The Startup Story

Vlad Magdalin, co-founder of Webflow

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About this episode

This week's episode features an interview with Vlad Magdalin, co-founder of Webflow. For those that may not be aware, Webflow (at its core) is a website building platform, but yet it is so much more. Webflow is a platform that has enabled thousands of designers to act as an design and development agency because Webflow allows anyone to design masterfully, and develop online engagements without any need to know how to code. In fact, just a few weeks ago we had Duncan Hamra, cofounder of Memberstack on The Startup Story. In his episode we discovered that Memberstack was built ontop of Webflow. So the reality is that Webflow is not just a website builder but an entire web and software development platform that is democratizing how web design and development is achieved.

Vlad is an incredible storyteller and you're going to love his full episode. But for me, one of my favourite aspects of his entrepreneurial journey. Is the fact that both he and his brother (who is also his co-founder) are refugees from Russia and who grew up in the Shadows of Silicon Valley. Having immigrated to the US only days before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Vlad knows quite a bit about starting over from scratch.

And aside from overcoming many personal struggles as he adapted his life to try and fit in within the United States. It also took him and his brother four separate tries to get their now two-billion-dollar company up and running.

Vlad’s story is so incredibly relatable because the startup story for many companies is not one continuous thread, sometimes it has many starts and stops and Vlad was no different.

In this episode, you'll hear:
  • Vlad shares how he was born in the USSR and his parents took the massive risk to move him and his siblings to America in 1991.
  • He shares what it was like growing up in American from the age of 9 and how he struggled with his identity and he tried to hide that he was from Russia.
  • When Vlad was looking to go to college his parents said he should do a computer course like his brother. He did this for one term then dropped out to go to art school to do 3D animation as he aspired to work at Pixar.
  • While he was at college Vlad had his first entrepreneurial venture. Vlad was using Quickdot to chat with his friends but the app crashed. So picked up a book on programming and started writing a clone of Quickdot but developed it and started ChatterFox. Here he fell in love with programming.
  • Vlad shares how he first came up with the idea for Webflow when he was an intern at a design agency. He accidentally saw how the company was charging their clients hundreds of thousands of dollars while Vlad was getting paid $7 an hour. This sparked his entrepreneurial flair and he wanted to fix the problem he saw and make it better for everyone involved.
  • Vlad shares how he pushed back starting Webflow for 6 years and experienced many ups and downs with this. He almost gave up until one day he randomly receives a trademark certificate for Webflow, that he applied for it over 5 years ago. He took this as a sign to keep going.
  • How he went viral on Hacker News. In less than 24 hours it was the number 1 post and went viral on Twitter. Vlad shares the posting on hacker news drove over 20,000 sign ups. When Webflow launched only 30 people out of the 20,000 paid to use the software.
  • Vlad shares that with those first 30 customers they started a group chat, to hear direct complaints, suggestions and requests they were making.
  • How they think Webflow hasn’t even scratched the surface yet of what’s to come for the website and with their Series B round completed they are on to developing Webflow.
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    Webflow Website: https://webflow.com/

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    Webflow Twitter: https://twitter.com/webflow
    Webflow Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/webflow/

    Bret Victor, Investing On Principle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII

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    The Startup StoryBy James McKinney