Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living
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....
193 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 123 ms ] threadNow 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
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.
It's nice to have a reminder and to realize the impact that comments, sharing and encouragement can have in the greater world.
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.
That sounds awful. Is she OK now?
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.
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!
How can this kind of thing be day-to-day for people in the richest country that has ever existed?
What a nightmare.
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.
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.
You will not have to worry about medical bills, no. But it will be harder to build the nest egg you'd need to bootstrap a company, since the tax brackets only go up from there. Wealth formation might explain why Canada has fewer tech startups and entrepreneurs than California, despite the decreased insurance risks associated with national health care.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We've had to warn you about this kind of thing before, especially the nationalistic aspect. Please don't post flamebait and especially please don't take HN threads into entirely off-topic, entirely generic classic flamewar topics. That path leads to the hell we're trying to avoid here.
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.
- 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.
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
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'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.
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.
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?
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.
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.