Ep 100 | 3 Critical Lessons Building Webflow | with Vlad Magdalin
Jul 30, 2024
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Vlad Magdalin, the CEO and co-founder of Webflow, shares his inspiring journey from a Russian refugee to tech entrepreneur. He discusses the vital lessons learned from failures, including a notable rejection that taught him self-worth. Vlad reflects on the role of serendipity in his creative path and emphasizes resilience amid early challenges with Webflow. He also highlights the importance of valuing work, leadership dynamics, and community collaboration in web design, ultimately celebrating growth and gratitude as the platform continues to evolve.
Freelancers must recognize their self-worth and adequately price their services, as demonstrated when a client valued their work significantly higher than their initial invoice.
Entrepreneurs often face cycles of failure and setbacks, but embracing these challenges as growth opportunities is crucial for long-term success.
Scaling a product effectively requires staying focused on core offerings rather than being sidetracked by market trends and feature bloat.
Deep dives
Valuing Self-Worth in Freelancing
Freelancers often struggle with self-worth and pricing their services adequately. A client once surprised a freelancer by valuing their work at $5,000, despite the freelancer's initial invoice of only $750. This experience drastically changed the freelancer's perception of their value in the market, prompting them to adjust their rates significantly. It highlights the importance of recognizing one's work's worth and the potential impact this can have on one's career trajectory.
Navigating Failure and Perseverance
The journey of building a startup often includes cycles of failure that can feel overwhelming. The CEO shared personal experiences of feeling like quits was the optimal choice during hard times, especially after various setbacks, including trademark issues. However, perspective shifts over time can reveal that these setbacks are not the end but rather opportunities for growth and learning. This mindset is critical for founders to embrace, enabling them to move forward rather than remain weighed down by past failures.
Learning from Market Dynamics
The podcast delves into the complexities of scaling a product in a competitive market. The speaker reflects on how Webflow momentarily lost focus during the rapid no-code hype and expanded its feature set too broadly without solidifying core components. This diversion served as a valuable lesson in product development, leading to a renewed focus on essential design tools and performance optimization. It demonstrates how market trends can sidetrack even the most committed teams and the necessity to stay aligned with foundational goals.
Empowering Teams and Individuals
The discussion touched on the delicate balance between kindness and the necessity of difficult conversations in leadership. The speaker emphasized that avoiding hard truths can inadvertently harm team dynamics and hinder individual growth. They noted that great leaders foster an environment where feedback is encouraged and essential for improvement. This approach not only strengthens team performance but also contributes to a healthy workplace culture where members feel supported while being held accountable.
The Evolving Mission of Webflow
Webflow's mission remains steadfast in empowering users to build the web, but it continually adapts to serve a diverse audience. The conversation explored how the platform aims to attract larger businesses while still accommodating freelancers and smaller agencies. By building a robust toolset that supports varying user needs, Webflow positions itself to grow alongside its customers. This inclusive strategy reflects an understanding that as businesses mature, their demands evolve and must be met for long-term partnership success.
So, for the 100th episode, I decided to get the big guns in, fly to SF and do this bad boy in person with the CEO (at the time) and co-founder of Webflow, Vlad Magdalin.
Vlad came to US as a refugee with his parents from Russia.
He learnt graphic design almost by accident when he worked with his entrepreneurial dad asked him to convert catalogues from english to Russian.
This lead to a job with a company called Russian American media → deepened his interest in graphics and then 3D animation.
At college, he studied computer science but dropped out to go to the academy of art in San Francisco.
The technical aspect of sophisticated 3D and animation tools and feeling like he was getting superpowers really interested Vlad.
He dropped out of art school and got a job at a design agency.
Why can’t web designers design stuff and hit publish to be live on the web just like 3D - render something and it’s live on the screen
As you may have guessed, this spark was the catalyst for Webflow. Webflow now has over 200,000 users and is over $100 million annual revenue.
And it was an easy ride with no failures whatsoever.
No no no dear Webflailer… it wasn’t quite this easy.
The failures that we’ll talk about today are:
1) Not valuing himself when he went back to freelancing – until a client rejected my invoice for $750 and said that to him the site is worth at least $5k
2) Stopping to work on Webflow in 2008 (for the 3rd time) when there was a trademark issue and I couldn’t use that name – combined with Weebly raising money
3) (Not sure if I can talk about this one publicly yet… noodling on it) Getting too caught up in the no-code hype and trying to do too much (e.g. Logic) before fully nailing the fundamentals (e.g. CMS)