the no code movement is taking the tech world by storm right now, with the moniker being a nod to tools and service is that allow you to create your own software with a little to no coating needed something that has been a dream for technologists and consumers for decades? Well, it's starting to become a reality. You want to design your own website or mobile app without any coating experience. You can now easily do that. You want to control your lights when you walk in the door or get a notification on your phone when someone enters your house or when the forecast calls for rain that day, all of these things would have required expertise and programming years ago. Inv. Lads Company Web Flow is the poster child of this new movement today, with tools like Web flow, weebly, Wicks, thinkable, IFT, Omni and others. The opportunity to build simple and complex software for yourself,

for your company is getting simpler and more powerful with each passing year. Vlad Magdelin, co founder in CEO of Web Flow, sits down and which had about his insane story of failure, followed by failure followed by failure all on the same company and idea spending 15 years before getting it right with Web flows. Current incarnation, which just raised 75 million from investors a few months ago and was one of the largest Siri's A's of the last few years. We talked about the debt he went into financially and personally, including with the most important of co founders, his spouse. We talk about what he thinks about today as a leader that he rarely ever gets a chance to talk about. And we talked about the R word religion. It's a behemoth of a conversation, and it is one of my favorites to date. I think you're going to enjoy this very different kind of conversation and founder story and a quick shout out to Schroth and KP to know code experts that have turned me on to these phenomenal tools that I'm now using and projects on a daily basis. If you dig below the line,

we'd love a review. It's how podcast platforms ranking suggest podcasts. It's also how I consume podcasts. Always check out the reviews so every review matters, and we appreciate every single one. If you're one of folks that have already left a review, especially all the five star reviews have gotten. I know that we appreciate you read every single one. So thank you for taking the 5 to 10 seconds to do that. He actually now could just smash five stories. You don't even have Thio toe leave the text review on podcast. Most podcast saps anymore. So it really does take five seconds. So I appreciate that bloodline is brought to you by a kick ass sponsor Play Cast Media. Do you want the easiest way to set up a professional premium podcast from your home? Go to play cast media dot com and get their premium podcast in a box delivered right to your door.

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And year thirst. Murder. Anything for me? This has been on the podcast once, maybe twice before. And it is the most outrageous branded drink ever by angry, and it's quite thirst quenching our thirst murdering some Glad I'm glad to share one with you. Well, I guess we're sharing to our listeners at home. We're not sharing one. That'd be a little too intimate, but great to have you on the podcast

this morning. It's amazing to be here. Thank

you for having. Of course, I can't wait to dive into. Ah, the whole host of of topics based on the things we share openly on online on Twitter. And I'm really excited, but I did want to start off the podcast talking about something a little orthe agonal to start ups. You You mentioned that you fast in the mornings, and, um, I'm guessing it's intermittent fasting. What? Do you have a morning routine that set morning routine that you try

toe? Um, I used to have a whole range of different routines. Right now, it's super basics. So I I wake up really early. I usually wake up at 4 45 you know, take a shower, drive to work and I focus on my most important task of the day. So that's when usually nobody's in the office. Put on my headphones, set a timer, set a timer for 60 seconds, 60 minutes. Sorry and just get in the zone. And the work on that most important thing is always different. It's just whatever is top of mind.

Well, that it's like, you know, really important job description or a new strategy, doc or whatever. That's basically what my morning is these days before I tried to do workouts and meditation, and that was just too much to try toe squeeze in and just wasn't getting the right. But But I always felt behind what I was miss days or something like that. So right now it's really basic. Get up, get prepared, Dr. Work on the most important thing. Then get into the

day. How have you always been a early riser?

Oh, absolutely not. It's It just became a necessity. Once we moved from Mountain View to the city. And if you miss the early morning window for traffic, you're essentially adding another 30 45 minutes or an hour today. Whereas when I, you know, leave when I do now it's a guarantee 30 minute drive. So that is probably the most important life hack for me and just getting more time in the day. So it kind of became a necessity. And, you know, for the last 40 years, even without setting alarm, I'll be up before 45 every day, every day.

Well, not every day that week. Saturdays are are definitely a wake up with my kids. Wake up and kind of enjoy the time with them. That's a lot more flexible,

right? Well, tell me a little more detail it I'm always fascinated with with routines, especially for someone like you that has 100 50 plus employees and a and a company where there are many imagined, many important tasks there every day. Tell me a little more about kind of evolution towards one important task

for for a day. Yeah, it actually came from a combination of things, I think I think multiple. There's a pebble called the Great seal within that advocates or something like this. But honestly, the main inspiration came from book called Essential Ism of Ah ah, and and the main idea. There's toe really focus your time on the essential few things rather than the you know, the sea of urgent tests, etcetera. And for me it was just a I saw how much something I worked with my coach on for a long time. Like I saw how much learning to say no to a lot of things that seem very promising. And, you know, they could span the gamut of opportunistic meetings with investors or potential clients Or just, you know, people that reach out to you for advice. Or

there's just a whole lot Yeah, exactly appreciate you saying

yes. I mean, yeah, just, ah, focusing on things that really give me energy and that that bring a lot of value to the impact that I want to have in the world and saying no to a lot more things that are like have impact but steal a lot of energy and, you know, make me dread wanting to work on them, et cetera. And this early morning focus on working on. The most important thing is just something that I've found. I've always struggled with procrastination, and I found that this is the most ideal thing for me, where if I knock out that one really important thing once a day, that's five times a week that I'm working on, things that are hypercritical and in a regular flow of things will probably avoid, uh,

we're trying to make them like a the end of the day when I'm like, losing a bunch of energy or whatever. So just something over the last year has, uh, has really solidified and kept working for me, and it's really easy to maintain. Um, you know, because the ritual is during a time that there are no other distractions. Um, the only distraction is kind of my own, my own mind or where it can go. But I've also developed some some tiny little um, you know, something that my coach helped me a lot with with addressing those kind of mental gaps when you try to fall into the space of working on the most important task and just just, you know,

acknowledging it, naming it kind of letting myself give it giving myself permission to feel those you know, those like thoughts of like, I don't want to work on this or whatever. And in just those little little rituals help get those get those tests done every day. And I also like the reason it's just one is because when I try to do more but I try to do two hours every morning it just started to fall apart. So I I have to know my own limitations and just say, you know, this is this is an hour, this now that's blocked. Nothing get scheduled over. This is not even during working hours.

That must know. What time

is it? What time do you Rahm? This is like 6 to 7. Most days

I imagine you cherish that you love. I love that time. Love that time.

I mean, there are times where I'm like, you know, I have to get into the mental space of loving that time. Everything has to be just right. Like I get into the office. I'm the 1st 1 to use the coffee machine. I have to have that specific timer that I got an Amazon that just sort of like tells my brain. How much time is left? It's a little Pomodoro technique ish, but it's like a full hour. Um,

is a physical

timer. It's a physical timer. Yeah, and it actually was a desktop. No, it's just like a physical timer. And that has, like, it just beeps after it's done that, you know, that's usually that beef is. Sometimes I'm just like in the flow of things were all right. I need another half an hour and I kind of keep working on something. But sometimes it's It's this like, don't we mean hit like I calmly just like afterward, right? Like I'm done or I have permission now to go get another cup of coffee or get some water or go for a walk or whatever,

right? That's such a powerful Imagine such a powerful psychological hang Just by 7 a.m. I am by 9 a.m. Whenever I'm getting to the office, you already feel like Okay, at least I have that done and you feel like you're starting

the day ahead. Yeah, I there's still a lot of things I feel behind on, but I'm already planning for, like, okay, a worst case scenario I'll plan this really important thing for the next morning for tomorrow. Um and I still get through a ton of urgent and important things about the day you know, whether it's meetings or other other priorities. But like it does feel great to be done with one thing that in my past life ah, you know, I would like, keeps needing and sort of have in the back of my mind and always thinking I'm behind in a ton of things. So it's It's definitely a It helps. It helps have, like a more calm approach to life. But at least for me,

right? Yeah, yeah, I think it's so. I know Max Election always cycles in the morning and says he just no matter what happens at work, he knows that he at least got that done in the morning. And it also is it's ever since high school, I've always written down my top two or three things on my and sometimes it's just one or two, but it being on my head, I'm thankful being on San Francisco. That's not yeah, right, Phil, right? Yeah, idea. That's awesome.

Today's the most important thing is really this episode so, so honored. I didn't need to write it down because it's already on the the books. But if it's something like for the book being able to write down, okay, finish this chapter for Angel Messing to kind of make a decision by, you know, by the end of the day on this company, it's It is I. Can I go to bed until I finish that thing and still just happen that, like that, that physical time or having that physical representation is just so much more powerful? And I've tried every to do less. Snape tried every productivity app but having that physical representation and to your point having that. And I remember reading this in a book that the most important thing you hear that was the title, the book and it's more or less.

The essential is, um, just of one thing a day that you say OK, this is the most important and it's ah, my hand. Well, I mean, it's not really a toe add. You can raise a mullet exactly, So it has to be one or two, maybe three important things, but I like that That edition of doing it right in the morning trying to knock it out. Out of curiosity, What was your approach to productivity and kind of these boundaries? If you had them, What was your what was your 10 years ago?

So if for listeners, Flat has started multiple startups. But when? 10 years ago. What was your approach to one of your first start ups? Did you have a morning routine?

Honestly, I did not like it was a ah, starting all the way back from high school. I was sort of a lifelong procrastinator. You know, I would always and I always did Great, right? That was the problem, you know, in high school is Lou. Tori and I would write my essays at lunchtime and hand them in, You know, 30 minutes later or whatever, I would pull a ton of all nighters like college was a lot like that. I went to a combination of computer science and dropped out, went to art school completely different, you know,

skill sets. But I had similar approaches to, like, always work at the last minute on, You know, the most important things and there was great. So, like, the my brain kind of associated that with, like, Well, I'm gonna do find anyway. But it, like in terms of my mental state throughout each day it was always anxiety. And, you know,

like, here's ways that I'm letting clients down and I did One of the things that I did kind of on the side is I ran an agency Thio build websites for clients. That's like a lot of different projects in addition to a day job that I'm always like, kind of feeling behind on. And I would have, like, you know, after I got married, it would have been about 10 years ago. I was working at that into it full time, but doing a lot of these side projects where, because of the lack of habit, look good habits and get productivity practices, I would get behind in a lot of things. Then just, you know,

work through the night multiple nights and then gets taken sort of like cycle oddities. You get these things done and they were, um, you know, for the most part, good, unacceptable, and you know what, get paid etcetera. But it was just not a good kind of life to live, especially it was hard on my wife because you just see me, you know, go into these like work zones and then for many days, just be kind of grumpy because I was getting sick or whatever. Not very sustainable it all. I think it only started and starting web flows seven years ago didn't really help with that because it was,

like, 100% of, like, waking time, minus a few hours on Sundays. Ah, and I wouldn't recommend this to anyway. Is just the necessity at the time because we didn't have any money, Didn't have any funding. Ran out of, like savings that she just had toe. We have to work day and night to get this thing to ship. That was, I guess there was no room for procrastination then. You're just, like,

always working, um, and and working with my brother and my co founder at the time, like we found ways to, like, figure out what was most important. But only then did it start to kind of develop into all right, as as the company started to grow like and as the list of things to the implicit of important an urgent things to Dio kept getting out of it and, like, just kept growing larger and larger. Yeah, I think I spent a couple of years of in the same kind of like procrastination purgatory, maybe three or four years in the weapon when the team was maybe, you know, going from like 20 to 40 to 50 of constantly, you know,

like falling through on commitments, not doing the most important things that procrastinate and said it was only for a few years ago were I just realized that that was not gonna scale like It also coincided with a lot of other realizations in my life around, you know, really focusing on on the essential things that are important, Um, my family and relationships and those things being a lot more important than sort of like performance of the startup. It's ever like this constant comparison to everybody else. And I think around the same time I started focusing on intentionally trying to figure out what will actually be a lot more sustainable in my life. What's a lot, uh, knowing that the company, and like my responsibilities that are only going to keep growing and the type of work is only going to get harder.

What year? About what year was this that you started to reflect on all of this? This,

um, very active very actively would have been 2017. So it's It's also the same year that I transitioned from mostly coding to mostly managing people and like, leadership on. And that's when I was completely out of my element and completely, you know, felt unprepared for I felt I was pretty strong engineer. You know, that was kind of my comfort zone, even with the sort of bad productivity practices. It was something that I could be like, really, really effective in when it came to leadership was just like learning from scratch, right? It was It was absolutely a like the impostor syndrome, one on one, right?

I felt completely unprepared or not the right person to be doing this like it's sort of not even looked into sort of happened into that role. And I can't believe other people were like listening to what I have to say. Ah, and are joining this company, you know, with me at the helm or whatever. So that was sort of ah, like the first intentional step into. Okay, I need help. I need a coach. I need

Thio. Did anything happen externally or internally that catalyzed that?

Or if I think internally, the realization. Like actually, though there was one, it was the combination of a lot of things. But there was one specific discussion I had with another engineer. Those on the team that had the courage to say like, Hey, what you're doing by maintaining control of like, a specific part of the code base is actually hurting our team. There are more important things we need you for then, like approving code reviews and things like that. Ah, and that was kind of a shock to my system. That was a a realization that I'm actually like a barrier rather than a You know, I wrote the entire front and part of what it will look. The majority of the up and kind of legitimately thought that you know, since I understand it the most, I'm

like I can be helpful. Way to move,

fastest way to move. I could be the most helpful. Like it's hard for other people to get that kind of context. You know, after me more can this thing for five years. How can anybody come on board that that quickly? But it was just robbing autonomy and ownership from from other team members. And having that realization, along with other things, was just knowing that I had to make a choice of. Well, if I'm going to keep going down the leader path, I actually have to get to a point where where I'm enjoying that kind of work and I'm filled by it and actually like gives me energy. And I knew that wasn't the case when I was primarily coding. I knew

I had, I told you, to your point of, of remembering the engineer, giving you that feedback just makes me mention mention that it's I remember. I think about the advice that I got our general counsel at Tilt or maybe 60 employees, 73 boys. And he said he said something very similar to me that I still think about all the time. He said, James, if you can learn to give up control, it might not be the task that's at hand might not be 100% of what you want, 100% of what it should be. Even If you are even that a mission to know exactly what it should be. It might be 90% but it allows us to move in 10 different directions and 90% rather than one at a time at 100. And that feedback I think about that. 90% in 10 different directions.

Part of the quote that that he said to me, I probably think about that once a week. That was maybe three years ago that he probably doesn't even remember it. Maybe does. But Josh Horowitz shadow, it sticks with me and the people that have that CEO seeking self awareness. Those moments really can be a five minute piece of feedback. But really, Chef door, just help anyone that you're working with. It doesn't have to be CEO. Kind of see something that we're all s o, um could be so blind Thio of just that by the by products of rev approaches that we might have as well as my one of my favorite leadership books that I bring up all the time. Sitting right up there is what got you here won't get you there and to just aspects that you're talking matches the book keeps coming up in my mind of of whether it was being able to write a paper at lunch, being able to procrastinate and still succeed, that can get you to a certain point.

But then it can actually be the limiting factor for you getting to the next pan point or or being that amazingly efficient individual contributing coder red versus abstracting to a management failure. It's Ah, that concept still floors me when I think about just our strengths can be our weaknesses. Yeah, yeah, so

so. But I'm thankful that her skills and interest can be so fluid and flexible and could be developed like now. I get such amazing energy from empowering my other team members and seeing what they can do independently because, like you said, you can go in 10 different directions and even if you're being generous or like you said, kind of assuming some sort of like founder on missions or whatever, most times like the teams will come up with something that's in bad times better than what you were able to come up with and by being that kind of retaining, controlling, being a bottleneck is ultimately will be hurtful to your company. I think it's still important for for there to be like context shared and, you know, Founders air usually around for years, if not decades, then somebody that solving a specific problem. And it's always awesome. Toa have a way to share that context to a conform a solution. But I see so many things that are created right now what flow that surprised me like to, uh, the degree of like I would have never

thought of that. What is a specific example comes to mind if you take a minute to think about something that would not have happened without and was it counterintuitive to you? Did it did it was that something that you couldn't quite buy into, that things would be better off in certain rooms without eating and directly involved.

I think the best example I have is so like I mentioned, I used to run wet flow as a kind of agency. We're working on websites for a lot of clients, and it just happened to be that most of the clients were dentists. Just because you know a word of mouth and you know, occasionally orthodontists want order feeling adventurous. I said I was using that as I would do the coding and surging. My brother would do that design. But you do the design and I had translated to like, wordpress or something, something like that. But that was sort of our experience, right? So when we were starting to build web flow like Okay, how do I get myself out of the picture as the like, the translational air and empower Sergi to do all the designs? But we were mostly informed by the things that we had built before,

right? So when we started Web flow about a year into it, when we had just gotten out away See, you know, we're actually like looking to hire first employee and our first engineer Dan joined. Maybe it would just knew Exactly. We thought we knew that what all the priority should be like here. All the missing pieces of all these sites that we built before that we really need. It's better a winning concept. Manners were improbable, and about six months into Dan being on the team sort of came to us and said like, Hey, I think we really need to add Ah, animations and interactions into what flow So sort of like turn a website development tool, Mornington Animation tool. And,

you know, we were like, really we thought it was a toy with Ah, you know, you shouldn't be like a key priority right now. We're still missing all this other stuff. And but Dan was really persistent. He just he kind of in a spare time, created the prototype and just God, it's really excited about it, you know, like kind of hesitantly saying, Okay, well, pause on other things because we only had one designer at the time of surging one of my co founders, so,

like kind of paused on everything and put two weeks into that interactions product, then launched it. Any just took off like gangbusters. It ended up. I think we did some math a year later, like half of our business came because people are like saying OK, like, this is what it is, is what's truly innovative about what Phyllis will brought me there, and to me, that was eye opening was like something that I was like, really hesitant to even put into the product that soon, and I had kind of mixed feelings around like All right, let's just let our engineer have some somethingto something that they're passionate about. Get it out there so we can get back to the true priorities or whatever. But it ended up really opening my eyes like that should have been.

I keep priority, right? I just wasn't seeing it. And that's because Dan came from an agency background where they did a lot more creative projects, right? They weren't working with that. A much broader range of experience across many different types of clients, not just like the kind of boring, small business ones we're working with. And that's just the perspective owes and seeing. And we've had so many of those examples with a lot of the tools that we've built, like a cross e commerce across a lot of the, ah, sort of like layout tools that we've built and even like small features that do you think are small. And then you launch them. And you just realized what amazing things people do with them that that original person that just kind of wanted to use their kind of spare time or their 10% time thio like build a prototype around like they saw it all along about how valuable could be. And it just like seeing more border. Those surprises is awesome.

Yeah, well, um, and there's and there's so many things that I wanna somebody different topics I want to touch on from the background as an artist to thio. You mentioned coaching and just that last seven years of building web flow and didn't want to get to all of those. But I want to ask one last question on this from your artistic mind. What? What did that? That example of people really wanting these animations? What do you think That that What was the reason behind that? Because he had it sounds superfluous. Yeah. Um, and yet you saw in the data?

Yeah, it's ah, I should have as an as an artist. That's somebody, because I studied three D animation. I wanted to work. A Pixar is like, I wanted to give these kinds of tools to myself into other people. Write that kinds of tools that existed in that sweet animation space, which are all about creativity, right, like they're so technical. But they're really there to empower somebody to tell a story, and I actually should have seen that. But I think I got, like, swung too much in the other direction of,

like, just business minded thinking after spending several years that that into it and kind of go as we started, wept low, thinking more around like OK, what's the competitive landscape with, Like Weebly in weeks and square space and losing mostly kind of cookie cutter and, you know, they solved, like business problems. You gotta get like a brochure out there. You got to get, like, a sales lead form and all these things that solve actual, like, quote unquote actual problems but missing the forest for the trees a little bit in thinking that you know a lot of the times. The reason people have a marketing site is to tell a more unique story right toe.

That's truly what was this separate from right? That that exactly that's what was different. In order to do that before what floor he needs to have a developer that not only was skilled to do that, but also interested in that. And that's usually the last thing that gets on, sort of like a budget or whatever. That's sort of polish of like animation and interaction. Polish is like, you know, we'll get to it if we can or whatever. But by putting a front and center, giving those tools to the designers immediately without having to rely on developers, it was a perfect Venn diagram match of like things that they're interested in and that have value to customers because you're building a unique brand. And that was sort of the magic combination. Andi and I think that is. The reason why creative tools are so powerful is because,

as the as a person creating the tools, you often don't even have any clue aboutthe limits that people will push that tool to. And it's usually surprising. So I'm pretty sure that when, like the Pixar engineers started creating sort of like three D seen and like animation tools, et cetera, they they weren't imagining the kind of what they're mostly programmers, right? They weren't imagining the kinds of, you know, things we see on screen today, and just like you know, whoever wrote created the first typewriter, they weren't imagining all the words that could possibly be written in a novel, et cetera. I think the core important aspect there,

though, is the foundational tool set right? Like by adding some, you know, the fact that you could do a whole range of things, like the fact that you can even animate an object and give it like behavior, and and let that behavior be driven by, like the interactions that the user's taking. Those core constraints are pretty simple. But then when you see what people do with it, it's like Holy cow. It's almost giving kids Lego blocks right there essentially, like 10 different types of blocks and colors or whatever, but the things that they can build them with with their imagination, kids and adults. I don't want that kind of limited thio two Just kids. But the combination of those building blocks can be amazing, right? You didn't create heart with Yeah, exactly.

That's Ah, it is. And it's almost a microcosm of what Web flow is, which is just abstract away, the difficulty or that engineering cost. And when you take that cost away, the the yeah, the directions are infinite as well as just in this. In that tiny example, you know, there is such a demand for these delightful unexpected, surprising, differentiating little animations and expressions. Artistic expressions that it's had isn't just superfluous. It is. Someone puts their hair a certain way to represent and express themselves. And they Why wouldn't they want that with her online quote unquote pamphlet of their dentist's office?

And it's not just that. Then we then we took that same approach of, like ke ke sort of technology foundations or like building blocks and applied it to more things that relate to building software. So, you know, we started with sort of like the visual layer and where you're kind of building how things are perceived and interacted with. But then we we expanded it to how things were actually represented. So we build this essential lack of visual database builder where you can, like describe any objects, sounds like object oriented programming. What passed the M s is we're kind of like, Oh, we have pages and we have blocked posts. And then you have all these you wise to sort of, like, manage that stuff. That was kind of the traditional model.

But what we did was just like any object essentially modeled. What? How programmer thinks about a date a vase, right? They can just add tables and columns and relationships between those two. But we made that a lot more human to where you can say hero, the blocks that care about or like the structure of the things I care about and the actual items within that structure. And then I can, like, visually, tie that structure in tow, representing it on you. I and people build like a lot of traditional things were there, like, Here's a block post that has a title in a body in that category or whatever, and I'm gonna list them out.

But then people take that same exact building block and build really, really creative things with it. Like where they'll represent, you know, voters and like politicians and from that, like draw relationships that you know, whether this sort of like political of affinity year or whatever. And then my one of my daughters actually built and still maintains and like this pride and joy of her life is just has this website called Emma's Animal Facts, and she models out animals and like facts about animals as objects with relationships between them, and then collects like wheat Super weird, obscure animal facts about those animals from all of her friends and essentially maintains a database right. It's not really a blogger. It's not a traditional website. It's still like a mini app that has as its database like an animal. It's like I am Devi, but for animals like super weird animal facts,

and for her, that's like a piece of software that is like a part of her social life now. And, you know, something that you know, helps develop her learning goals or whatever

and amazing how old. How old is Emma when

she She was nine? Yeah, yes, yeah, actually, almost love.

That is incredible. Yeah, well, and she keeps

like a notebook all the time just to make sure she captures that these things as they come up and gets him into the database. And

I love this entire last decade, and I think we're going into a supercharged decade of lowering the threshold of creation because it is. I mean, it's just having a nine year old build a website for you and I. When we were growing up, that would have been 14 year old, a 15 year old. You would have been a prodigy, and and that's on the upside. The downside is you would have been one in a 1,000,000 because no one knows yet was doing that at very few people could do that at at nine or even 10 years ago. A nine year old building Web site was built of Remember building a video game when I was, like 15 when video games up and built a video game and I just thought this no one ever played it? Maybe, you know, three of my friends play, but it was just this

even one Users infinitely more than

exactly exactly. No, it it was all I needed. It was just, and it was the sense of accomplishment. But it was the beginning of feel like, Wow, I could make other things, and that is way more important than that myself. And therefore, for Emma or countless nine year olds out there with something like Web flow, it is, um, it's impact cannot be. It can't be overstated. Not only just that project, but the creativity that that sense of accomplishment that now an 11 year old she's feels like an unaccomplished 11 year old.

It's, I mean you just abstract, are you? You put the timeline at the next 10 years and what she's gonna create its phenomenal but ah would love. It's a great segue. Way to ask if you could give listeners a breakdown of this. There's no code revolution that's that's taking place right now. And you all are the poster child of poster Children. Hester, child of of this No code and low code movement toe where nine year old is creating a database object or in a database application, which is nerd speak for a really cool project online. Can you give listeners are kind of an overview of this space the last year, seven years or start whenever you want. I

mean, the no code monikers sort of started developing a few years ago, so it's relatively new. But at a at a high level US humans, engineers, technologists that air. We've been creating software for the last 50 plus years, right? We software is a super powerful medium we have now, especially with the Internet augmented with Internet. It's it's a way that we have to solve problems that impact the entirety of our life Now, right, I got here in a lift, which is powered by software. You know, you and I exchanged e mails and you probably have a spreadsheet of guests. And all these things are

put this out online instantaneously

correctly, and that's sort of like the big examples we know about. But there's so many problems that are solved with with software behind the scenes that they just power the world today, right? Ah, from just like workflow automation to It's just makes humans lives easier to get computers to do. Work for them, right?

Starting a phone number of a dentist ex having a website helping? Exactly,

Exactly. So it's, We know that it's a very powerful medium, and right now, soft words. You know, the market recent sort of coined. This term of software is eating the world. It's exalting a lot of the things that we used to do manually are now being automated by, ah, these new so that even automated, sometimes just like new use cases are created like Adrian be right where that was. Ah, brand new type of wealth was created where people were ableto make a living from sharing their homes, et cetera. Ah, and there's you know the examples.

They're pretty leading there. But the key thing is, the people who are creating the software are the people who know how to code. And on Lee, one out of every 350 people or so I know how to code. That is a tiny percentage. It's around 1/4 of 1% of the world's population, or half a percent of like the online Internet connected population. And that disparity between consumptions of people using software and creating the ability to create software is a massive right. Like everybody who's using the Internet is using software. But only a tiny tiny fraction is creating that software. And that's because learning how to code learning all these frameworks is really, really hard. There's just a lot of complexity that goes into that, and no code is really all about applying the types of democratization effects for creation that we've seen in other disciplines and other mediums to software. So we kind of saw a similar shift in reading and writing,

right, like you know, during the Renaissance and, um, kind of over the last 400 years, we've seen the ability to write and the ability to distribute words go from something like 1/4 of 1% of the world's population where it was really in, You know, certain power structures. You had to be like part of the government, part of the church to, like even have access to a printing press, have access to distribute writing. Etcetera would even have something like a typewriter that you can like, go share your words with on kind of a mass scale. And now we're in a world where almost everyone is that on an equal playing field when it comes to literacy and literacy is not split between, oh,

the vast majority people know how to read, but very few people know how to write. We're kind of in the same playing field in terms of having access to that ability. And I'm not saying that everybody is gonna write a novel like J K Rolling Order. But everybody has the ability to try right. There's there's like a lot more grace and forgiveness there. Then there isn't creating software, creating software still so brittle and so specialized, and so many of the things that needed that that are needed to create software are so repetitive, like almost every business is, you know, creating a database and writing, like figuring out how to like later in business logic. And you Why? And the database, et cetera.

And so much of that is what a lot of people call accident. Accidental complexity. There like its complexity that people don't really need to understand in order to solve that same problem. To make an analogy there is sort of like the difference between the telephone and the telegraph. People solve the same problem with both. They just want to send a message across right. But a telegraph requires the knowledge of Morse code right board the reliance on a telegraph operator. Thio, go translate the message in Morse code electrical signals sent it across translated back. You get the same message rate, but you can, you know, we know now that we can solve that same problem by just like using it directly. Human interface such as the voice and and just, you know, down the number and have a conversation.

So they need to know Morse code was accidental complexity, right? It was. It was complexity that we can remove from the equation, and you still have to know howto like have a conversation. You have to know what to say, etcetera. So no code is all about, like getting software development to the core principles. You still will have to understand how to model data. You'll have to understand how to think about like objects, relationships, You know, Block Post has a category or has an author has multiple authors relationships like that, and you'll still have to understand. How do I create something that has value and it solves a specific problem.

So all the important things about, like product design, understanding, customer problem, you'll still need to know. But no code has started. Ah, like the entire goal is to remove all that complexity of what? Okay, how do I spin up a server

had away? How do I find a developer exactly. Chats with wrong one for 13 months, going in the wrong direction and exam and throw up your hands and for the next 15 years, not touch anything. Webs that were

right. Is that because you're so reliant on that and that brittle piece of code or whatever? So so no code is all about raising that percentage of how many people are able to create software, not just consumed software can the main. The main assumption of this entire movement is that it's gonna be way too hard, and it gets harder over time to become a coder for me to become a coder. 25 years ago, when the Web was first getting started, like literally, I had to pick up a book on and and I had to have a copy of Dream Weaver, where html CSS were barely new technologies with like, 20 tags or something like that. And I essentially was a full Web developer after reading a book. Today you have thousands of technologies, thousands of frameworks. It's like a huge, overwhelming kind of problem when you try to say, Oh, I want to

become a software engineer, right? Instead of kind of telegraph to telephone, call it at the accidental complexity, Exponential ized became exactly even more

complex. And I understand why, because we're solving these like more and more complex problems. And it was a much faster path to building those than trying to find an abstraction layer that represents this stuff in you, I and that's that's a really hard problem It's almost like, you know, it's a lot easier for us to to type something into a computer directly, then develop a voice to speech, voice into text kind of algorithm that knows how to translate. That detects intelligently, right? So that's why no co took a while to figure out. Okay, so over the last 25 years is the Web has, like, matured water, like the core problems that are,

like, repetitive, and we can find a visual abstraction over them that solved 80% of most use cases. We're never gonna We're never gonna get rid of the need for coders. In fact, like the no good movement's gonna expand the need for coders because we're gonna create a lot like, drastically more software. And that's gonna have exceptions around the edges, where you're going to need a lot of engineers to figure out things that haven't been visually abstracted yet. But the reason this movement is taking off now is people are starting t. It's the combination of it's kind of a perfect storm of the tools are catching up where they're capable of doing a lot of things. Like what floor where even five years ago. Marketing teams wouldn't touch it because there's just a lot of things that it wasn't able to do. Now, entire marketing departments across like even like multi 100 person startups, are operating even better than having to rely on coders because they can move like super fast because the tools they're not really capable.

Same thing happened with, like, three D animations after right? It was a toy at first, where all the like you know, Toy Story one was made primarily like engineering talent, because those are the people who knew how to develop like that, rendering technology, that animation technology, et cetera. And then over time is the tools matured like they were capable to do so much more that you put creative people in charge and they're able to, you know, with the support of the technical folks building the actual tools, they're able to make, you know, much more creative and impactful. Ah, things that way so that so the tools are catching up and that demand for creating software is just exploding right. People are realizing the kinds of things that you act you can actually solve to a software

like even basic things you know, what are some of the things

I you know, tracking animal facts is a very, you know, not business critical one. But think of something small, like just the other day. I have, like, a war calendar and ago and, ah, personal calendar, right? There's all sorts of reasons why I don't want to share one with the other, right? But I also want to make sure when I plan a date with my wife of that, my time at work is blocked off, right?

So I set up a really like Typically, I would sort of trying to figure out the FBI of like, Google Dogs. They're Google Calendar and maybe work up the energy even as a developer to, like, create some sort of bridge or whatever. But it's wants this happier. They set up a zap like when this happens, do this when this calendar gets an event like blocked the same thing on the other calendar. That's a super simple automation of my life that just adds a lot of value and removes the need for like a personal assistant to go on like kind of track. The overlap makes their life easier, makes my life easier. Ah, and it's It's like a problem that I've solved right? Or when I turn on the switch like this should happen. That's just outside of business,

Right? In the business world looked so many problems, right? Like you look at the amount of use cases that are now stalled. You would like to look like weapons happier and air table by, like product teams and marketing teams and things that usually would either not be done or you would need a much larger investment of like, Okay, now we're building internal tools and we need it like Staffan Engineering Team et cetera.

Yeah, well, the example of blocking off your your work calendar with a personal you know, Ah, personal calendar event automatically is a perfect example. When I think about the no code moving, I know in my own chronology of understanding it, it was kind of this. This thing with it was, this narrative arc in my mind was like, Well, there are a lot of really cool pamphlets, sites that need me and created. That's really important. Um, and that and that's great And really, you know,

dentists are relatively underserved, or doctors that need their own websites for this podcast is having a static site at for our own your l for the podcast. But it went from thinking that I realized Oh, no, I'm only thinking about this in terms of 2009 1999 how the Web was used versus exactly what you're touching on which I then got to the point I was like, man, anyone imagine these tools becoming so easy that anyone that says the phrase I wish this app did X and then you within 90 seconds can make that app do X whatever that edge cases everyone, Yeah, says those things. Everyone is like, I wish I wish Facebook did this. I wish Twitter did this. I wish Gmail did that. My man, I would. Someone needs to create an app that when you when you do X on on Google calendar you and it's that type of stuff is so global those things air said billions of times over break or at least a year.

And when you follow this, this trend, whether it is day Pierre or Web flow, it is or ah, you know ift. And it really is that rich of like take these edge cases that you wish when it's raining. You get a notification on your phone rather than being to look out the window.

Yeah, uh, and those are the small ones, right? Those were the ones where eso software is made up of three big chunks. There's the database, sort of like the data model you can think of air Table that way. It's sort of a source of truth of like, what is the You know what's happening Then you have the u I which, you know, in something like a table or a spreadsheet. It's sort of like the same your wife for everyone. But in Web low, you would have you could create any sort of you. Why that you might want right. Then you have business logic, which is what happens when somebody interacts with the user interface like what happens?

Thio. Whether like impacts, the data causes some sort of external event outside of that, ultimately, Nokko tools will get to the point where there will be, you know, right now, you sort of have to glue a lot of things together. I think we'll be in a place where We call it visual, softer development where it will be like a centralized and develop an environment where he can do all three in one place. And, of course, we're trying to make it flow that kind of one of those one of those platforms. But it will be. It's probably for a lot of things for a lot of things that really matter. It's not gonna be like a 92nd thing,

of course, but it's going to be to the point where the kinds of startups that were created 5 10 years ago like Airbnb like Get Hub etcetera, will be able to be created by an order of magnitude, if not two orders of magnitude number of people. So one example had recently was, um, one of the executives. Distance on What, Christine, we're trying to plan this off site, and we're using Airbnb and Airbnb is, you know, not made for corporate offsite pointing right? There's just a lot of things that you might care about, like having a white board president having like the ability to string him to like an apple TV or whatever. That's what that's more like breathers space, right? But we really wanted this sort of feel of kind of. But being in home and spending more time together, it's that

I'll give a little shout out to Airbnb for business, which is really great. Ah, White Glove service for business travel in conferences. But okay for this press No, you're you're right.

Let's say let's say there's some sort of niche, like somebody is really interested in creating kind of, ah, business around helping companies find, you know, offsite space rights that are right in like Super White Glove. And they just have a lot of different things that they want to happen. Like when somebody request something, I get a text

message. Everyone traveling gets a text message right there,

just like all the things that you can think about when you're trying to solve that problem and you're really passionate about it right now, there's no place you can go to and say, like, you only really go to like a software engineer and say, I have this idea and then how do we build it out or whatever? But it's exactly what you said, like we want to get to an end state where somebody that has that idea has the tools at hand without going through a four year college or like a boot camp, ah, softer group boot camp to try to figure out 100 different technologies to glue that stuff together. We want people to focus on the most important things, which is the logic, how things look, how they're presented, other model. And I think the vast majority, if not all, humans,

have that capacity to. I think at that level, it's just we don't have those building blocks available in a human friendly way yet across the entire stack of what it takes to build, like really powerful software, especially when you start to include things like subscriptions and, like different plans and, like user systems, where people actually have to log in and have like a different experience than kind

of like a payment isn't exactly yeah, yeah, that's it is in tow. Build off of your your Lego analogy and use upon the same Segway the, uh, the it's almost a Ziff. 10 years ago, you needed these you need. There were only these cement blocks to build things there was or to accomplish something about building that's accomplishing some end goal you're in goal is keeping track of your all of your customers. And they're like, whoa, Okay, their sales force. Okay. And then we're gonna agreement, I guess, to use sales force and try to bend it in the way.

And it's that or two or three other big cement blocks. And then five years later, then it's kind of like, Wow, there's Google Docks and Google spreadsheets that now people are using We could use that to manage things a little bit in the block's got a little bit smaller, little bit lighter. And and you follow this trend to today where it's like, Oh, I wanna push notification on my phone whenever it's raining in San Francisco. So I just no right when I wake up or it's gonna rain that Daito, bring a jacket and it's this tiny little block that you're obviously not gonna hired Web development firm before. But you follow this exponential curve of these blocks just getting older magnitude smaller, and then you you are out of those you know, one developer out of 355 years from now, 10 years from now, maybe there's two developers for every 350. But those 300 people that have big and small ideas, whether it's for their work or whether it's for their personal life, 300 of them are able to utilize the Web, utilize absolutely technology and his tiny and and big

blocks, Andy and the important thing. But even the tiny blocks is that behind the scenes, you know the monitors no code right. But even behind the scenes of that tiny block, like when you know the weather is cold or when it's rainy sent me a text notification. There's so much code and technology behind that. But the key part is that there's, you know, specialists behind that one block that know how to maintain it. You don't have to worry about hooking up to like. Twilio is a P I in like some weather a p I. Then whenever those things change, you have to go change them, etcetera. It's a similar analogy to what happened with the cloud, right?

Look, it used to be that every business had to go, uh, you know, as a person who wanted to host something like you. If you were running anything serious, you would have to let go buy your own servers and get location space and set up a network. And, like if something fails, you got a rack. New hard drive instead, a parade and install the operating system or whatever. And today it's like you press a button like new machine, right? And then you have access to computing power. All that the complexity is still there.

In fact, there's probably more complexity. But to the person actually used, who needs that computing power? So much of that accidental complexity is gone, and you're using what truly matters to you. And I think the no cut movement will keep making those atomic building blocks more and more available. That way, people use more of the ingenuity and creativity to solve, like, specific problems for them, because now they have a lot more of that, like that tool set of Lego blocks that they can married together to make the solution that they actually want. And it's just like being an engineer, right, like to your sort of cement block analogy.

Throughout that entire time, we've had, like you could be an engineer where you don't even have access to cement blocks you have, like, sand and like, whatever ingredient next, we're going to cement, right? And you have to know how to do all that. So you have to know how to build your own,

like access to all of the excitement to do it

right. You have, you know, ultimate flexibility because you can build anything right. But you have to have so much knowledge t figure out. It's like, you know, having to learn howto be manufacture your own pencil if you want to make you write a note to to a loved one. Um, that's the kind of, you know, complexity that's not needed in in a lot of, ah, a lot of like these cases. And usually it's not gonna mean that people are like developers are switching to a different way of like working. It just means 100 times. Many people have access to that kind of power,

the similar way that YouTube has democratized like access to creating videos and having a voice on this like megaphone of Ah, you know, being on YouTube, where before you had to have access to a professional studio and a distribution mechanism and like, you know, some wayto reach a bunch of voices. And now it's kind of like if you have a story to sell and you can like build a following, it's pretty magical because a lot of that complexity has been taken away,

right? Well, I want to talk about So you started Web low seven years ago, and I want to talk about where the space where you think it'll be seven years from now and continue that on the bedroom line. Probably exactly what kind of Legos will be on the moon. It would continue that that metaphor. But before we continue, that is that side of the conversation of where it's going seven years from now on, where this? Because I think it's just in my own head. I'm I'm so fast I went from things like Okay, people need websites and pamphlet style websites. Two years later, being whoa, this is, you know, it's like clay around my life.

It's not even blocks anymore. But before we get to that, tell me about seven years ago, what before the moniker no coat existed did the did the monitor visual programming exist seven years ago? I actually just give me a whole breakdown of what it was like. You think about this becoming this massive space seven years ago when you first started?

Absolutely not. So their visual programming as a term did exist, but it meant something a lot more specific. I don't know if you're familiar with scratch. It's sort of like a visual thing that m I t developed. Teach Kids had a program, but it's just a visual representation of things that you would write in a text editor. Like if this really low level kind of logic constraints. But at the end of

the day, that kind of want one similar to Funchal.

Uh, thinkable is higher level, so likable female code might Yeah.

Ah, investor unthinkable props. This guy also injuries, but no code

space. Awesome. But that was kind of Ah, that's That's been, ah, themes from the sixties when you know the been a lot of researchers, something known as like the mother of all demos. Where it was demonstrated how weak, unlike do programming and like a drug direct manipulation kind of way. But that's sort of fizzled out after a while. Look, not that many people put a lot of research into into that field but actually started well flow in 2005 the first time. And there's two other founding attempts, like before the 4th 1 in 2012 and way back in 2005 I wrote my senior project like this idea of user lands after development, and I knew it was gonna be a thing. I just didn't know how, like how foundational it was gonna be To me,

it was just like a personal optimization thing. I was working at this agency where there's, like a design team, and I was an intern that was translating these designs and to, like, sort of SQL statements and like you guys too kind of capture data and like, listed out on a website and a lot of it was so repetitive them like Okay, something like I could make my own job easier just by creating a tool that helps the design team sort of do like a foreign builder style of input. And it will auto generate the things that I'm doing manually. So I kind of started then. But I never imagined that it would be, you know, any order to the kind of scale that it is today. And then as the years went by, sort of saw that and then, like,

company started popping up like Weebly and score space and ah Wicks and it's sort of. And the thing that sort of killed my interest in the space for a while was the death of Dream Weaver, where I thought, like, Okay, Drew mover is gonna be like the If my assumption is true that a lot of people are gonna be building these things visually, then it should succeed, right? And it was kind of an industry standard Tepe tool back in the early to

thousands. I remember learning. And in high school Yeah, I guess it was visual programming, but it was right. It was actually quite complex.

Yeah, in the donor, the main outcome of that was like tools like that generates such crappy code and that it's never gonna be scaleable. And I think a lot of people like the vast majority people walked away with that assumption. I would say the vast majority people still have that

assumption. It was It was like the the intersection. You don't want slightly compliments. Not as easy as it should be and very limited in the way it could

be right and the key problem with that. And I think what a lot of like most people missed was that it tried to be too clever to make it too easy and not respect the foundations, the medium. So, for example, the way sometimes they use this analogy of Look, let's say you have a photo shop, right Photo shop is used for two D like you're creating business cars. Or like you're doing photo editor, photo editing, etcetera. So yeah, but to say, OK, everyone who's used to two D kind of design used the same tool because a lot of people are used to it. Use it to generate three D movies, right?

Is just not gonna work because you're not it. It's not built for the medium that you're targeting, right? So dream weaver and tools like it that tried to make it so easy to try to make a Web development tool into a graphic design tool and say this works just like a graphic design toe. They try to make it too simplistic where you just simply can't express all the nuance of what you would need so something as simple as you know, an element being 600 pixels wide on a small screen and growing to be larger as a resize your browser. You just can't draw that in a graphic design tool, but that's exactly what room number was. They were like, Whatever you do in a graphic design tool will somehow find a way to translate the code. But it didn't force the people using that tool to actually understand the core principles of Web development, right? They didn't actually understand that everything is a box that everything has to be nested. There's like there's meaning in hierarchy. There's there's a lot of things that, you know,

like text, you know, crawlers or whatever they have to go in. Flash made the same mistake of, like, just focus on what it looks like, and then we'll deliver it and nothing else matters. And that's where the programming approach had a lot more benefit because, like people were actually structurally correctly building thes layouts and applications etcetera. And that's what the current breed of Nokko tools that would flow actually gets right. And then what? You respect those foundations and you actually like weapons becomes sort of if you're familiar with deaf tools or like Web inspector, it's actually just that plus plus, yeah, it's like

it's you and I'm using it right now for ah, uh, a landing page or it'll end up being any commerce page. But it's just it's It is as opposed to, you know, when I say Dreamer was complex, it's almost like dream mover was for something super simple. But if you had any modicum of taste or wanting something to be slightly impressive, then you end up getting into this insanely nasty Kobe and can't recover from you can't re and then you're just like, Okay, this is actually more. It's like trying to, I don't know, create art with with dry foot chopsticks. It's like there's more trouble than it's actually worth versus something like weather, where it's like in a day you have this thing that you might end up building from scratch encode for the last 10% of restaurants that that you want. But you have 90% of it for that team. Communication for that testing that federation with 10% of

the cost five. And now, now that used to be the primary use case of like, you know, the last 10%. You go do somewhere else right now, especially in the last two years. We now have entire teams running 100% on weapons, like especially marketing teams where you know you have something like lattice dot com, right? They have such a wide array of case studies and all these things that you would if you go to their website. There's just so much like custom data. And you would never guess that this wasn't built completely visually without a developer. And they're constantly iterating, constantly adding things same thing with like Hello, sign, et cetera.

And how big is it? Lattice says, in terms of 100 people, Yeah, 100 person company

like and over 10 million in revenue. I'm guessing at this point, and ah, and we had a company get around. So the pretty well known they switched completely to doing their marketing in in what float. And they just like 10 extra federation speed, like they were afraid to touch that code base before your thug borrow engineers from product and engineers don't usually want to work on like here's a photo shop file or a sketch file and go translated into HTML, CSS or whatever some of the least inspiring kind of work. So nothing got done right. And and now there's like Iterating really quickly, and their brand is evolving, like Zendesk is powering their entire like style guide through Web flow. Like in this thing's public right. Do typically would require an entire entire engineering team to go like take some fig MMA, you know, instead of documents or some sketch documents and translate that to code. It's like working live in the environment that you're going to shoot two.

Ah, and I think that's the magic of it. And and once the tools get even more mature or getting like the sky's the limit, you know you asked about seven years from now, I think people are gonna be creating entire the kinds of the kinds of software that you know we're talking about. Building on Ruby on rails 5 10 years ago is going to be like it's already happening. There's hundreds of products that were like top three on product hunt over the last two years that were built in web right that you would never guess that were developed without a developer. Companies that gettinto I see and get above a $1,000,000 in revenue that only then are adding engineering. That's that's like a whole new world, right? And we're just scratching

the surface right now. And these things happen in these step function changes where it's, you know, there's going to be a unicorn filter on just yep, web flow. And then everyone shifts. Is it just for so many of us? Is just path dependence or nomadic behaviour of everyone's doing it this way. We can't do it differently, and then, like y Combinator for, for us or for me. I don't know if this was the same for you, but once there was these massive companies and went through it, it's just like, Oh, well, that's the way to do instead of That's a way to do it right becomes the way to do it. Um, least that was for for my co founder and I when we when we applied in 2009 12 and and you you guys were 13 4013 years later, before

we tell me a plan in 2012 but we got

rejected. That's right. I read that online, and it's actually, um, I want to bring up a tweet that you posted. Um uh, banging. Yes. No, you're you're gonna pay for your sentence flat. Now, is your vulnerability online? Your openness online is something that we mentioned before he kicked off the That's how Russian plots, by the way. Yeah, it was not you.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, okay. Well, you can claim that for anything that you don't want attributed to you. But the kind of staying on this last seven years and and maybe holding this carrot for the next seven years a little bit longer. I just wanted to touch on this tweet that you wrote. Um, and this is really goes back 15 years. So you published this last year, and it says 2004 idea in 2005 1st try Failed 2006. Married 2007 2nd try Failed. 0 8/3 try filled. 09 Get number 1 2010 day Job 2011. Kid number two 2012 4th try.

Why? See? Says no. 13. Y c says yes. Funded 2014. Hard work begins T L d r keep trying. And I know you went over this tweet a little bit on this week and start ups, but I wanted you to walk me through When you're putting that tweet together and and looking over 15 year, um, time arise and of when you post that in 2019 1 What made you write that? And then and then tell me about these failures along the way and stutter starts test starting web flow. I

think what made me write that is seeing all the ah, how demotivated some some other founders That was tryingto kind of guide through putting together their Y C applications just the way they talked about comparing themselves to others and being really honest about how I felt at the time, like I felt I was failing the whole time. Ah, and still due to a degree where it wasn't like this, you know, crushing it, killing it, whatever it was always kind of this mental space of Is this the right thing I should be working on? Am I the right person to be working on it? Is it worth investing time into this? Compared Thio you know, my family and other kind of opportunity costs. Like having an actual day job that will help me save up for retirement and things like that And just being just seeing how discouraged people can get from, you know, having one or two things go wrong early on in the process and just kind of thinking, Okay,

that must not be a good idea. And reflecting back on how many times I had, you know, some semblance of clarity like this is obviously good idea, too. Holy crap, like other people are doing this much better or it's to wait or it's, you know, it's not gonna work out. I'm not gonna write. Find the right people who are convinced the right people to work on this with me and trying to remind myself that even in the times that it feels like things are falling apart, which, you know these days seems like almost like a daily thing that I have to get myself into a place where I give myself permission to to fail and to stumble into, you know, own owned the fact that you know, there's gonna be a lot of things that I don't do as well as other people.

And there's there's a lot of things that I can do better than other people, and that's just natural. And I think giving myself permission, giving other people permission to be like, you know, be themselves and developed developing in ways that are compatible with their lives and interests and passions, et cetera. And you know, a lot of it is also I just want to own the fact that it's survivorship bias, right? Like I can give all this advice around like, Oh, here's what I did I tried, like, three different times. I cashed up my foreman K a borrowed like 80 cane credit cards and ah,

hold true for listeners All right in this little part of

the yeah, and did that while I had very young kids with, like, almost no health insurance and going through multiple surgeries and selling cars and

take out your for one Kate to pay for a daughter surgery.

He had a CZ. Things were, Yeah, and, ah, like those things, I I would if if I was talking to a friend over coffee right now, I would not recommend any of that right because 99% of time these things don't work out. So it's a like you have to take what I'm saying with a giant grain of salt of like this. Just, you know, I lucked into a lot of things that happened with wet flow, and also there's a huge amount of privileges that I kind of came into it with. So that's a maybe that the main theme was I was tryingto be more encouraging and also just remind myself of, like, just the huge amount of luck that I had in and pulling through with with all the challenges that we've had

over the years. Well, I think that's part of the reason of starting The podcast was that they're these slivers of the story that people here and it is that 10% they you know, the iceberg 10% of it. That's above the water vs for you. It's very in a very real way. It's It's like No, that's actually was started in multiple times, and it failed. And there was, I think, for many people that might have seen maybe a news headline in August of raising 70 plus $1,000,000 for a series A, which is crazy and and largely unheard of and be like, Wow, that must have been overnight success. Yeah, it's Siri's A.

It's a startup. It's these people that don't look too too dissimilar to maybe me and what I'm working on it. And it's something that happens, instantaneous and maybe do a little research. And you see okay, well, they started it seven years ago, so I spent a lot of seven years of work, and still that's only a sliver of the story reading. Even 5000 words of Ah, detailed breakdown is so far from what that lived experience, it would would be like a failing a couple times and then, and one of things that I want to ask you about is just the spouse dynamic and the family dynamics of saying, OK, this this has not taken off my previous efforts Haven't just I know what that that is in a very tough conversation to have to say to a spouse, a partner in life and hey,

can I take this gamble again? That includes you and her Children at this time? Had it, Was it worth it to you? It's now two kids one and three was that many conversations? Did it take many months? Did you do have to start it as this tiny small thing that is? Hey, don't worry, it's just not. It's nights and weekends. It actually walked me through the very specific details off of that dynamic

with Yeah, yeah, my wife on

his bounces do not get nearly enough,

right? It. Her name's Natalia. She's amazing. I think it's in large part while still sitting here today. Her faith in my own dreams, like giving room for ah, for me to work on what I was dreaming about, I think, because when when we got married, this was after the first attempt. It was a I was already actively kind of like winding down things from that attempt, not working. She already knew that it was. It was something that was really important to me, right? Like I went into pretty much maxed out the only credit card I had during college to buy the domain name,

which I thought, like, once you get the domain name like everything explodes right, so if you can get it done domain name like would flow dot com, then you know, you're kind of golden, Definitely not the case, but she knew was important to me. But it was also like, hey, kind of the traditional. You know, we both grew up in Russia and we're very traditional, kind of like an very religious families where it's, you know, you gotta provide for your family,

you've got to do the traditional thing and, you know, have kids as quickly as possible. And it was just a foregone conclusion that I had to get a, you know, a real job, a day job. So I ended up going into it right away after going to college. If that wasn't even a conversation was sort of like that. That part of kind of wanting to explore Web flow again was a conversation between us. But it was It was like, Hey, you know, maybe someday And then as I started working it into it and sort of the second time a year after I started looking into it, this was 2007. Natalia saw the kind of the drain of working something for over heroes on the payroll team off working on something that,

just like, doesn't bring any energy right, Like the working on something that you know, like I have this other idea that it really want to work on. And it started kind of developing in our friend group. Thankfully, where into it had this awesome program where you know, the 1st 3 months they sort of fly you out to Arizona and co locate you with the customer support team. Ah, with a bunch of these other college grabs and you learn the product learned QuickBooks learn their payroll stuff and just, like, developed this affinity and this empathy for customers. But as part of that, you know, we're all sort of in a mini dorm right together that into its paying for and it's like a great time to make new friends. And so a year goes by and like with the same friends,

we kind of like to start getting that age of like, Okay, this is the 2007 like y Combinator was becoming a thing like convertible notes were becoming a thing. There's like people started having more dreams of like Okay, how do we spend out and work on something? Ah, and of course, wet flow was like this idea that was still, you know, top of mind for me

And you had the domain

the whole time Have the domain the whole time and convinced Ah, one of my one of my buddies, Kyle was also a year into, uh, into into It's like this amazing designer and another body Jodl like, you know, look. Okay, let's incorporate It's put a like the's ah, decks together, Try to get funding and try to get into White Sea and ah, in the tights off the energy of that like Okay, this is exciting, right? Like and you know, we didn't have kids yet, and it was like,

really saw how much black, more lively life became when there was, like, a goal, right? And for many reasons, like we can spend a whole podcast episode on that. Like that attempt didn't work out with a bunch of trademark issues, and we ran out of money to like to pay lawyers for all the incorporation stuff and like various sort of family things where people kind of had to step away and focus on day jobs, and that kind of went away. But the energy of that, you know, like when I went back to sort of more focusing full time on into it stuff and the ties that sort of like that decrease in sort of like passion and what I was actually like wanting to dio. And then about a year later, in 2008 I try to start it again. But just by myself to look,

I started, you know, kind of moonlighting writing code, as I had a few clients on the side try to actually develop them into some instead of just building a site from scratch. Try to build like a tool that I could use the to build their sights are like the CMS is, um, But then one thing led to another and our first daughter arrived. And once that happened, it was, you know, like, really focusing on on that, you know, a lot of sleepless nights and just, like, really focused on the data up, keeping things afloat there.

What year

was this? This was 2009 then, you know, a year and 1/2 later or a year and two months later, we find out we were pregnant with a second daughter s. So she was born in early 2011. And then it was sort of like, Okay, this is life, right? Like we have to sort of like the the fading memory of, like, the start of dreams or whatever is like Now you have two people you're responsible

for. You didn't feel locked in tow where

it's, like, sort of like way already window, right? Like we were planning on. I mean, I was still kind of thinking we had, like, these sort of side conversations. And I like someday, you know, like when we're empty nesters or something like that, like, Well, because because we at that point we already moved back to Sacramento. So we have, like,

our family around us, were looking to buy a house and kind of like settling down. And I honestly thought that, like, the window was closed in terms of even like the market opportunity, because, like, we 1,000,000,000 square space and weeks, we're going to be some really huge getting like these big funding rounds, cetera, even of the products different. I have thought that it was like they're going to get into that space. Um, like, much faster than I could by myself kind of working nights and weekends and then something kind of magical happened and totally unexpected. So in 2007 when,

like the second attempt, where we, you know, actually incorporated filed for a trademark. One of things that happened was we got denied We got this official notice that like, hey, some other company in Florida, like, um, objected to you filing for this trademark in this class, we can't have anything to do with websites. That was one of the reasons why we got kind of like demotivated actually, like, really try to reincorporate as another company name called Marked Up like a single market but with the missing E. Because, you know,

you have to drop all sorts of hours to get domain names infected. And then when? When my second daughter was one, Ah, was one. So this was late 2011. Like November 2011. We had moved multiple times since the You know, this second Inc attempt back in Mountain View, I received in the mail of like a certified letter with the trademark certificate for Web flow from the defiling in 2007. So somehow, like we were in some Q and some, you know, that company, like drop that trade marker forgot to renew or whatever. And it was like, holy crab like, this is some sort of side, right? And

you said this is 2000

and this was late 2011 11. So that start like that. Spark conversation like, like, you know, went and tell you how to explain this right now. Like I you know, I've been at this time I'm still sort of. I still have the Web flow name, and I'm still operating as l C and building sites for clients, right? Working with my brother, like, here and there just for citing come right to try to save up more for buying a house or whatever, but totally e no, not thinking that there's gonna be a big thing. But then when that trademark arrives like thistles,

like, you know, why would I ever need a trademark? I'm just doing, like, a rinky dinky little, um, single person agency. Yeah, so that started, but like, the brain sort of cycles again. And that's when we, like, legitimately started thinking. All right,

how do we save up for this like this? This has to be like, it's obvious that you wanted, like my wife would say, It's obvious that you want to do this. I don't want you to, like, look back on life 20 years later and say that you know, you didn't take this chance on and at that point I had Are, you know, like six or seven years of experience, like professionally programming, I felt like my skills were in a place where I could actually look at into it. I built, you know, they're one of the first,

like, Sass products. Then we end up scaling it to several $1,000,000 in revenue. So I felt like I had more confidence toe sort of when that idea came in and thankfully we had enough like enough of ah kind of avenue to sell some. Like if I was to leave into it like there's, you know, a bunch of stock being left on the table and into it. You know, they gave out a bunch of options, and I was there at a time when, you know, their stock covered around like 20 bucks. So I had all these options that if I had stayed it into, it would've been worth, like, close to 1/2 a $1,000,000 or whatever, but I ended up selling them thinking like, Hey, we can sell all this, have we'd have 30

grand. That's like three months of being ableto

work on Web flow and will in three months, we can, you know, incorporate and build a Kickstarter video weekend like raised 300 grand or whatever it can like use this to support her family would have the same salaries before. And, you know, this sort of one bribe unbridled optimism of like, you know, obviously this all work out kind of convinced myself and my wife that this

is, you know, and was it willful, unbridled optimism knowing the the back dropping failed attempts before what?

Honestly, I wasn't even thinking about that. I was like, you know, this is just meant to be. It was a almost like just then, an optimism that I couldn't explain, like I just knew it had to. It was became very obvious to me that this is something that needs to exist. And another thing that that happened very serendipitously but that gave me even more conviction was I saw this video by this guy called Brett Victor called inventing on principle. I think every creator should see this, and this was like early 2012. Victor Brett, Victor create What is it called Inventing on principle? And it's this video about like it asked, posits this question like, Why do you do the work that you do?

And it happens to center on, like the work that he does in his life. They give them eating all around direct manipulation like, How do you create technology? That is for, like, animation tools, right? He gives one example of, like using and flash like traditional animation tools, and one where a kid can use an iPad with their finger and animate the same thing, like in 10 times less time and something that looks a lot more natural and organic. So it's the same, like telegraph telephone example, where you can learn a bunch of complexity and do the same thing. Or you can find an abstraction later that unlocks that ability to a lot more people using skills that they already have,

And seeing that video was just like Okay, like this has to happen. And he just happened to have another paper that he wrote called Magic Ink. That sort of roughly describes the idea of, like building software visually, that all those 30 things combined was like, Okay, there's a no brainer like it just has to happen. And But we still have these, Like, you know, I kind of put together this plan in a spreadsheet of like, Here's what would need to be true for us too, how much money we need to save for us that have, like, some runway here.

But it had all these assumptions that were pretty dumb looking back where you know, we will get the cheapest health insurance because, you know, that's only $300 a month or whatever, but it was like this catastrophic insurance that you know, has a really high deductible and then a really high copayment type thing, which ended up biting us later. But it was, you know, we have this sort of a kickoff date where we were both inspired on we want with our kids are like the top of close them, like Mount Tam, where we have this sort of we're midway through doing this ABC date thing or like a arcade bees Ballet and see was, uh, um Chinatown. And like, all the way down and I was like this I date was,

like, inspiration and just two other eyes there around like, OK, we're doing this thing like moving to the bay area. We're gonna, like, start, start web flow will try to This is before, even like, convinced any of the co founders to join. It was just like I knew

I had to make it a thing. Was it Was it many conversations with Natalia to get her comfortable

with it? Yeah, Yeah, I think it was. It was over the course of two months after receiving that trademark thing and sort of like looking through the numbers. And we were, like, still in credit card debt at that point, like we were not the best in like financial planning, But we had enough of inability to get some liquidity from, like, stock sale Thio start something and have some confidence that we're gonna, you know, make a Kickstarter video and get more money or whatever. You know, those three months of runway turned into, you know, we ran out of that money of month and 1/2 in because Inc costs a lot more than we thought. Kickstarter video. Actually, we have to pay somebody to to make that video.

It ended up that about accident of complexity. Oh, yeah, legal side of setting up a business

and just talking about the legal side. We spent 10 12 and 1/2 grand on the Kickstarter video because we have to, like, rent a space and do the whole thing. And like there's a person that came in, they helped us with the script and there's like a day of shooting. And then we found out that kick started. Doesn't even supports that service, eh? So we threw away the whole thing, and it was, you know, we wanted to repurpose it for Indiegogo. But, you know, the whole the whole, we'd have to reshoot again.

We don't have the money and very quickly that three months of runway just disappeared. So, out of desperation, we applied to I see that that same fall of 2012 thinking that's sort of a last ditch. Ah, and that's when all the bad financial moves started happening, like started kind of writing those checks to yourself with, like, you know the credit line kind of bounce transfer things. Then that December, like, gone Christmas day. We found out that my daughter had a hernia, which, which means that had to have all these tests and like this is aware that catastrophic health insurance really didn't help that much. Because,

you know, all those test costs. Ah, close to 10 grand. And then, you know, that's all out of pocket, which was money we didn't have with sell a car. Then That's when all the conversation started. Like Okay, we can't do this anymore. Like you have to go get your job back into it. My brother was living with

us at that point. What was your emotional state during this?

That that's a huge like a punch in the face, like reality check wise. I thought I really thought in September when we started doing all this that I had, like, the perfect point. Ah, where this was like, slack built into

it. How many months later? This was September. It was

before, you know, this is so September. We started out with, like, uh and and we did pretty, um, you know, illogical things, like Okay, we're starting out. That means we gotta get new computers. And you no use that sort of like nest egg that we put into the company account Thio by, like, new Mac books. And,

uh, whatever. I know that I know that feeling. Every new startup ideo like I need a new computer. It is so attempting or silly to be like, No, this is an investment, but

it's yes, those September And then by December, we're completely out of cash. And I was already at that point, maybe 30 came to critical dead because I also didn't anticipate how much, like just we have. Like, um, um, you know, a car that was financed. And, you know, rent was not because we had made that decision Sacramento and then moved to the Bay area. Not anticipating like how, uh, how high the rent was gonna be.

Just the daily the monthly cost of, you know, maintaining family stuff that was already like expenses. When when your patriot goes away, those were not prepared for that. So by the end of that year, especially at as a surgery was happening like we had already like, I was already talking to an Italian making plans and Sergi surgeons. My brother, um around surging, moving back to San Diego, getting his job back, me moving back to Sacramento and getting my job back. And then maybe we'll like moonlight and try to keep working on what we have so far. And by that time, we already had,

like, the White Sea rejection, we were not sure what we're building like we've pivot away from that because, you know, just kind of goes a pretty de motivating thing. Thio think that. Okay, here we have, like, this awesome demo, and we thought it was gonna take off. So we kind of gave ourselves a, um it wasn't artificial is like a true deadline would like. I negotiate with its high right, six more weeks and if you like, just give us six more weeks and we'll put together like the bare minimum of a demo of something and try to put it up on hacker news and see if it takes off.

And that's six weeks got negotiated into nine weeks. When we got to six weeks and saw that it wasn't, you know, being done, and we still had some ability likey bordering on credit cards and stuff. I was able to borrow some money for my brother, older brother. So as we got to the end of February, it was sort of like, Okay, we have this one shot, so we created Ah, you can still see it playground at buffalo dot com It's not even a product is just an idea for what the product is gonna become. You couldn't even create account. It was sort of like the bare minimum of the interface that we want a ship, because that's like we're just out of time.

Thankfully, we put it up on hacker news and it just took off. And from that, it was like hope was back again, right? And it was just one more thing. And my wife is still skeptical or and like, you know, we had hoping so many different points where, you know, this almost happened then and here's what actually happened. But I think getting into like having that Haqqani's post take off so much gave us conference a great like Okay, one more thing, like we're actually gonna try to apply to oh, I see and see if they get an interview that we can keep going. And then we got an interview,

and then okay, if we get in there, we get going. But once we got in, that was actually like some investment component to it. So again, finally, like pears always minimum wage or something like that. So there's, like hope at the end of the tunnel. Then it's a 22 and 1/2 month program, and then we'll actually get real funding, and then we'll be ableto, you know, get back on our feet. Right?

So it was always, like, just the threat of hope like that, that, um, you know, Ray of hope. It was enough that it was in the idea, and the challenge of building this product was challenging enough. That was like most of time was spent like, really thinking about the product, just like, you know, developing it. And just so thankful for my wife for being patient, even though I know many times she had,

like, you know, like the uncertainty of like, Holy crap, what did we get into?

Yeah, I'm going to do an episode at some point with spouses and just ask them their below the line emotional arc with their their spouses going through the ups and downs. And both are no, it's both or scary. The You know, the elation is scary. It's like, Okay, we're on this roller coaster a little bit more, and the deflation is scary because it's obviously you don't know when it's gonna end. It's just a trend line that's going down. It's, um, the that patients. And it's, you know, it takes a village to raise a baby,

and it takes a village toe. Build something of of significance, whether it's a piece of art or whether it is ah, company cannot see our state. How how It's good and bad because you also your love for them. You feel that stress that I know that, Yeah, that your own decisions are putting them under. Put your hope that it's an investment.

Yeah, that's the best center days. That's the toughest challenge, because, um, I was watching the show while ago. They're gonna alternate history thing for all mankind s Oh, it's, you know, the alternate histories. If what if Russians landed on the moon first and and one of the one of the sort of sideways topics later on is like the astronauts as they land on Moon. Sort of have this conversation around their spouses, right? They know their spouses or having like these nightmares. And yet they make the choice to push this frontier, you know, being first on.

But there is an aspect of, like selfishness to it. There's an aspect to like this given taken like that's That's a host super hard balance, right? And for me, it was the thing that that made me feel comfortable with. It was like having all the conversations were just being honest with with what's actually driving me and what's actually important. And in many ways my wife was the one slowing me down and making sure that I don't miss the force from the trees and, like, don't mortgage the relationship with my kids or like chasing some dream that even if it's widely successful, it's totally not worth it. If it means, you know, abandoning kind of hope of a deep relationship with my Children, right? Even if it leads to likes a multibillion dollar company or whatever,

it's totally not worth it. So I'm super thankful that we were like in that life stage where the important things were already there, and she kept pulling me back into, like, Don't forget what's actually important and make sure the structure life in a way that provides for that and gives an outlet for, like, you know, creative and professional pursuits. But you know, people, people don't lie on their death beds thinking like I should have had twice the are than I actually did. They regret the relationships that they didn't invest, too, and they didn't develop. And that's something that is really hard. It's kind of trust. It's hard to rebuild once, once

it's lost, Right, right is, and in those times over it's It is, please to my own experience where it is just for those really low moments. I was. I think about this, this quote off the Mark Twain attic or the when something like I could survive two weeks on a single compliment. And and as you're talking about the six weeks than nine weeks than minimum wage and getting in tow Ah y c interview, then why getting into my common area? And it just reminds me of, you know, my my own creative journey. It's just these little you know, I could survive two weeks on a single point of validation. Yeah, and you have these 14 things going wrong. But this one thing saying no, there's something this way and I

think that it's almost irrational, But I think that's one of the main drivers for entrepreneurs. If it was fully rational, I don't think we have that many businesses. Eso It's like something about that drive for a like purpose

and meaning. Why do you Why do you say we wouldn't have that many businesses if it was fully rational?

Yeah, because it's It's a completely rational thing to go, you know, leave a stable and well paying job, too. Take on a pursuit that has, like no, like, honestly, zero of the motivation that I had was was financial related, right? Like I didn't Look, I think I told you earlier that my ambition was to work on a product just with my brother. That's what I thought it was gonna be like. It was like the meaning was a lot more important than like the outcome. Ah, lot of people,

like make this claim. You know why we need to incentivize entrepreneurs like with lower taxes or whatever they want to make a bunch of money or whatever. Maybe if greed drives and people, I understand that. But I think a lot of times people people see like, Hey, here's something that's not optimal in the world and there's a better way And I see it Ah, and I want to make it really like That's a much deeper drive, at least for me Then, um, you know, some sort of like financial album outcome or whatever. So I think if people were purely optimizing, unlike rationality and like chances of success, people wouldn't start businesses. People wouldn't try like new ideas. They wouldn't build new products because it's it's like the amount of risk involved in that usually is is like pretty, uh, pretty high compared to kind of the safe path,

right. But to, ah to Webb, close credits, if you can also just make it so much less risky, so much less costly to start, yes, you get that narrow edge of the wedge started then, and

that's that's a beautiful part of our mission and vision is that we empower other people to make a living, and that's just feel so wonderful, like working on a tool like that because people like, right, it's postcards like, Hey, I have this business now or have the service Or have I was able to build this consultancy and ah, the only reason I I was able to do it was because the tools empowered me. I had to learn a lot less that, like, actually take advantage of my creative skills, et cetera. That's magical, like you can't but that sounds like a cheat code,

right? I don't know if there's anything I don't know if there's anything Maur high leverage for usefulness in the world than to empower creators to be more creative and our creator's to be more creative, and it's it is. Uh, I think it's a divine quality within all of us that we want to create. But it is. It is becoming radically cheaper in every direction, whether it's music, art, Web development, starting a company. But it is still I mean, it was just a few years ago that you're telling this story and just everything that you went through to get this off of off of the ground. I did want to ask. You said that you had a religious upbringing. It was there ever a religious or spiritual component to to these last 15 years?

Oh, absolutely. Just the the way I live my life in the way I I want to treat other people. It's like very much rooted and sort of like the same principles of, you know, treating other people the same way that I would want to be treated and even like I would even take it to a deeper degree now, like treating other people how they would want to be treated as a lot of times you have completely different standards. Ah, and that's something that I've tried to bake into everything like including our corporate values and how we apply kindness in the workspace and entreat ah, relationships as being at least as equal and usually a lot more so than sort of like the bottom line business aspect. And there's a lot of like negatives to how I grew up in, like the Piper religious. It's almost like to a to a fault, right? You could, like, go dancing.

You couldn't talk to American. What was your religious background? It was Protestant Baptist like it is, it's It's one of the things that it's the reason I'm actually in this country because, you know, my parents, my grand parents, that their their parents went through persecution in Russia, which was, you know, the Soviet Union was very anti religion. Sort of side is like the, you know, the opium of the masses and kind of the competitive thing that competes with state in terms of authority. It's that it was terrible because, you know,

like my great grandpa was like shop a firing squad just for having a Bible in his home. So my grandpa grew up like with all the siblings. And, you know, my dad grew up with, like, the shadow of that. And when the authorities, even my dad's boss in Russia when found out that my my parents are Christian, you know, leads to all sorts of like Okay, now it was it was almost like a you know, something that's now used against you, right? Like if you don't do this, I'll let other people know it's ah.

When my brother and I, when our teacher found out that our parents were Christian like they you know, we're the only two and in class that were like our parents order of that religion were religious at all. Like even the teacher would bully us, right? It was sort of like would give us more homework, would give us more. There's just a lot of a lot of things that were It wasn't at the point where people are being like imprisoned or hurt anymore. But it was still, you know, look a socially peons determination, right? This is a lot of things that were we've we see kind of in the fight for civil rights along many different dimensions here in the States. Still, unfortunately so. But it's also the reason why my family was able to make it here as refugees,

right? This one of the reasons why I like their asylum was approved and the account that is like a huge point of, like luck and privilege that we were even able to make it here because otherwise I would still be living back there in life, would have been drastically, drastically different. And it's still like a major major part of our of our family's, like a lot of their traditions, are, parents are it's just kind of defines a lot of how we how we live life having to traditions and holidays and,

um, do practice today. Yeah, you know, the Do you attend church here, And, uh, in today? Yeah. There we go to my wife. When I get Thio and our daughter go to reality that stuff here and awesome and San Francisco large were just coming by said Wednesday. Yeah, really awesome. Yeah, It's a great great service. I grew up Catholic and And And I talk in the intro episode of Of My Fascination With With Western Eastern Philosophy and obviously the roots. Really philosophers are religious and and or Eastern philosophy is probably Maur think more aptly described as as philosophies then right then religions.

And so they intertwined quite quite closely. And, ah, the interest in both. And it's in my own entrepreneurial path. I don't Well, I don't think I would have. I don't think I would have become an entrepreneur if I didn't have that model and I it took me 30 years to really even understand. Wow, This is like a mental model of a capital in mythological model in my head that is imprinted of many generations here that this is how I view the world. Thio Uh, I remember one personality tests said that James believes strongly in individual sacrifice and hard work for good things to happen. Ah, and it was it was neither good nor bad. And actually think many good things happen for all of us that we had nothing to do with that. We were not even partial co authors,

and that just happened for you. But it was a very strong part of my way of viewing the world that, um, hard work must happen for for good things to happen. And I think that went back to my family's pretty strong damn a strong Catholic ethic, Um, of, you know, it's ah, attendant of Catholicism. That hard work is is equal to faith to get into heaven. And, you know, I probably spent my teenage and 20 my twenties having no clue about that aspect of what's reinforced that 12345 15 years in. But my daughter it, too.

I can see that these stories are imprinting models and bread and ah, whatever story. I mean, we're gonna be reading about Elmo going to the body, and it is wow, there's some really strong imprinting of behavior that that happens. That is it. I mean, it probably wasn't even until a year or two ago before I really realized there. While there's some real, neither good nor bad, I think there's some riel real danger Thio to the imprinting and and the human fingerprinting of these models, right? But it's a really slow, foundational aspect nonetheless, just that around that subject out have you had to go go to that. Did you feel like that that faith has been a a wellspring for the really tough times of? I think it's from your entrepreneurial journey.

To be honest, it's more of the community because there's a lot of, you know in my faith community. There's a lot of people until about Valley and, like dealing with the same sounds like a group therapy type of, you know, year old there for each other, etcetera. I think that's been a lot more and think about models, actually, now that I think about it, Protestant religions are a little different in that there is a a m more like a grace component rather than ah work there like

a refuge flaw, huge floor on the Protestant and I wear

That has sort of in seeing a lot of the ways that I've experienced life, like a lot of the things that I've done had, ah, sort of at my advantage. We're not things that I earned right there. Not like married based, just like pure luck or privilege, or it's hard to explain how it would be pretty arrogant for me to say, like a white. I earned that right. It was what it shows that exactly where I worked really hard for that. I mean, there's absolutely a ton of hard work, et cetera. I think certain parts that have also reflected and just like the way I think about you know, organizations and treating people where you give people the benefit of the doubt versus like, you have to go learn a bunch of trust,

right or you you look make no room for mistakes and, um, like there's just more for lack of better word. There's more Grace Associate would like giving people room for humanity because everyone on earth is like struggling with something or going through something, and it just it just feels so much better when you have a relationship with somebody and you confer, you know that they're there in, like, a more forgiving fashion right there. They're like to serve you and to sort of partner with you rather than, you know, constantly watching like a hawk to see if you're gonna make a mistake and having that sort of a notch against your favorite in the future. It just feels like a more calm and relaxing way to live right when you know you have, like, grace and forgiveness from other people and, like, you know,

some some give and take. It just feels like when you have that kind of relationship with people, it's, ah, you kind of have more permission to be human. Interesting toe look, sort of zoom out from history and think about a lot of the things that we really care about today, like social justice, et cetera. Even just the the inherent value of a person's worth just for being great was that completely radical thought, you know, thousands of years

ago. Oh, yeah. Individual equality is, uh, that's a It's a yeah, a crazy thought. If you go back 5000

years. So it's sort of like in a lot of these things were informed by thes spiritualist Icka religious. Ah, radical thinking that even if you don't have that imprinting like early on in a kind of a religious family like society at large, for better or worse, hopefully for mostly better is ah benefiting from that kind of through the centuries of elevating humanity over, kind of like the material right of of the pure, like in the evolutionary sense of, like pure survival or pure, pure kind of optimization of you, no more resource is more life etcetera. And I think that's a good thing because it's just ah, looking mentioned earlier at the end of your life. Like that's the Those are the things like the relationships with other people, that the intangibles you can almost one way to see it. It's just data, right?

Like interactions. If you really believe in kind of like this Ah, fully deterministic life, right where our brains were just firing signals and it's just, you know, all kind of coincidence that mean you're just having this conversation? What? Even if you believe that you still get value to like the human experience of kind of reflecting back on things that you really have a lot of, unless you're, I guess, a true psychopath rate. People at the end of the lives, like really cherish the relationships that they've built and the experiences that they have. Other people, not what they have or what they what they earned or what they were able to in a lot of times, like what they were able to build or like their legacy.

You know, for me, it's not because it's like, Okay, check off. Kind of built a startup. It's because I was able to help other people live their lives easier. I was able to help other people make a living. I was able to. It always comes down to other people, like, How do you positively impact other people's lives on? That just feels good. Okay,

I don't know. It's the best form of self interest, right? Yeah, the, uh and ah won't go into it to too much, but below the line is I mean, the podcast is all about these kinds of foundational mental models and a psychological approach to to work. And you know that conversation with two friends that are in vogue thing I think is to be, um, anti religious, as if it's outdated. But I think there's so much wisdom that we can rescue from not the cartoon version, but ah, but the the real radical version. And I think things like equality and social justice today being so it's not coincidence whatsoever that those two are are taking place so so strongly in the Western world or things like a separation it's gonna

date. It's still gonna be radical for, like centuries. You know, one of the most radical things is, um, you know, there's this kind of parable or I said, it's not even parable. I think it's just a recounting where somebody says, like, How do I live? Ah, you know, a meaningful life. And it's like still everything you have then, like,

help others with it right? We still have kind of our our own selfish desires for, like, safety and security and et cetera that, um, it's gonna be impossible to expect that humanity will ever reach like these totally relic live for others. Kind of like there's this book about the ST Francis of Assisi. Forget exactly what it's called. Something about the heart and you look, will you take it to the extreme of finding like, ultimate meaning of what? Giving up your life to sacrifice the toward serving others? And that's a pretty fricking painful life, right? But it's It's this paradox where at least if you believe those writings that you find ultimate fulfillment right. But there's like, you know,

well, the three miracles, um, and the deeper intellectual side of it are more intellectual side of it was thinking of the three bigger, much bigger miracles which are from any structures, imagination. What a miracle is that I think what suffices, which is you mentioned one of equality, individual and everyone being equal. That is a massive contrast. Grants to anything that was, I mean, the Greco Roman, the Greco Roman religions, or Polish a theistic religions to Indian caste system like this is not. This is not a ah well known contrary. Second

is not self serving, right? It's like, uh, if you dare to, like, serve some power

forever, right? Exactly. The second miracle being the separation of church and state comes from large and comes from, and it and I may I haven't fan. I actually spent more time on the podcast, talking about, ah, philosophies like Vedanta more than Christianity. But these air staunchly Christian ideals thes separation of church and state in the concept of give unto Caesar. What is Caesar's, that is. And God, what is God's said, That was the beginning of Texas friends, Yes, pay your taxes for sure,

especially crypto friends, Um, and in that separation is not. That was not something that existed in in previous state religions and in third, at least in the West and the Roman Empire. And then third is which I think is maybe the most incredible self sacrifice, every other religion, every other large religion at the time. You know, the concept of sacrifice has been around for a long time, and the animal sacrifices you would have human sacrifices, but the concept of self sacrifice and getting back toe just tying it to, above of my almost preternatural understanding of of sacrifice, hard work for good things to happen, um, or sacrifice self for that ultimate self interest of it's the most fulfilling.

That is a very concretely Christian ideal in the West, and it's borrowed. I would assume the History City have it would would come from the East but a Roman empire. Christiana was most Eastern, geographically and philosophically concept in the Roman Empire at the time. And that's that concept of personal sacrifice is that was radical And, um, to it, to the degree of, you know, at least the ah, the idol, the the hero of of this Jesus character to the ultimate degree of death, self sacrifice so that those things are no, they never. This type of conversation is why I love this podcast project because it's just it never comes up when in a business conversation with these things come up. And yet, yeah, I had no idea you had a a religious background until his conversation and and

talked about it quite a bit on various threads on Twitter.

But yeah, you have. Yeah, well, I must have missed those. It's ah, they're not the things that get the most engagement on on Twitter, at least what I've seen. And, uh, that's really it's I should look closer, but of late, I've got two questions for him, and we'll wrap it up with these 21 is tell me three stories that have helped shape who you've become as a non tratar man as a human and and I'll say the last one for last. But what two or three stories come to mind that I helped shape who you've become,

I think the 1st 1 I kind of alluded to in just the story of how were ableto leave Russia. Ah, which again I had no control over at the time, but just learning more about it from my grandparents and my parents after we're already here as I became an adult, just just flabbergasted at the the things that had to combine for all that thio um uh, actually happen. So my parents didn't even want to leave like they had kind of the the propaganda machine that worked well in that you know, America's evil, they're going to corrupt the youth. And and it was really my grandma, my dad's mom, that took it upon herself to like essentially, for I don't want to say forging documents, but fill them out on my parents behalf. And not only that, it just so happened that she found out that these documents even existed. And it was a 25,000 refugee quota,

huh? that was opened up by the most senior administration because I'm like Protestant. Pentagon, not Pentecostal. Yeah, Pentecostal person who, um, but like, out in the Far East of Russia, they were like, like, literally being killed for their faith. And they had him, or like that religion was more that word and that, you know, they spoke in tongues and,

like, things that ah, lot of people, that was. It was really weird, but they suffered more persecution. This person, like, was able to go to Congress and sort of like, ah, was able to escape the country and give this sort of passion plea in Congress. And and that opened up like the small quota that somehow some, some personal visiting. A very small town in Russia, where we lived visiting this church, that my grandma somehow heard about that.

And he was leaving to Moscow the next day. He had the forms on him, so she filled them out. Kind of forced my parents to go to sign it. And he took those forms with him to Moscow to the embassy and turned them in the next day because he was already flying there. My grandma's sister she got the same forms, wasn't able to fill them out until the next day. And then they mail them in. And they far missed the window of the 25,000 allegation that you only ended up coming to America using, like, family reunification laws, like nine years later. So it was like, you know, my parents didn't want to go The combination of like, this person being available.

I'm flying it, Teoh the right place at the right time. And then my parents, like, kind of overcoming this. Okay, well, you know, once we got noticed that maybe this pathways open pick up their life when they were, like, both 33 at the time with six kids. And my dad had, like, an OK job where he finally thought that his life was kind of in order to pick up everything you know, language that you don't know to a country that you've heard a lot of horror stories about and and just pick up everything go there like that to me, the more I learned about that start.

And then, like, we arrived into New York and find out half our luggage is missing. And you know those like our worldly possessions right there was wasn't even real luggage was like bags that my mom so together from like rags from drug rugs that we had not rags and half it was missing. That was like a devastating thing until the next day when my dad found that finds out that will actually pay money for that stuff. Right? And I think they got $2500 was just more money than we've ever had in life. My dad was April goodbye. So its computer, IBM 3 86 wit. And that started sort of the journey of like my dad getting into computers and getting us into computers. And, you know, a lot of the direction of my life wouldn't have happened like a didn't come to America for sure. And then if that, like incident of losing luggage didn't happen, probably would have taken another several years to save up

that kind of money. And every new journey starts with the purchase of a new computer exactly as we touch me. Yeah,

um, so that like that I think about that a lot because it's it's not only, um, like, just the sheer luck of like this was at a time when America had some pretty prejudiced views against Russians, you

know, because, like, what year

Resist. This was when that law was passed that when we submitted the application was laid 89 early nineties, uh, so kind of the end of the Cold War. Um, so there's still a lot of tension and, um and also knowing that, like this would have on Lee worked for this specific religion because, like, a lot of it is the predominant religion in America, right? We haven't seen that kind of, you know, hospitality to people that, for example, don't look like me, right?

And right now we're seeing like, a totally opposite policy Thio refugees, and it's that s o just religion. It is such a, um, you know, but stark contrast to the welcoming that we saw because we were like the right religion. Born at the right time was right skin color, all those things that you know, completely unearned, but still led to the outcomes that that have me sitting here today. And that just always reminds me that very little of what What I have today was, you know, because of my merit. Of course, I put in a lot of hard work,

but there's still I can't claim credit to all of this stuff that's been happening because it's either my team are all these, like secondary factors or tertiary factors that I had no control over and didn't deserve or whatever. And another, another story is I think I kind of told it with this Ah, this whole journey when we, you know, we're running out of money just going through these all these tough conversations with my wife around like, OK, this isn't working out. How do we go back? Thio, go back to what was working before. Just go back to the day job, etcetera. That that constantly reminds me that you know what we have right now is not guaranteed to be set in stone forever. Like at any moment,

this whole thing could fall apart. And I have to be thankful for what we have now and not, you know, take it for granted. For me, that's a being that close to the brink of personal financial ruin and you know, as a love this tension in the family and just uncertainty and constantly reminds me toe enjoy every moment right now when that stuff is

and pass it on. I saw on on Twitter that that feeling of grace you're passing on quite literally with, uh, with a recent family vacation that you decide not to go on. Inventive 1000 bucks. I don't know if I'm getting the details right, but $1000 to 10 people instead of going on a vacation. $1000. 10 people fighting for social justice system in the world. And yeah, is you're taking advantage of the opportunity and both for yourself, but also to, ah to extend it to others. Yeah,

and that was that was a phenomenal to see my daughters get, like, really understand the purpose behind that. Not just like oh, shoot. That means we can't travel this holiday season or whatever it was, you know, having those conversations with him. Why, it's important. Thio support people who are fighting for social justice and are largely invisible or ignored. Or, um, you know, a lot of people see as a loud voice in the room. That's kind of a lot of a lot of times people we use terms like, especially people of privilege and power like you and I,

uh, a lot of people that look like us or have the kind of, ah social and power positions that we do will say, Oh, this is not civil like these air. Why can't we have civil discussions? Why can't we have the way that the world usedto work, right and sort of thoughts focus on meritocracy, ignoring the fact that ah, lot of the the reasons like one of my favorite books of all time is ah, book called White Fragility Where just lays out a really clear case of, of how much you know me as a Caucasian person, like, literally born on the Caucasian mountains in southern Russia, How much I benefit just from the the way, uh,

the family I was born into, uh, my thing was like super poor, right? Like we're on welfare for four years. When we came to America, We, you know, my parents were we were as a family, cleaning dental offices every night just to make ends meet. It was, like, super embarrassing and, like, really hard work. And we were doing this. Wild Office staff is still there, you know, it's It's kind

of like, gives you an appreciation entire family. Yeah. Uh uh. Understanding how

old? Ah, this was from when I was probably 13 up through mid high school, so 16 or so and just just kind of shows how much even just being part of the dominant group and not even having to think about, you know, my race being a factor in anything. How many advantages that gives me, and that is a realization. I But I wish that more people had, because it's it's easy to think, like here all the things, the ways that I, the adversity that I had or the think challenges that I had to go through there for Everybody can pull themselves by their bootstraps or whatever, completely ignoring the fact that there's systemic issues and these systemic forces that are centuries old, that are, um, kind of add up to to being some pretty powerful forces,

that if if we don't actively, especially as people in the dominant group like fight against and nothing's gonna change. So so for me, it's, I don't know, I, uh, I'm just thankful for that. For that remind No, like for these stories that just remind me that so much of so much of what I have is not like directly earned and deserved. Therefore, it's a responsibility of mind to try to make those opportunities happens for more people that don't have the same sort of, um, privileges that I was

privy to write as, Ah, that is awesome. And and it said, super inspiring as well as just it is such a great reminder, especially if you can illicit stories. Uh, how many applications did you have to do? We had conversations. Dangerous

was it was amazing to see what happened there because a lot of other people got inspired and sort of like matched donations. I think we did close to 25 k on

how many people applied for the $1000.

So the way the way that I asked for it was like to nominate other people. It was over so desperately that we had over 1000 people got nominated. It was pretty clear.

Do you have to read all of the stolen? Yeah. And did you ever publish those

weed? Didn't Adam So what we What we did was we love, right? Teach each person thio um because a lot of times the especially that we had many people specifically make the request to not publicly say, because this is like a unfairness. We saw something. For example, Social just advocate had a go fund me, right to try to raise a little bit of money for activism work. And, ah, somebody, uh, you know, one of these kind of this is an annoying part of Twitter. And like the's larger social media networks, they will have these sort of like anti social Justice warrior people who are just,

you know, trying a troll around and say, You know, the world is going into, like, this hypersensitive mode or whatever, and they would see that this person was trying to raise money. They, like, posted an instagram post that they went to the zoo or something. And then they, you know, completely shame the person for like, Well, if you really need money, then you wouldn't be doing these like optional things,

right, which is a completely, you know, unrealistic standard. Or like it's a inhuman standard to set on folks. Just why don't you know, believe in all these things, like, you know, when When you subject the most vulnerable people toe like that, the strangest behavioral type, the norms like drug testing and center just to get food stamps and things like that. I like it. It's just oppressive to the degree where we expect some sort of like perfect WeII behaved exactly. There's just two deserve, like a tiny bit of of help or whatever, like there's no humanity

in that. The Protestants gotta write was the grace concept

and and so we kept. We have, like a doctor that was shared with all the people who matched, like all the stories and all the screenshots of like what? And a lot of people thought a lot of the people that were nominated thought it was fake was like, Oh, I thought, you know, when they actually received the money, they're like, Oh, I thought this was a one of those, like Internet things, that whatever's here, right? So we shared that with all the people who like match donations, and we didn't sort of like publicly and I was like this person that got this much money,

etcetera. There's some some awesome stories that came from that, and the one that's most precious to me is the, um, like the effect it had on my daughter's just to see them sacrificing something and in doing that willingly and kind of owning our understanding, what impact that has on other people

it is. It's so awesome to hear that it here, this and that inspired sounds like 24 other people to D'Oh or other people to dio very similar things. It's It's inspiring thoughts in my own head, and it's this is it was a side of silken dalliance. There's an extremely generous, thought provoking, boundary pushing towards justice type of outside of Silicon Valley that it makes me so proud to be a part of of it or the tech mean the technology sector. It's

just like it's still not even close to sort of the radical kind of idea that you know, it's still Tonto like close. My family's fine, right? We're not like, truly sacrificing to the degree where you know there's like this parable of like, somebody gave $10 another like, you know, elderly woman gave two pennies, but that was that was her entire, uh right like that's they. I think if we're talking about like true, truly radical generosity like it would look

completely different. No. One. And that's another hallmark of one of the reasons that I think it's It is great to get to know you through this podcast, but also, um, online, because you're you're also just saying this isn't enough and I think both can be true. It is a massive step in the right direction of raising awareness for these things, but also just raising the dialogue from the cartoonish character organized version, too. Ah, dialogue that is intellectual and much more human. Then I think the dialogue usually sits at it, and it's and I think you didn't really mean it's there's the $10,000. But then is there the 1000 people, the tens of thousands of people that saw the Post and who knows the untold impact that that could have its?

Like I said, it's inspiring thoughts of my own head just talking about it with you. But the well, cap it there so that you don't have to have any more caveats of how you're not doing enough, because I think it's, um I think both can be true. What is the third story that that comes to mind. Mmm. Is this is one of my favorite episodes, by the way. Flatter.

I'm I appreciate that. I was really nervous

about it. I do. This is Ah, it's one of my favorites on. I mean, there's I don't know if there's a single topic we haven't we haven't

touched. I think this is Ah, this this story is could also be sort of like a practical one for startups. Ah, but it was really foundational, for me is like a creative and a designer. So in 2000 2011 got this trademark thing and the convinced my wife to start working with flu. Like I, I started working on it full time in early 2012. By myself, I was still kind of. I phased out to where we moved to the Bay Area and I started working like really early hours like 6 32 like 2 30 it into it and then to 45 to 7 o'clock or something. I'll just go to a coffee shop. Working with, like Pete's on Ah, San Antonio and El Camino in in Mountain View or Los Altos was like my spot I would always have the same corner. And I was such a perfectionist that,

you know, it spent two days on, like, an icon or whatever. I would spend another two days on getting the alignment right of something. Just, er just working on the logo and, ah, you know, optimizing something, not actually working on the most important things in that philosophy. Like, thankfully, I think convinced my brother because I was just like, Okay, this isn't gonna,

um I'm not the best of this. And I tried to get my brother to work for me on, like, a little contract which eventually turned into, like, Hey, why don't we just do this full time? Then we started working on it to the point where you know, we have to force ourselves to build that demo because, like it was just time was running out and way would need to go back to our day jobs or whatever, but even then we had this Once we got into icy were like, Okay, we have a, ah, level of a standard level of things that we want to build, at which point people are gonna be willing to pay for this,

right? So our own thought process around like, what is good enough or what is like M v p that weaken like release. And for us, that definition was like, you know, you need to have a content management system, because what kind of website can you build that doesn't have blogging, like, literally weeks. We believe squarespace the WordPress, all of them had it. How can you launch like a website building thing without it? And a whole laundry list of things that we needed tohave didn't have animations on it, Um, that we thought was like,

you know, Okay, maybe we can release something for free, but there's no value there yet. Like, people are gonna be willing to pay for it because we personally maybe wouldn't have paid for it, Given what we were is an agency before, we'll just do it ourselves, right? The code or whatever. And I remember one very particular meeting at why. See, it wasn't even with one of our main partners. It was with Kassar. Um, he was a kind of a part time partner at Yeah,

he was just like I think he was just went through an acquisition and kind of was, you know, doing some consulting. And, ah, it wasn't even our main partner at Y C. But remember meeting with him with with our team, it was just three founders. He said something like, Well, why haven't you guys launch? It was like, uh, maybe four weeks before day Monday. Look, Oh,

we have to have all these things and when you're gonna have them and oh, probably take us another two months or something like that. It actually took another year and 1/2 by the way, to build those same things. Um, but he said, Look, if you don't actually ship something in the next two weeks, you're probably going to get through it like I'm I'm going to try to. Well, he implied in a jokey way, that I'm gonna throw you out of this program like you just got a ship. And for us, that's such an uncomfortable thing. Like everything was broken like a lot of things

were missing even after the lesson of the reception of playground that the other Demi yeah, did so well

even after that. Like it was like, we personally didn't think that that was up like the demo itself. The quality of the demo was so polished for what the demo was and what the actual product where you couldn't sign up and create a count and create like actual pages, etcetera within. Even we didn't have the ability to add multiple pages, so you can only build a single landing page. We were like, This is useless, right? Like every single dentist website we've built, none of them was zero page. I mean one pages right? Then you need, like a contact page or whatever. Castor convinced us that Hey, there's you have to test whether there's actually value there.

And we ended up launching a week later, like in a beta or whatever. And he he said, Like, you have to charge You're and we were completely uncomfortable is charging because it was like, Okay, let's put slap a beta sticker on it and then that way we don't actually have to, like, go through the process of figuring out how much it's worth or whatever. And we were completely surprised that even the super limited functionality that there were more than enough people who like Okay, this is for me. This is amazing, you know, especially people who are designers who knew what they wanted to build, but they weren't Developers and the tool let them build, like at least start to build their like,

transformed their imagination into something that's actually like working production. Ah, like a working production website. And that was kind of a shock to the system of like, Wait, maybe we don't know what we're doing in terms of, like, what this is actually worth. Ah, and like I said, it was a year and 1/2 later. We're already doing over a $1,000,000

in air are. Well, when

we ended up shipping our CMS, Yeah, and I'm pretty sure that the company would have floundered if we didn't ship. And and from that, just learned that, you know, we gotta put down your ego in thinking like what you're kind of owned. Of course, you have to have a quality bar, but that should be in the service of your customers to make sure that they, you know, are not having a crappy experience. But you'd be surprised how much value people can get out of something being in their hands sooner, even if it's much more limited subset of what you're thinking of, Like the grand vision. Yeah. Um, so So for us, that was a, um like we're lucky to have that lesson s o early on because it helps California.

Yeah, that guides the whole business for the next 17 years. We tail

made mistakes later to like doing a year long project. Ah, and in that ship. But, you know, that was a retraining of that same same

lesson, right? Right. That's Ah. Well, then you get into the game because you feel like you have taste. And I kept Member who said it, but it's basically that ah hye bar of taste and feeling like the world needs X. And none of these match upto is the thing that also holds you back because you're like me and nothing. We're making it up to that a cz well, but it's that's a great lesson to ah, toe learn and sometimes relearned, Um, along the way. Last question for you, Vlad. And thank you for being so generous with your time. We'll wrap it up. But what is the topic you you think a lot about But you rarely ever get a chance to talk about it could be a professional could be social personal, a friendship

I've been thinking about throughout my entire life. I've I would say I had a lot of friends and cousins and acquaintances and, you know, social interactions. Um and even, you know, people. I called best friends many times, but it wasn't until two years ago that I was able to form, like to very, very close friendships where they're, you know, there was a lot of vulnerability on both sides and a lot of like time investment into like getting to know each other in like a really deep love and just like really knowing it sounds like a marriage like it's it's all accepting right where you know the things that are truly bothering you like it's like a therapist that loves you right? Discovering those types of friendships for me was almost transcendent to the degree where, like I realized that it's not quantity that matters like even having one really great friend like that in life is foundational. E way more impactful than having 100. You know,

people that you're on a texting basis with or whatever, like you're working on some project with or whatever. And to me like that, I feel like a lot of people are too ashamed to talk about, sort of like that. They're deep, kind of desire for friendship because honestly like that. That's how both of these friendships were performed was like sitting around a campfire ring saying like, I don't have any deep friends and two other people saying Not in that vulnerability, like was forged a new relationship that now is something that if I kid you not like if I had to pick right now family, that friendship sort of that trifecta and, um, work right? Obviously, family comes first. But if I had to pick between like losing that friendship and losing Web flow like hands down,

uh like I'll start at the company right now, even all the awesome things about what flow on the team, etcetera. I I wish that I think like that, too. Like I mentioned, the two things, at least for me that became obvious was, too. To form those kinds of relationships like you just have to be yourself, and you have to be honest and you have to take like these shots where you have to risk being yourself and

being vulnerable, vulnerable, vulnerability, but gets vulnerability

and maybe sometimes like because there's there's this concept, which I love. Uh, I forget who they're sort of like this. There's three aspects, too. Like deep relationship, right? Like one is being known, right? Ah, look, somebody truly understands you for who you are, ones being accepted for who you are and one's being loved so you can be loved, right, for somebody can love you. And if they don't truly know you,

they're kind of like loving a different version of you than who you really are, right? What they can love you, right? Like there's a lot of relationships that I grew up with where, like these traditional families and somebody would, you know, come out as gay or whatever. Their parents say they love them right, but they don't accept them in their home, which is a you know, it's a it's a devastating thing for the for that. For that relationship, poor you can have like the other combinations of the three, but

not all of it acceptance. But they don't know that exact trial was going

through something exactly right. But when you have all three, when you feel like OK, I've been like I fully kind of told this person and other people of who I am and a lot of times like having that experience and people sort of disconnect because it's like too hard for them to support that. That issue that you're going through or whatever it is like that's that That's Ah, I wish that more people would take that risk because at some points it does work out where you have kind of a mutual, you know, look, reciprocity of vulnerability. And you do need, like a mutual reciprocity of like investment into that relationship. This is very hard to like. Maintain a kind of one sided relationship, like both parties have to like, really want that and seek and and sacrifice time for that because, like in our in our life, especially in Silicon Valley,

there's always I guarantee you will always be reasons why you can't make time for, like, a one hour facetime or a you know, just to just to ask somebody, you know, like how are you really doing

a 20 minute face time with a friend and I and my whole bio physiology changes. It's like and it literally could just be a screen. You can't make it in person. It's Ah, Saturday and you just give him a call. I'm like notorious amongst my friend group of just randomly faced him and and even if it's 90 seconds, yeah, it is. My brain is making a connection, Dan. It's that is a micro version of what you're saying. It's like, all right, I was just seen by friends. Just accepted her. And maybe it's one or two laughs and they need to go after two minutes, three minutes or 20 minutes. But it is, uh, it's like basically makes the whole day when I think about

it, right? One. Sort of like, Ah, little life. Heck, there's a There's a tool called Marco

Polo. I love it. Yes! Oh,

great. It's It's like it's ah, in a digital wants to talk to media exactly. Ah, but you get to like you get to see people you get to experience. It gets. It's such an honest A think it's the most on it's sort of a synchronous. I wouldn't even call it a social network. It's just like a way to facilitate, like, closeness and, you know, with my best friends, like we used it all the time and it's just like, you know, we cry on their We, like, support each other. We talk through our gate,

going as opposed to, like, eight seconds or 15 seconds on Snapchat you can. I talked to him. Leave him a three minute message in 25 minutes. Yeah, that's five years in business before just having updates because it is just being able to see something. You 6% of a CZ. They say 6% of communication is verbal, and then and so it's really rich tohave whether it's ah, few minutes on this time or or Marco Polo much better, you can leave Ah, on 11 minute message updating someone on on Rex or why, and they can see your body language. And it's just it's this implicit communication you don't even know that year Able Thio provide by record. Yes. Oh yeah, I love it.

Yes, I was just more people talked about, like, kind of the being vulnerable with their desire for friendship because, like when I think a lot of people just want friendships to be there. But it's also kind of this by Motta like you have to be honest about that that, you know, I want to engage in friendship and be willing to invest time into that cause. Even in in like the Marco Polo example, you have to put in time to even listen to those things right. You have to make time, thio Ah, reply and not just, you know, like swipe past it or

whatever. Like some of my friends like Jordan. It was, Ah, as one of my cholesterol, your elastic Georgie, would he? Whether it's text or Marco Polo leaves me hanging? Ah, but it and leaves me unseen. But I love that you mentioned friendship. It is to the Greeks. That was the highest form of love until Greeks was was friendship over romantic Lovitz. I remember learning this a few years ago that it's largely a Victorian era concept of romantic love, and and so therefore, it's quite recent that we have elevated romantic love as the end all be all of of your life. But every every spouse in a in a happy,

loving marriage knows that it's actually farm or about that friendship bridges for richer, deeper than in just the romantic side. Or someone like you're talking about having to really great friends in saying, Yeah, that's that's up there with with other forms of love and I it's I I Ever since hearing that I it completely almost allowed myself Thio acknowledge the orientation that really is in my head. That I just didn't have an articulation for that friendship is there's a, uh um,

do you know the Greek word for love? There's actually four different

words, right? Yeah, there's got a They love video

arrows and forget the other one. But one of them, like folios like brotherly love is like a friendly love. Ah, got paid like this Forgiving, you know, self sacrificing love. Airless is like, you know, it sounds like kind of what it is. But it's also for, like, this passion for, you know, I love like woodworking, Right? Right.

Uh, difficult What the other one is? Yeah, it's a It just gives so much more richness to give it a name that I wish we had like that. That level of granularity

and many acts like the Aztecs have one word for water and Eskimos have eight, Uh, and and when you're exposed to it and a society of you prioritize it enough thin like the Greeks did the nude, you'd start toe come up with different words. You start to name different

versions, but it also leads to like different behavior. Like sometimes you have outsized expectations. Like, you know, we have this one word love, and usually it turns into this, like life partner. And the expectation is, if you read like all these romance novels and watch these movies that all your sources of love come from that relationship, just way too much to expect from one person, especially when there's so many different like aspects, the fulfillment. And, you know, one of the amazing things that my wife and I do is every year each one of us has like a runaway trip just alone right, either with friends or alone or whatever,

not with each other. And it's one of the most restorative times. We both come back like, deeper in love with each other. Obviously, because we get thio, we get toe sort of like live out aspect of, you know, our interests and other friend groups that don't share the same, like you just have had totally different experience when it's like a more general kind of, you know, either like a spouse trip or like a multiple couples together. It's like a totally different dynamic than you know. If you go with some best friends or you go on a work trip with, you know, people who are passionate about,

like the problem that you're solving or whatever. Yeah, so it just just brings a lot of energy. Thio Give permission. Thio, you know, live out like certain aspects of our lives that important,

right? Violence. You know that Aztecs didn't have rain, didn't have snow and ice and sleet and and ask most did in it. But it's if you can coming up if you can recognize the different forms and you can shape one into the other. You know you can take that that snow and make it water ice and and and make it, um, you know something you drink and and I think it's the same with that. Friendship can flow into that romantic love, which flows back into the friendship, but that's that's awesome, that is, I think you're the first person to mention friendship on the podcast is a topic you think a lot about. But that is that just goes to show how blind we can be to our own desires or more purpose of Lee kind of shielding the vulnerability towards something that is so innate. Lee Human that direction and desire for friendship. And yet, well,

this is a business for yeah, store a creator Focus podcast. So we're not going toe to mention such an aspect. But I appreciate you sharing that, Vlad, thank you so much for for the time there's ah, you know, when you learn these, these seemingly overnight stories realizing there 15 years, uh, 30 years, 30 plus years in the making, shit there, hundreds of years in the making, with with generations of of, of family members or people that came before us,

it is after chatting with you again. There's no doubt in my mind weapon was destined for. It's not only the poster child for this whole massive movement within technology of of that no code kind of revolution, but it's ah, it's There's no doubt that that is destined for even more special things down the road you use, well, individuals. So thanks so much for coming up with James. Thank you for having thanks, but friends and listeners, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you want to hear more of these types of conversations, go over to your favorite podcast. Nap and hit, subscribe or leave us a review. Better,

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