The Exchanges

Q Oh, I'm getting some good ego inflation off that, but I do want to start today. Like, kicking off with a little bit about you, so tell me, the idea first came to you for Webflow in 2004, talk to me, what was the moment, and then what was the zigzag path to today in a very concise three to four minutes?

A Sure, so the very moment that the original spark for the idea came to be is, like you mentioned, back in 2004, I was an intern at a web design agency, a very prestigious web design agency that was doing work for Apple and HP and Tennis Channel and Quicksilver, all these big brands. And my job was literally, I was college, and it was the lowest of programming jobs where I was working with a genius creative team that would take these designs, and my job was to implement them into this custom CMS that this agency had developed. So it was taking me three or four days per what they call objects, you know, like Quicksilver would have events and writers and products and things like that, and I would translate each of those things into HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and all of that was fine and dandy until one day I saw the invoice for one of the customers, and Per object, they charged over 100,000 dollars. And that was the aha moment of like, holy crap, this is something I'm essentially doing glorified translation of somebody's creative vision into this medium of the web. And I thought I was being paid really well, like 12 dollars an hour. That's more than minimum wage, right? And seeing the value that that created and how slow it was, relatively slow to take somebody else's vision and like make it real. That's when the whole Spark hit of like, this creative team should have the tools to take…

AI assessment note: “That's when the whole Spark hit of like, this creative team should have the tools”

Q Swift Transition from something so sweet and lovely as like two wonderful daughters to fundraising. It feels terrible, but you mentioned conversations with VCs, and it is a really interesting story, your fundraising journey, because it is slightly unorthodox, and I spoke to Ben Ling, one of your seed ambassadors, and he asked, how was it for you raising the seed, and what lessons did you learn from that raise?

A So the way I remember it, and the way it felt during the time, is one of the most anxiety-inducing moments of My life, Ben might have a different perception because only saw several parts of that conversation. But for us, it was, you know, we were seeing, we're in this YC batch, and we're seeing all these companies sort of like on demo day, close around, or already had their round closed before demo day. And we were having all these conversations with very seemingly powerful people at all these kind of partner tables where we weren't getting either yeses or nos. By the way, I'm speaking more broadly, not there were exceptions to this. But we probably met with 70 different firms, and it was a pretty consistent theme around, well, there's not enough traction yet, or the tool that you're building is not powerful enough for professional developers, and it's too sophisticated for sort of the Wits and Weebly and mom and pop shop kind of businesses, et cetera. So we're just not sure yet. And this big theme around where does mobile fit into this? Because responsive design was a popular thing with web designers, But mobile was all the rage. So we had to sort of tweak our positioning to say, like, okay, we're kind of starting with the web, and then we'll figure out a story to move into mobile, just to get people excited about reframing the story around the web. Because this was right aro…

AI assessment note: “one of the most anxiety-inducing moments of My life”

Q twists and turns, the failed trademarks, not getting into the first YC on application. My question to you is, that's a lot and it's hard to take. How did you take and absorb the rejection and the really shit moments? And I guess, what advice would you give subsequently to other founders when it comes to really just having that persistence and not giving up on the idea from 2004?

A Oh man, that's the hardest advice for me to give because it's so rational. For me, it was just blind optimism that this has to exist, that it will become a thing at some point. And it's a rational drive that there's a better way and I can help make that happen. But when you're in the weeds, when you, you know, you're, especially my case, the fourth time we started, I already had two kids. We had a life to finance, you know, you have car payments and you have rent and you can't just like operate on those dreams. So It's really hard in the moment to say, stick at it. Cause I did things like we went over 60 K in credit card debt. We had to cash out our four on K even with like massive penalties, sell two cars. None of these things I would recommend to my friends now. So I don't want to give this advice of like do everything possible because there's so much of like survivorship bias in my advice and saying like, well, it worked for me. And therefore you should basically mortgage everything in your life and make dumb financial decisions. Uh, but honestly the overriding driving force there was Look, there's a much better way to do things, and I've seen it. I can see the impact it has on people. It gives, like, designers and entrepreneurs and creatives, like, these superpowers. Why doesn't this exist? It's almost like you land on an alien planet or whatever, and you, you know that eve…

AI assessment note: “For me, it was just blind optimism that this has to exist”

Q Oh, I'm getting some good ego inflation off that, but I do want to start today. Like, kicking off with a little bit about you, so tell me, the idea first came to you for Webflow in 2004, talk to me, what was the moment, and then what was the zigzag path to today in a very concise three to four minutes?

A Sure, so the very moment that the original spark for the idea came to be is, like you mentioned, back in 2004, I was an intern at a web design agency, a very prestigious web design agency that was doing work for Apple and HP and Tennis Channel and Quicksilver, all these big brands. And my job was literally, I was college, and it was the lowest of programming jobs where I was working with a genius creative team that would take these designs, and my job was to implement them into this custom CMS that this agency had developed. So it was taking me three or four days per what they call objects, you know, like Quicksilver would have events and writers and products and things like that, and I would translate each of those things into HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and all of that was fine and dandy until one day I saw the invoice for one of the customers, and Per object, they charged over 100,000 dollars. And that was the aha moment of like, holy crap, this is something I'm essentially doing glorified translation of somebody's creative vision into this medium of the web. And I thought I was being paid really well, like 12 dollars an hour. That's more than minimum wage, right? And seeing the value that that created and how slow it was, relatively slow to take somebody else's vision and like make it real. That's when the whole Spark hit of like, this creative team should have the tools to take…

AI assessment note: “That's when the whole Spark hit of like, this creative team should have the tools”

Q Swift Transition from something so sweet and lovely as like two wonderful daughters to fundraising. It feels terrible, but you mentioned conversations with VCs, and it is a really interesting story, your fundraising journey, because it is slightly unorthodox, and I spoke to Ben Ling, one of your seed ambassadors, and he asked, how was it for you raising the seed, and what lessons did you learn from that raise?

A So the way I remember it, and the way it felt during the time, is one of the most anxiety-inducing moments of My life, Ben might have a different perception because only saw several parts of that conversation. But for us, it was, you know, we were seeing, we're in this YC batch, and we're seeing all these companies sort of like on demo day, close around, or already had their round closed before demo day. And we were having all these conversations with very seemingly powerful people at all these kind of partner tables where we weren't getting either yeses or nos. By the way, I'm speaking more broadly, not there were exceptions to this. But we probably met with 70 different firms, and it was a pretty consistent theme around, well, there's not enough traction yet, or the tool that you're building is not powerful enough for professional developers, and it's too sophisticated for sort of the Wits and Weebly and mom and pop shop kind of businesses, et cetera. So we're just not sure yet. And this big theme around where does mobile fit into this? Because responsive design was a popular thing with web designers, But mobile was all the rage. So we had to sort of tweak our positioning to say, like, okay, we're kind of starting with the web, and then we'll figure out a story to move into mobile, just to get people excited about reframing the story around the web. Because this was right aro…

AI assessment note: “is one of the most anxiety-inducing moments of My life”

Q I had a really interesting conversation with Brianne Kimmel, one of your investors, and she's had her views about founders angel investing. How do you feel about founders angel investing?

A I think it personally removes focus. It introduces another thing to worry about, but more importantly, I think it drives a potential wedge between kind of a founder and the rest of the team. Because especially as you start angel investing, maybe if you're doing it publicly, it starts to create more and more of a separation between you and the rest of the team. And I think that's something that's appropriate or more appropriate after a big exit or something where everybody gets to benefit from that upside. But mostly it's, it's kind of a focused thing when your team, at least in my perspective, the reason I wouldn't lean too far into angel investing is because it might make my team feel that I'm already focusing on other things and making other bets. And more excited about something else where in actuality, like my time can be much more impactful, like dollar for dollar, uh, or time per dollar into making Webflow more valuable. And that, that makes their stake in it more valuable. And it shows that I'm all in.

AI assessment note: “I think it personally removes focus. It introduces another thing to worry about”

Q Yeah. How did having them change how you think about operating?

A It changed everything. Honestly, like going into starting the startup with kids, you just have to, it forces you to think about prioritizing because I'm personally as much pressure as there was early on to like not talk about kids. You know, we went into VC meetings and even at YC, we sort of got the advice of like, just don't mention anything about kids or Because it signals that you're not into your startup or like not going to dedicate everything, which I found pretty depressing. But to me, it forced that prioritization of like knowing what's truly important and knowing that I would much, much rather lose my startup and lose or lose some sort of like business offside than lose my relationship with my kids. Like that's just something you can't mortgage that and sort of think, oh, well, I'm just going to work like a dog and not ever see my kids and And my wife and my family and my friends and come back to it 20 years later when there's some sort of exit or whatever and live an amazing life. Like, that just doesn't happen. And I think I was lucky enough to have some early conversations with other operators and VCs where I would ask them, like, what are your biggest regrets? And over and over, they would come back to, you know, I wish I didn't ignore my family. Like, it always seems like in the moment that it's something that can wait, but I absolutely don't think so. Even thoug…

AI assessment note: “It changed everything. Honestly, like going into starting the startup with kids, you just have to, it forces you to think about prioritizing”

Q twists and turns, the failed trademarks, not getting into the first YC on application. My question to you is, that's a lot and it's hard to take. How did you take and absorb the rejection and the really shit moments? And I guess, what advice would you give subsequently to other founders when it comes to really just having that persistence and not giving up on the idea from 2004?

A Oh man, that's the hardest advice for me to give because it's so rational. For me, it was just blind optimism that this has to exist, that it will become a thing at some point. And it's a rational drive that there's a better way and I can help make that happen. But when you're in the weeds, when you, you know, you're, especially my case, the fourth time we started, I already had two kids. We had a life to finance, you know, you have car payments and you have rent and you can't just like operate on those dreams. So It's really hard in the moment to say, stick at it. Cause I did things like we went over 60 K in credit card debt. We had to cash out our four on K even with like massive penalties, sell two cars. None of these things I would recommend to my friends now. So I don't want to give this advice of like do everything possible because there's so much of like survivorship bias in my advice and saying like, well, it worked for me. And therefore you should basically mortgage everything in your life and make dumb financial decisions. Uh, but honestly the overriding driving force there was Look, there's a much better way to do things, and I've seen it. I can see the impact it has on people. It gives, like, designers and entrepreneurs and creatives, like, these superpowers. Why doesn't this exist? It's almost like you land on an alien planet or whatever, and you, you know that eve…

AI assessment note: “I don't want to give this advice of like do everything possible because there's so much”

Q What do you know now that you wish you'd known at the beginning?

A Perfection is the death of innovation. Honestly, in the beginning, as a, as an engineer, I would want to get everything perfect, even if it took like a year to do that. I just felt that if it's not perfect, nobody's going to pay for it. And I've paid that cost so many times. We're seeing how much pain that gives the customers to have to wait for something that you think is perfect. And then you launch that thing that you think is perfect and still has a ton of problems. So if I could tell every founder is just like, focus on delivering value faster. You can always incrementally add up to your vision, but just ship, ship, ship.

AI assessment note: “Perfection is the death of innovation.”

Q Can I interject and ask, like for me as an investor today, what makes a great investor meeting for you, the founder, where you leave and go, Shit. I loved Harry. That was great. I want to work with him. What makes that meeting great?

A Honestly, for me, it has nothing to do with tactics. It has nothing to do with quote unquote value add. You know, what can a VC firm bring or whatever? Almost all of them can add a lot of value, you know, bring connections, bring resources, et cetera. It's honestly, and this is going to sound really, really foofy, but it's how do you make me feel? Am I like so energized that I want to spend more time with you as a friend or as a mentor, as a Something I gravitated to, or was this a, what's more common, a kind of an exercise in ego expression, or, you know, here's everything that's great about me and how we're better than the other guys, et cetera. Sort of like a, a selling pitch. I think really what gets me going is this, this idea of like true partnership and a true partnership, just like a true co-founder relationships or human relationship or like a romantic one. You don't want to compare, uh, People in like a spreadsheet type of model, if you're running like an RFP process of what's better than the other thing, like you really connect on a human level around, can I feel a sense of care from you to me and the inverse? Do we share the same vision? Like, are we both excited about like changing the world in similar ways? Like, can we see ourselves like grabbing a coffee every Wednesday morning or, you know, a beer every Wednesday afternoon or whatever, and just laugh together, …

AI assessment note: “it's how do you make me feel? Am I like so energized”

Q of that. I guess my question to you is that this is an episode where we completely threw the schedule out of the window, so apologies for that. But my question, given the people centricity, which totally aligned, how much of a role do terms play then in terms of your thinking around accepting new investors and who to work And what advice would you have to founders on that?

A That's a great question. I mean, again, survivorship bias here. So we had the, the leverage to, to basically have like very, very company friendly terms outside of a one X liquidation preference, which is very standard. We have a true partnership with Excel. It's not like Excel, just like the founders are here to serve the company. Like the company is not serving the board or serving LPs or whatever. Of course there's fiduciary duty to work towards a return, but that is a given with a growing business. So I think the terms are, if you're sort of thinking about it as a legal strategic thing, you always, like founders have this mentality of, I want to retain as much control as possible, which the more you can do that, the more it gives you sort of like a sense of safety that things are under your direct control. But I think the more a company scales, all that stuff gets away from you anyway, even if on paper you own more of the company. I mean, you see the stuff that we work, you see like Travis having to leave Uber. Even though they technically legally had control, like what really ends up happening, like what drives everything is what's the right thing to do for the organization and the company and the mission of the company. So all the sort of legalities of exactly what percentage of the company you own or what are voting shares like, that is all my new details because ideally…

AI assessment note: “all the sort of legalities of exactly what percentage of the company you own”

Q want to talk about kind of the coming back to market for the A. You tweeted the hilarious picture of the flock of animals, we said it before, all plummeting The water like investors to a profitable company. So why was suddenly there a moment when you realized, okay, now's the time to start fundraising for the A. Why did you choose then as the time to raise the A?

A So to be honest, we didn't choose the time. We didn't actually go out and start raising. It was, you know, we had some articles and some conversations we had on Twitter around our company being profitable and how we're, you know, just in trying to attract candidates in all the things we would say publicly in terms of like employer brand to Try to get more people to join us. And that attracted more and more investors. Like they sort of saw that something was working. A lot of the conversations in the community, something was like really special was happening. And that led a lot of inbound conversations of investors reaching out to us. We never actually started a process. We were always skeptical around if we were to raise up, what would we use the money for? And, and really, honestly, the biggest concern for us was Does partnering with a VC fundamentally change sort of a values driven and a mission driven and a purpose driven organization? And that was always why we were kind of like hesitant to go into like considering sort of the quote unquote venture life or like the venture growth path. But the more conversations we had, and actually a lot of the conversations we had sort of doubled down that, that fear because a lot of investors we talked to, and we talked to a hundred plus over the Three plus years that people knew that we were running breakeven and started to grow and sta…

AI assessment note: “we didn't choose the time. We didn't actually go out and start raising.”

Q too interested. You said about board meetings there. I'm really interested. I just joined my First board nine months or 12 months ago. What advice would you have for me having sat on the other side of the table as a founder that makes a great board member to you? And how have you found board management really as Webflow scales and adding the incredible names that you have done?

A Yeah. So like I mentioned, I see the board as serving the mission of the company. The company is not there to answer to the board per se. The board, just as the founders and the executives, they serve the needs of the company. So I expect Every board member, everybody who's in that board meeting to come with the perspective of how do I make this company's mission succeed faster? How do I support everybody in this room and everybody not in the room, like all the departments of the company? How do I make them more successful? How do I serve them? And I'm really a huge fan of this servant leadership model versus the, how do I go in here with the perspective of like, why aren't we getting returns faster? Why aren't we growing faster? Like asking the Direct hard questions. Those have a place, right? But they have to come from a place of you want to drive for that because you fundamentally care about the mission of the company and the people that are doing the work, not because you see those things as secondary, just because they're going to attract more talent or whatever, so you can provide a bigger return. I think if the founders of the board that you're participating in have this feeling that, you know, Harry's there to support me in whatever I need. He's there as a sounding board. It's safe to go to you to ask Questions and, like, think through, like, really tough situations, li…

AI assessment note: “I'm really a huge fan of this servant leadership model”

Q What do you know now that you wish you'd known at the beginning?

A Perfection is the death of innovation. Honestly, in the beginning, as a, as an engineer, I would want to get everything perfect, even if it took like a year to do that. I just felt that if it's not perfect, nobody's going to pay for it. And I've paid that cost so many times. We're seeing how much pain that gives the customers to have to wait for something that you think is perfect. And then you launch that thing that you think is perfect and still has a ton of problems. So if I could tell every founder is just like, focus on delivering value faster. You can always incrementally add up to your vision, but just ship, ship, ship.

AI assessment note: “Perfection is the death of innovation.”

Q Can I interject and ask, like for me as an investor today, what makes a great investor meeting for you, the founder, where you leave and go, Shit. I loved Harry. That was great. I want to work with him. What makes that meeting great?

A Honestly, for me, it has nothing to do with tactics. It has nothing to do with quote unquote value add. You know, what can a VC firm bring or whatever? Almost all of them can add a lot of value, you know, bring connections, bring resources, et cetera. It's honestly, and this is going to sound really, really foofy, but it's how do you make me feel? Am I like so energized that I want to spend more time with you as a friend or as a mentor, as a Something I gravitated to, or was this a, what's more common, a kind of an exercise in ego expression, or, you know, here's everything that's great about me and how we're better than the other guys, et cetera. Sort of like a, a selling pitch. I think really what gets me going is this, this idea of like true partnership and a true partnership, just like a true co-founder relationships or human relationship or like a romantic one. You don't want to compare, uh, People in like a spreadsheet type of model, if you're running like an RFP process of what's better than the other thing, like you really connect on a human level around, can I feel a sense of care from you to me and the inverse? Do we share the same vision? Like, are we both excited about like changing the world in similar ways? Like, can we see ourselves like grabbing a coffee every Wednesday morning or, you know, a beer every Wednesday afternoon or whatever, and just laugh together, …

AI assessment note: “it's how do you make me feel? Am I like so energized”

Q of that. I guess my question to you is that this is an episode where we completely threw the schedule out of the window, so apologies for that. But my question, given the people centricity, which totally aligned, how much of a role do terms play then in terms of your thinking around accepting new investors and who to work And what advice would you have to founders on that?

A That's a great question. I mean, again, survivorship bias here. So we had the, the leverage to, to basically have like very, very company friendly terms outside of a one X liquidation preference, which is very standard. We have a true partnership with Excel. It's not like Excel, just like the founders are here to serve the company. Like the company is not serving the board or serving LPs or whatever. Of course there's fiduciary duty to work towards a return, but that is a given with a growing business. So I think the terms are, if you're sort of thinking about it as a legal strategic thing, you always, like founders have this mentality of, I want to retain as much control as possible, which the more you can do that, the more it gives you sort of like a sense of safety that things are under your direct control. But I think the more a company scales, all that stuff gets away from you anyway, even if on paper you own more of the company. I mean, you see the stuff that we work, you see like Travis having to leave Uber. Even though they technically legally had control, like what really ends up happening, like what drives everything is what's the right thing to do for the organization and the company and the mission of the company. So all the sort of legalities of exactly what percentage of the company you own or what are voting shares like, that is all my new details because ideally…

AI assessment note: “all the sort of legalities of exactly what percentage of the company you own... is all my new details”

Q As you said, you've seen that from the very early days of YC, living on the West Coast, you've seen that the growth of the tech ecosystem. If you could change one thing about the world of tech in the Valley, what would it be and why?

A Well, I would decentralize the Valley first and foremost, because I think like tech has saturated so much in Silicon Valley that makes it completely different. Unaffordable to live here. Like the infrastructure here can't really handle it. We're gentrifying this entire area. I just don't think it's sustainable. The other thing I would change is that goes along with the same theme of distribute Silicon Valley into like a more worldwide phenomenon, because now with things like zoom and slack and so many of the tools that we have for collaborating across state lines and across time zones, there's just so much more you can do with much smarter people. And trying to sort of like have this mindset that the most innovative things only happen in Silicon Valley.

AI assessment note: “I would decentralize the Valley first and foremost, because I think like tech has saturated”

Q the many meetings and quite often the sales pitches that VCs give, especially when they know that you're in profit. My question to you is, in terms of, like, VC value add, what have you found where VCs actually do tangibly add value, and that's great, and then is there any misconceptions where people are like, oh, they really add value in hiring, or in editing, where they actually don't?

A I think all of our investors have added value, like, practical value across the board, especially Excel now, given that they're so involved, like, especially with hiring, like, most of our intros come through them, they, they help interview people, they really help us understand what roles have worked What hasn't worked? Like, making introductions to, like, really key companies, you know, like Slack and Atlassian and all Dropbox and getting us set up with mentors. Like, on the practical side, tons and tons of value. I think value is even more important on the human side. So, both Arun and Ron that you mentioned that you talked to, the fact that they make you feel supported, not through practical help, but, you know, this sort of, like, meta concept of, like, whatever you need, I'm here for you. Like, even if it's venting or emotional support or, you know, just Being there for you is so much more important, right? Like being happy for you when you go take vacation, recharge, or like build relationships outside of work. You know, I remember a very early conversation with Ron from Rainfall, Rainfall Ventures, where I truly knew that he had my best interests at heart. We were on this walk around building in San Francisco, and he was like, you know, I never expected this from, from an investor. He's like, Vlad, do you know about the, the Patagonia founder? He kind of takes like six …

AI assessment note: “I think all of our investors have added value, like, practical value across the board”

Q obviously a huge Twitter fan boy of yours, and I saw a tweet that you said about speaking about your kids' deepening relationships, and just how to build those really kind of human and non-transactional relationships. So before the discussion, hit me, Vlad, how many kids, how old are they, what's your favorite activity to do with them, and then how did having them change how you think about operating?

A Lovely questions. So I have two daughters. They're eight and 10, about to be nine and 11. They're Born around the same time. They're amazing. Both totally different personalities. One's a lot more like me, like quiet, reserved, introvert. One's a lot more like my wife. Just lives life. Emotions on her sleeves. Just like super happy-go-lucky. They have such different interests that what I end up doing is having individual dates with each of them, and they get to pick what to do. So for one, it's a lot of video games, and Dave & Busters, and like Chuck E. Cheese, and you know, going to like, you know, trampoline places to jump around, laser tag, video games at home. For another one, it's really like Deeper conversations. Like I, you know, helped her build something that she really wanted to build for her friends to track animal facts or, you know, ended up building it in Webflow. So we read Harry Potter together and watch those movies and sort of like bash how bad the movies are compared to the books. And usually when we end up doing stuff together, it's like watching stuff together. Ends up being Shark Tank. Actually, we love Shark Tank. Believe it or not, there's some investment going on there. And we play these sort of like couch co-op games on PS four.

AI assessment note: “I have two daughters. They're eight and 10, about to be nine and 11.”

Q too interested. You said about board meetings there. I'm really interested. I just joined my First board nine months or 12 months ago. What advice would you have for me having sat on the other side of the table as a founder that makes a great board member to you? And how have you found board management really as Webflow scales and adding the incredible names that you have done?

A Yeah. So like I mentioned, I see the board as serving the mission of the company. The company is not there to answer to the board per se. The board, just as the founders and the executives, they serve the needs of the company. So I expect Every board member, everybody who's in that board meeting to come with the perspective of how do I make this company's mission succeed faster? How do I support everybody in this room and everybody not in the room, like all the departments of the company? How do I make them more successful? How do I serve them? And I'm really a huge fan of this servant leadership model versus the, how do I go in here with the perspective of like, why aren't we getting returns faster? Why aren't we growing faster? Like asking the Direct hard questions. Those have a place, right? But they have to come from a place of you want to drive for that because you fundamentally care about the mission of the company and the people that are doing the work, not because you see those things as secondary, just because they're going to attract more talent or whatever, so you can provide a bigger return. I think if the founders of the board that you're participating in have this feeling that, you know, Harry's there to support me in whatever I need. He's there as a sounding board. It's safe to go to you to ask Questions and, like, think through, like, really tough situations, li…

AI assessment note: “I'm really a huge fan of this servant leadership model versus”

Q want to talk about kind of the coming back to market for the A. You tweeted the hilarious picture of the flock of animals, we said it before, all plummeting The water like investors to a profitable company. So why was suddenly there a moment when you realized, okay, now's the time to start fundraising for the A. Why did you choose then as the time to raise the A?

A So to be honest, we didn't choose the time. We didn't actually go out and start raising. It was, you know, we had some articles and some conversations we had on Twitter around our company being profitable and how we're, you know, just in trying to attract candidates in all the things we would say publicly in terms of like employer brand to Try to get more people to join us. And that attracted more and more investors. Like they sort of saw that something was working. A lot of the conversations in the community, something was like really special was happening. And that led a lot of inbound conversations of investors reaching out to us. We never actually started a process. We were always skeptical around if we were to raise up, what would we use the money for? And, and really, honestly, the biggest concern for us was Does partnering with a VC fundamentally change sort of a values driven and a mission driven and a purpose driven organization? And that was always why we were kind of like hesitant to go into like considering sort of the quote unquote venture life or like the venture growth path. But the more conversations we had, and actually a lot of the conversations we had sort of doubled down that, that fear because a lot of investors we talked to, and we talked to a hundred plus over the Three plus years that people knew that we were running breakeven and started to grow and sta…

AI assessment note: “So to be honest, we didn't choose the time. We didn't actually go out”

Q obviously a huge Twitter fan boy of yours, and I saw a tweet that you said about speaking about your kids' deepening relationships, and just how to build those really kind of human and non-transactional relationships. So before the discussion, hit me, Vlad, how many kids, how old are they, what's your favorite activity to do with them, and then how did having them change how you think about operating?

A Lovely questions. So I have two daughters. They're eight and 10, about to be nine and 11. They're Born around the same time. They're amazing. Both totally different personalities. One's a lot more like me, like quiet, reserved, introvert. One's a lot more like my wife. Just lives life. Emotions on her sleeves. Just like super happy-go-lucky. They have such different interests that what I end up doing is having individual dates with each of them, and they get to pick what to do. So for one, it's a lot of video games, and Dave & Busters, and like Chuck E. Cheese, and you know, going to like, you know, trampoline places to jump around, laser tag, video games at home. For another one, it's really like Deeper conversations. Like I, you know, helped her build something that she really wanted to build for her friends to track animal facts or, you know, ended up building it in Webflow. So we read Harry Potter together and watch those movies and sort of like bash how bad the movies are compared to the books. And usually when we end up doing stuff together, it's like watching stuff together. Ends up being Shark Tank. Actually, we love Shark Tank. Believe it or not, there's some investment going on there. And we play these sort of like couch co-op games on PS four.

AI assessment note: “So I have two daughters. They're eight and 10, about to be nine and 11.”

Q the many meetings and quite often the sales pitches that VCs give, especially when they know that you're in profit. My question to you is, in terms of, like, VC value add, what have you found where VCs actually do tangibly add value, and that's great, and then is there any misconceptions where people are like, oh, they really add value in hiring, or in editing, where they actually don't?

A I think all of our investors have added value, like, practical value across the board, especially Excel now, given that they're so involved, like, especially with hiring, like, most of our intros come through them, they, they help interview people, they really help us understand what roles have worked What hasn't worked? Like, making introductions to, like, really key companies, you know, like Slack and Atlassian and all Dropbox and getting us set up with mentors. Like, on the practical side, tons and tons of value. I think value is even more important on the human side. So, both Arun and Ron that you mentioned that you talked to, the fact that they make you feel supported, not through practical help, but, you know, this sort of, like, meta concept of, like, whatever you need, I'm here for you. Like, even if it's venting or emotional support or, you know, just Being there for you is so much more important, right? Like being happy for you when you go take vacation, recharge, or like build relationships outside of work. You know, I remember a very early conversation with Ron from Rainfall, Rainfall Ventures, where I truly knew that he had my best interests at heart. We were on this walk around building in San Francisco, and he was like, you know, I never expected this from, from an investor. He's like, Vlad, do you know about the, the Patagonia founder? He kind of takes like six …

AI assessment note: “I think all of our investors have added value, like, practical value across the board”

Q Yeah. How did having them change how you think about operating?

A It changed everything. Honestly, like going into starting the startup with kids, you just have to, it forces you to think about prioritizing because I'm personally as much pressure as there was early on to like not talk about kids. You know, we went into VC meetings and even at YC, we sort of got the advice of like, just don't mention anything about kids or Because it signals that you're not into your startup or like not going to dedicate everything, which I found pretty depressing. But to me, it forced that prioritization of like knowing what's truly important and knowing that I would much, much rather lose my startup and lose or lose some sort of like business offside than lose my relationship with my kids. Like that's just something you can't mortgage that and sort of think, oh, well, I'm just going to work like a dog and not ever see my kids and And my wife and my family and my friends and come back to it 20 years later when there's some sort of exit or whatever and live an amazing life. Like, that just doesn't happen. And I think I was lucky enough to have some early conversations with other operators and VCs where I would ask them, like, what are your biggest regrets? And over and over, they would come back to, you know, I wish I didn't ignore my family. Like, it always seems like in the moment that it's something that can wait, but I absolutely don't think so. Even thoug…

AI assessment note: “it forces you to think about prioritizing because I'm personally”