January 18, 2024

#93 - The Technical CTO + Readying for IPO feat. Allan Leinwand // CTO @ Webflow

52 minutes

Leveraging Your Tech Knowledge as CTO: Staying Hands-On and Readying for IPO

Embrace the technical side 🔧 of the CTO role with Allan Leinwand, CTO of Webflow 🖱️ who has combined technical know-how with great products on every layer of the OSI Model: from setting up HP’s first ethernet, CISCO’s early networks, building the world’s first CDN at Digital Island, and continuing up the stack to enterprise cloud ☁️ (ServiceNow), social gaming 🎮 (zynga), communications 💬 (Slack), eCommerce 🛒 (Shopify) and now webdesign 🎨(Webflow).

Listen to find out;

Why deep technical knowledge 🧠 allows better products

How a monolith can combine individual code ownership and great deploy times 🤔

How to attract 🧲 talent with a ‘boring’ stack (+ Innovation Lab 101)

How to embrace the role of a pre-IPO CTO 🧑‍🚀🚀

How to stay technical as a CTO 🧑‍💻

Why he ships small fixes from their #UX-Papercut chann

Listen here

BROUGHT TO YOU BY: WorkGenius and codecentric

About Allan Leinwand:

Allan Leinwand is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Webflow, where he leads the engineering team. He joined Webflow from Shopify, where he also served as CTO. Prior to that, Leinwand was SVP of Engineering at Slack and the CTO at ServiceNow, where he grew engineering from 100 to thousands and led the team through an IPO. Before ServiceNow, he was the Infrastructure CTO of Zynga, a Venture Partner at Panorama Capital, an Operating Partner at JP Morgan Partners, and spent 7 years at Cisco Systems (among many other roles). Allan is the author of two books ("Cisco Router Configuration" and "Network Management: A Practical Perspective"), an investor, a board member at Compass and a trustee at Harvey Mudd College. He is based in San Francisco.

TIMESTAMPS (approx)

(00:00) Intro

(02:10) Creating A Frontend For Front-End Webdesigners At Webflow

(04:31) Allan’s Nerd Journey

(08:38) Allan's Experience In Venture Capital

(09:16) Allan's Transition To Social Gaming

(09:28) ServiceNow And Slack

(09:43) Shopify And Webflow

(11:04) How Technical Knowledge Creates Technical Excellence

(12:41) 2 Types Of CTOs: Thought Leaders And Builders

(13:34) Diverse Domains Need Diverse Stacks - Choosing New Challenges

(16:22) Webflow's Tech Stack

(19:25) Webflow's Secret Sauce

(24:05) Staying Technical As A Builder CTO

(25:58) The Importance Of Understanding Developer Workflow

(26:25) The Role Of A CTO In Understanding And Improving The Tech Infrastructure

(26:38) Solving Ux Paper Cuts: Why He Ships Small Changes

(28:04) How To Stay Technical As CTO With Community And Coding

(30:26) Why Webflow is Monolith

(30:52) The Importance Of Code Ownership In A Monolith Structure

(31:33) The Debate: Monolith Vs Microservices

(31:59) Fast Deployment In A Monolith (Kubernetes And Docker)

(33:10) The Role Of A CTO In Code Quality And Team Management

(34:03) The CTO In A Pre-IPO Company

(34:45) How To Make A Company IPO Ready As CTO

(35:09) The Importance Of Aligning Engineering Needs With Business Needs

(37:13) The Challenge Of Tech Debt And Its Impact On Innovation

(40:36) Attracting Talent With Conservative Stack

(43:19) The Role Of Innovation Labs In A Tech Company

(46:40) The Importance Of Specialization In Engineering

(48:09) Choosing The Right Company: The Role Of Passion And Leadership

(51:46) The Importance Of Patience And Persistence In A Tech Career

Quotes:###

VC is not for everyone. It is hard to be that hands off when you're a technologist at heart

’” - Allan Leinwand, CTO of Webflow,alphalist CTO podcast #93

Look for companies where you passionately believe in the product, you passionately believe you can bring something to it, and they're led by folks that really understand the market they're tracking and they really are passionate about it because those things combined are just an amazing place to” - Allan Leinwand, CTO of Webflow,alphalist CTO podcast

About our sponsors

WorkGenius

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codecentric

The codecentric Culture and Career Podcast is unique for a company podcast. It is just employees talking freely about their daily life - from IT consulting projects they are working to imposter syndrome. We support this because we think it's pretty cool that codecentric simply lets the colleagues talk about everything, no matter what it's about - project business, Imposter sydrome, further education or parental leave in the consulting business. For us it is definitely worth a recommendation. Listen in - the codecentric Culture and Career Podcast. Note - its in German.

Just go to: www.link.alphalist.com/cc

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By Tobias Schlottke - alphalist CTO Podcast

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