Vlad Magdalin is the co-founder and CEO of Webflow. He recalls advice from Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham when Webflow was struggling to complete its seed round.
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“And we really just tempted to, I think we went back to PG all Graham and sort of said, we only raised, we're kind of targeting a million dollars, but we only raised 350 so far. And he sort of told us this perspective is like, Hey, look, if this is like stressing you out so much, and actually you're not delivering any value to your customers right now, your users, why don't you just make the decision that this is all you need You're going to be constrained. You're not going to be able to hire any more people potentially, but there's a lot you can do with three really smart founders over the next year. And this is enough money for you to at least pay yourselves some median salaries.”
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AssertionNot checkable as stated
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Vlad Magdalin: Top-tier VC pitches are mostly generic and transactional
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Disclosure
Vlad Magdalin accumulated $60K credit card debt and sold cars for Webflow
“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.”
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AssertionNot checkable as stated
Webflow met with 70 VC firms during its seed round
“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 an…”
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