Bootstrapping Webflow to $10M ARR, and scaling to a $4B Valuation with Vlad Magdalin (Co-founder & CEO)

The Peel with Turner Novak

Vlad Magdalin is the Co-founder and CEO of Webflow, software that empowers designers to build websites without code. Vlad started the company with his co-founders Sergie Magdalin and Bryant Chou in 2013, and has since raised roughly $335 million supported by investors like Accel, Khosla Ventures, YCombinator, Capital G, and Eric Bahn.

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Topics discussed include:

• The history of web browsers, websites, and web design

• Why websites are the ultimate economic enablers

• How Webflow empowers anyone to design websites without code

• Why website design is a gateway into programming

• How the movement to CSS and web standards in the 2000’s and 2010’s created the opportunity for Webflow to build a product around responsive design

• Moving to the US with his parents and five siblings as refugees from the USSR at nine years old

• How losing half of their luggage and immigration documents in the move enabled his dad to buy the family’s first computer

• The first website Vlad ever designed for a Brad Pitt movie

• How his experience dropping out of a computer science degree to work in 3D animation at Pixar, then going back to school gave him the idea for Webflow

• Failing to build Webflow three times between 2005 and 2008

• Why the spouses and partners of founders are the unsung heroes of startups

• The moment he immediately quit his job and attempted Webflow for the fourth time

• Burning three months of runway on a Kickstarter that never went live

• Liquidating his retirement account, paying rent with credit cards, and selling and leasing back the family car’s to keep the business running

• Vlad’s exuberant optimism that kept him going for 10 years

• Failing to get into YC, and the crazy story behind getting accepted the second time

• The trajectory-altering customer and fundraising advice they got from Paul Graham

• The “Investing on Principle” contract they signed with Accel who led Webflow’s Series A

• Why Vlad thinks every startup founder should operate with the assumption they’ll never be able to raise money again

Referenced:

• Inventing on Principle (Video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII

• Inventing on Principle (Transcript): https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/inventing-on-principle-by-bret-victor

• The Infinite Game: https://simonsinek.com/books/the-infinite-game/

Where to find Vlad:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/callmevlad

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladmagdalin

Where to find Turner:

• Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak

Production and distribution by: https://www.supermix.io

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