The Start:

The founders of Webflow, Vlad Magdalin, Sergie Magdalin, and Bryant Chou, bring a blend of creative and technical expertise to the table.

Vlad, originally from Moscow, Russia, moved to the U.S. and grew up valuing hard work and innovation, inspired by his father, an engineer, and his mother, a piano teacher.

Vlad initially pursued a career in web design, freelancing and working at Intuit before teaming up with his brother, Sergie, who shared his passion for web development and design.

Sergie, who started collaborating with Vlad during their freelance days, provided the creative edge to their projects. Together, they sought to simplify web design, leading to the creation of Webflow

The Problem:

The start of Webflow was driven by the frustrations that Vlad Magdalin and his brother Sergie experienced as freelance web designers.

They were tired of the repetitive and time-consuming process of converting static designs into functional websites. This process often involved setting up databases, writing extensive code, and dealing with technical limitations that hindered creativity.

Their goal was to create a tool that allowed designers to build websites visually without needing to write code, thereby bridging the gap between design and development.

Their personal experiences with these challenges inspired them to develop Webflow, aiming to empower designers with more control and efficiency in web creation​

Getting their first $$$:

The founders' initial goal was simple - build a prototype & get website designers to use Webflow. So Vlad posted on Digg and Reddit where designers hung out but that didn't work out.

After that, Vlad used a new product called KickoffLabs which allowed them to add a way for people to join a waitlist on the landing page and get a unique referral link – if they got others to sign up for the waitlist using their link, they were promised to get earlier access to Webflow when it was ready.

It fizzled out too.

So on March 20, 2013, as a last-ditch effort, Vlad launched the first version of Webflow on HackerNews.

Which went viral and they had over 5,000 people join the waiting list just from that HN post. Since they didn't have a working product, they just showed a demo via a Proof of concept and shared it on HN.

And crucially, over the next few days, the KickoffLabs viral mechanism also started working really well – many of the people who signed up wanted earlier access, and they sent out several emails encouraging them to share with their friends to move up in line.

This led to over 20,000 more signups over the next few weeks, primarily fueled by people posting their referral links to their social networks.

TechCrunch did a piece on them and they ended up getting 50 paying users. Soon after they got into YCombinator.

Digging this? Get more actionable strategies like these straight in your inbox for free