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Nearly 5 years ago, a few months after being rejected from YC and a few weeks from being essentially bankrupt (my daughter had an unexpected surgery while we ha

Nearly 5 years ago, a few months after being rejected from YC and a few weeks from being essentially bankrupt (my daughter had an unexpected surgery while we had only catastrophic health insurance), my brother and I posted a Show HN about Webflow (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5407499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5407499). It was our last-ditch attempt to show a proof-of-concept to the world before going back to our old bosses to ask for our jobs back. Thankfully, the post took off - we were #1 for most of the day, and over 25,000 people signed up for our beta list in the several days after that post. This helped us reapply to YC with a lot more confidence and traction, and we were able to get into the next batch. Webflow (https://webflow.com/ https://webflow.com/) has since grown into a profitable business with close to 1,000,000 users all over the world, billions of website requests served, and close to 60 team members in over 14 countries. I'm pretty sure none (or very little) of this would be possible without HN and the community here, and the super positive reception our post had. Today, we're on a mission to enable more people to create powerful software without having to learn how to code - we probably have decades to make that vision a reality, but we're on a decent start in large part thanks to our launch on HN. A HUGE thank you to the community here!

kolinko 9y ago
A similar story with me and AppCodes. I wasn't struggling, since my mobile app business was already giving ramen profitability (which is around ~1k/month in Poland). I wrote a post onto HN, outlining new features of our service ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3693151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3693151 ), it got to the front page, and was picked up by TC shortly afterwards. 6 years later, I moved to other projects, but still maintain the site, and the site still brings profits, and has happy users :)
rohan1024 9y ago
Hi, I just signed up for your website and everything looks really good but on your design dashboard I am getting your browser is currently not supported. I am using Firefox 59.0b10. It seems like Firefox is not at all supported. I should not have to switch browser. BTW, Great work!
- MarkSweep 9y ago
  On the other hand, the homepage looks great in Firefox with NoScript enabled. It's nice to be able read about what a product does without enabling a bunch of scripts first. It seems a lot of sites these days make their landing pages using SPA frameworks.
  - callmevlad 9y ago
    It’s rendered on the server with React + Apollo + GraphQL, just like all the other Webflow-powered websites out there! ;)
    - mixmastamyk 9y ago
      Came to (mildly) complain about lack of the FF support also, five years later. ;-)
- callmevlad 9y ago
  Thanks! And sorry for the FF snag - we’re working on supporting Firefox later this year!
unclebucknasty 9y ago
That's an awesome story. Congrats! Quick question: My understanding may need to be updated, but doesn't YC give you Ramen-survival cash? How did you deal with the financial challenges with so little and a family, etc.?
- callmevlad 9y ago
  Yeah, the first year even after YC funding was very tough. Long story short: sold a car, borrowed a ton on those credit card write-yourself-a-check 2% balance transfer deals (thankfully had good credit to be able to do that), and withdrew early from an IRA (those penalties hurt!) - wouldn’t recommend :)
  - thr0w__4w4y 9y ago
    I'm delighted to hear that after taking on all that risk and "doubling down" by believing in yourself(ves), that you're doing great now. Totally inspirational success story!
  - unclebucknasty 9y ago
    Ah. Understood. It can be a tough call: Am I being persistent and believing in my team/self/product or am I just being stubborn and not reading the signs? There's always a certain insanity to starting a business in the first place, hence is it any less sane to continue?! So, I imagine that the ray of hope that YC-acceptance presents might embolden one to continue and take on that additional risk as you did. Still, very gutsy and glad it worked out for you. (BTW, I can attest: yes, those 401k/IRA penalties hurt!)
murukesh_s 9y ago
Couldn't upvote this enough, for folks who are lucky to get those fat checks from investors with just a POC or even a business plan, never understand the pain and pressure of making it without that.. good that you hanged in there till the last moment without breaking.
AndreRauh 9y ago
25k signups from just HN? That's a lot more than I expected. My startup was on HN frontpage for 22h last Friday and until now (3 days) it gave me ~9k unique visitors and ~1900 new signups. Since before I only had ~30 users the HN post was by far the best driver of signups so far. So I'm super happy and have been working a lot on it.
- callmevlad 9y ago
  What we posted got shared in various other places (Designer News, Twitter, Reddit, etc), which might we why it was higher. But Hacker News was definitely the catalyst of it all.
Mashimo 9y ago
What does YC stand for?
- jbkrule 9y ago
  You might want to check the URL of the page you're on :)
- TwelveNights 9y ago
  YCombinator
- bboreham 9y ago
  “Y Combinator”, which is the name of the company that runs this website.
DelTaco 9y ago
Nice man congrats! You're livin' the dream :)
mazumdar 9y ago
Nearly 5 years ago, a few months after being rejected from YC for the first time, I came across your Show HN and started using Webflow to build a mockup of my product's sign-up page (I did not know how to code at that time). Over the next 2.5 years, I reapplied to YC five more times. I interviewed twice in the second round. I eventually got rejected every time. From the ideation stage, to $1M in revenue, YC has an application of mine for every milestone in between (until I did not need to raise money anymore). My company, Y Athletics (https://yathletics.com https://yathletics.com), is a profitable business with no investor funding and 7 figure revenues. We've delivered products to over 25,000 paying customers all around the world. We don't solve problems, but we create some amazing products that people want. This post about Webflow made me nostalgic as it was during that time that I started to read HN religiously (and now I discovered that Vlad and I applied and were rejected in the same batch as well). My first landing page was made on Webflow. I learned how to code using Codeacademy. My first 100 users came from a comment I posted on an Ask HN thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6617551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6617551). Seeing others building their startups inspired me to continue building mine. My company would probably not exist if it wasn't for HN. Thanks for everything!
- rkuykendall-com 9y ago
  Sorry if you've answered this elsewhere before, but what's with the logo? It almost looks like an exact copy of Y Combinator. Was that the case when you were applying?
  - hanspeter 9y ago
    The only resemblance is that both are a "Y". It's not the same font and it's not the same colors.
  - mazumdar 9y ago
    Yeah our logo has not changed since inception but it’s not a copy of YC or anyone else. Take a closer look here - http://bit.ly/2obM60y http://bit.ly/2obM60y (first image is our logo)
- andrea_sdl 9y ago
JepZ 9y ago
From the thousands of links we click on HN, Webflow is actually one of the few I can remember without even visiting the website again ;-)
rsp1984 9y ago
I love Webflow! It perfectly fills a niche between Weebly / Wix and raw HTML / CSS / JS. It's for the technically savvy who want to build websites quickly but for whom Weebly / Wix are just too inflexible. You guys did such a nice job executing on the UI/UX of Webflow. It feels very quick and offers lots of choices without overwhelming me. That's such a rare quality these days.
- corpMaverick 9y ago
  As somebody trying to figure out what Webflow was. This description makes a lot of sense to me.
jacobwal 9y ago
Just started using Webflow a week ago - it's amazing! Thank you for a great product!

kolinko 9y ago

A similar story with me and AppCodes. I wasn't struggling, since my mobile app business was already giving ramen profitability (which is around ~1k/month in Poland). I wrote a post onto HN, outlining new features of our service ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3693151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3693151 ), it got to the front page, and was picked up by TC shortly afterwards. 6 years later, I moved to other projects, but still maintain the site, and the site still brings profits, and has happy users :)

rohan1024 9y ago

Hi, I just signed up for your website and everything looks really good but on your design dashboard I am getting your browser is currently not supported. I am using Firefox 59.0b10. It seems like Firefox is not at all supported. I should not have to switch browser. BTW, Great work!

MarkSweep 9y ago
On the other hand, the homepage looks great in Firefox with NoScript enabled. It's nice to be able read about what a product does without enabling a bunch of scripts first. It seems a lot of sites these days make their landing pages using SPA frameworks.
- callmevlad 9y ago
  It’s rendered on the server with React + Apollo + GraphQL, just like all the other Webflow-powered websites out there! ;)
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    Came to (mildly) complain about lack of the FF support also, five years later. ;-)
callmevlad 9y ago
Thanks! And sorry for the FF snag - we’re working on supporting Firefox later this year!

unclebucknasty 9y ago

That's an awesome story. Congrats! Quick question: My understanding may need to be updated, but doesn't YC give you Ramen-survival cash? How did you deal with the financial challenges with so little and a family, etc.?

callmevlad 9y ago
Yeah, the first year even after YC funding was very tough. Long story short: sold a car, borrowed a ton on those credit card write-yourself-a-check 2% balance transfer deals (thankfully had good credit to be able to do that), and withdrew early from an IRA (those penalties hurt!) - wouldn’t recommend :)
- thr0w__4w4y 9y ago
  I'm delighted to hear that after taking on all that risk and "doubling down" by believing in yourself(ves), that you're doing great now. Totally inspirational success story!
- unclebucknasty 9y ago
  Ah. Understood. It can be a tough call: Am I being persistent and believing in my team/self/product or am I just being stubborn and not reading the signs? There's always a certain insanity to starting a business in the first place, hence is it any less sane to continue?! So, I imagine that the ray of hope that YC-acceptance presents might embolden one to continue and take on that additional risk as you did. Still, very gutsy and glad it worked out for you. (BTW, I can attest: yes, those 401k/IRA penalties hurt!)

murukesh_s 9y ago

Couldn't upvote this enough, for folks who are lucky to get those fat checks from investors with just a POC or even a business plan, never understand the pain and pressure of making it without that.. good that you hanged in there till the last moment without breaking.

AndreRauh 9y ago

25k signups from just HN? That's a lot more than I expected. My startup was on HN frontpage for 22h last Friday and until now (3 days) it gave me ~9k unique visitors and ~1900 new signups. Since before I only had ~30 users the HN post was by far the best driver of signups so far. So I'm super happy and have been working a lot on it.

callmevlad 9y ago
What we posted got shared in various other places (Designer News, Twitter, Reddit, etc), which might we why it was higher. But Hacker News was definitely the catalyst of it all.

Mashimo 9y ago

What does YC stand for?

jbkrule 9y ago
You might want to check the URL of the page you're on :)
TwelveNights 9y ago
YCombinator
bboreham 9y ago
“Y Combinator”, which is the name of the company that runs this website.

DelTaco 9y ago

Nice man congrats! You're livin' the dream :)

mazumdar 9y ago

Nearly 5 years ago, a few months after being rejected from YC for the first time, I came across your Show HN and started using Webflow to build a mockup of my product's sign-up page (I did not know how to code at that time). Over the next 2.5 years, I reapplied to YC five more times. I interviewed twice in the second round. I eventually got rejected every time. From the ideation stage, to $1M in revenue, YC has an application of mine for every milestone in between (until I did not need to raise money anymore). My company, Y Athletics (https://yathletics.com https://yathletics.com), is a profitable business with no investor funding and 7 figure revenues. We've delivered products to over 25,000 paying customers all around the world. We don't solve problems, but we create some amazing products that people want. This post about Webflow made me nostalgic as it was during that time that I started to read HN religiously (and now I discovered that Vlad and I applied and were rejected in the same batch as well). My first landing page was made on Webflow. I learned how to code using Codeacademy. My first 100 users came from a comment I posted on an Ask HN thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6617551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6617551). Seeing others building their startups inspired me to continue building mine. My company would probably not exist if it wasn't for HN. Thanks for everything!

rkuykendall-com 9y ago
Sorry if you've answered this elsewhere before, but what's with the logo? It almost looks like an exact copy of Y Combinator. Was that the case when you were applying?
- hanspeter 9y ago
  The only resemblance is that both are a "Y". It's not the same font and it's not the same colors.
- mazumdar 9y ago
  Yeah our logo has not changed since inception but it’s not a copy of YC or anyone else. Take a closer look here - http://bit.ly/2obM60y http://bit.ly/2obM60y (first image is our logo)
andrea_sdl 9y ago

JepZ 9y ago

From the thousands of links we click on HN, Webflow is actually one of the few I can remember without even visiting the website again ;-)

rsp1984 9y ago

I love Webflow! It perfectly fills a niche between Weebly / Wix and raw HTML / CSS / JS. It's for the technically savvy who want to build websites quickly but for whom Weebly / Wix are just too inflexible. You guys did such a nice job executing on the UI/UX of Webflow. It feels very quick and offers lots of choices without overwhelming me. That's such a rare quality these days.

corpMaverick 9y ago
As somebody trying to figure out what Webflow was. This description makes a lot of sense to me.

jacobwal 9y ago

Just started using Webflow a week ago - it's amazing! Thank you for a great product!