself? This is the stuff that inspires human beings and
| makes everyone feel like they could do it too. Clouding it
| in _oh but what if you're in the other 9 out of 10 camp_ is
| just you know .. pointless.
|
| It's fine to say, hey make yourself comfortable first, play
| small bets and free yourself from complete ruin before you
| go bet the farm, but, yolo so you do you. But no need to
| rain on the parade of the person who has crossed over to
| the other side.
| rizpanjwani wrote:
| so basically you're saying it's ok to create positivity
| around a topic on a regular basis, but not negativity,
| even though the negative consequences happen more often
| than not?
| [deleted]
| blizkreeg wrote:
| And what do you aim to accomplish with that negativity?
| We all know the risks in everything.
|
| By educating me about the risk, you haven't accomplished
| anything. If you have ideas for how I can play the odds
| better and improve my success rate, I'm all ears. It's
| better to say look to each side of the road when you
| cross vs you're gonna die if you're not careful.
| true_religion wrote:
| We are a forum sponsored by a venture capital fund. If we
| can't be positive about emerging businesses here, then we
| can't be positive about it anywhere.
| austinl wrote:
| I agree in the sense that the HN community cannot save a bad
| product. And sometimes it wouldn't even save a good product.
|
| 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.
| ATS22 wrote:
| totally agree with you. young people don't have to worry about
| stuff like managing their money because they are backed up.
| it's a shame grown ups with families can't find this backup in
| the community. once more capitalism shows it's ugly side.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > it's a shame grown ups with families can't find this backup
| in the community. once more capitalism shows it's ugly side.
|
| OP had a three year old daughter with a life-threatening
| medical condition, so I'm not sure what exactly you're
| talking about.
| nojito wrote:
| >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.
|
| This really isn't true. The average age of a successful
| entrepreneur is 45.
| czbond wrote:
| OP Wow - nicely done. Amazing persistence that needs to be shared
| more.
|
| 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.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| I have seen Webflow ads...
|
| - One ad features a developer saying "no", repeateadly.
|
| - Another ad features a developer talking in an absurdly
| complicated manner.
|
| Now you come to this forum, mostly used by developers to say
| "thank you"?
|
| Wow, I mean, after being insulted by your ads in a daily basis
| now you suddenly feel gratitude?
|
| There are many ways to sell your product that do not involve
| insulting developers.
|
| Stop your anti-developer behavior, then come here with your
| kumbaya crap.
| xwdv wrote:
| While I will say congratulations, I hope you also appreciate how
| lucky you are. I cringe at some of the decisions that were made
| and how close you may have came to absolute ruin not just for
| yourself but your family as well. I hope the lesson people take
| from this isn't "Never give up" but rather that startups are
| harder than you think and posting on forums is more of a crap
| shoot than a guarantee of any useful traction. Calculate that
| risk carefully to yourself and dependents and see if it's
| _really_ worth it.
|
| 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.
| kitcar wrote:
| Congrats!
|
| 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..
| azifali wrote:
| Vlad - Congratulations. I used to see you and Sergie at
| Hackerdojo in 2012-13 when it was very early days of Webflow. It
| is great to see what what you've accomplished despite the
| challenging circumstances.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > my oldest daughter (3yo then) was diagnosed with a life-
| threatening condition, requiring expensive surgery
|
| That sounds awful. Is she OK now?
| callmevlad wrote:
| Yes, she is now, thank you for asking!
| mooreds wrote:
| How fun is this!
|
| It's nice to have a reminder and to realize the impact that
| comments, sharing and encouragement can have in the greater
| world.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| This very inspiring, great job! This place has that effect. One
| of my open source projects got a lot of popularity just because I
| posted it here on HN and people found it useful (or at least the
| tech keywords were baity enough).
| johnghanks wrote:
| this is an ad
| Reedx wrote:
| Congrats, and thanks for sharing!
| staunch wrote:
| Congrats on the startup success and (more importantly) I hope
| your daughter is well.
|
| 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.
| dvt wrote:
| > So don't trust what YC says...
|
| 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).
| staunch wrote:
| https://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply/
|
| 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.
| dvt wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I did a bit of research and you're right; they clearly say
| in multiple places (including here on HN) that they fund
| non-traction companies often. I'd agree that this is
| stretching the truth and it's probably orders of magnitude
| more difficult to get into YC with no traction.
| zenbryo wrote:
| Great to hear about your success story! However the number one
| ingredient must have been a good idea to start with. I hope to
| get the same viral success sometime for one of my projects, but
| its near impossible to foresee. Just work hard, keep afloat and
| hope for the best.
| erulabs wrote:
| Awesome! Thank you for this post - as someone currently in the
| "convincing my wife it wont be much longer now" phase, this is
| nice to read :)
| nomadtwin wrote:
| Been using Webflow for years almost daily. Still a big fan but
| seeing round after round of VC money and little improvement on
| the actual tool (Webflow Designer) something feels off...
| Scramblejams wrote:
| Amazing story, glad you made it.
|
| 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?
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| (Not OP) I know replying "seconded" is out of line with Hacker
| News guidelines, so I'll add that in addition to the above, I'm
| also curious about whether it can cooperate with any front-end
| frameworks
| ketanmaheshwari wrote:
| Great! Congratulations that all worked out well.
|
| 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.
| abinaya_rl wrote:
| Woah, That's an inspiring story. Congrats on your recent funding
| round!
| gadders wrote:
| I love a happy ending. Congratulations! I hope your success long
| continues (and that your daughter is fully recovered).
| dvt wrote:
| Congratulations! The Webflow co-founders personify the perfect
| combination of persistence, grit, and a bit of luck. I know nay-
| sayers will start parroting "survivorship bias," but these kinds
| of stories motivate me :)
|
| Cheers, and thanks for the inspiring words!
| vladmk wrote:
| You mean survivorship bias? Interesting to think how many web
| flows does that were so close. The difference was 1 mere hacker
| news post. Crazy to think how big of a factor luck plays
| dvt wrote:
| > You mean survivorship bias
|
| 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.
| ilovefood wrote:
| What a wonderful story and I'm very happy for you!
| Congratulations! I am a happy customer and love the product you
| all built and are still improving. Keep it up!! :)
| yayr wrote:
| Great tool. You do have your happy user group now,
| congratulations and cudos for persevering!
|
| 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.
| type0 wrote:
| Thank you for the heart wrecking description of hardship in a
| startup life. I actually learned about Webflow in a workplace
| through the word of mouth. I'm probably not your target audience
| but what intrigued me was that I recently learned that it was
| possible to integrate it with Git, what would such a workflow be
| like? Do you plan to implement a visual diffing screenshots or is
| it already present?
| callmevlad wrote:
| (continued from OP)
|
| 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!!!
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5407499
| dang wrote:
| I've copied this into the post above.
| rsp1984 wrote:
| This is so well deserved and I feel sincerely happy for you.
| Webflow is an amazing tool. Keep the good stuff coming!
| lbj wrote:
| Having just killed SabreCMS (something in the same vein as
| Webflow) before reaching the break-through point you guys did I
| can fully understand how it must have felt when you broke the ice
| and saw your baby turn into a success story. Wishing you guys all
| the best and lots of future success!
| breck wrote:
| Aloha Vlad!
|
| 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!
| nathanyz wrote:
| Congrats, this story is a good reminder to founders that it's not
| just having the right idea, and execution. It's about the
| persistence and willpower to get to that right idea & execution.
| akotlar wrote:
| That's amazing, congratulations on all of your success.
| pembrook wrote:
| After spending 7+ years in the static site generator world, I
| recently started using Webflow exclusively for all marketing
| sites and landing pages and have been blown away with how much
| better it is than dealing with the complexities of the Static
| site + Headless CMS ecosystem. It seems you've actually delivered
| on the vision that dreamweaver was originally trying to create
| all those years ago.
|
| 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?
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