4 ms·

Evolving Webflow for the Agentic Web

50 points by rocketpastsix 4mo ago

paulfri 4mo ago
What a ghoulish title for a layoff announcement.
- new_account_101 4mo ago
  [dead]
rvz 4mo ago
> As a result, many of our Webflow teammates are leaving the company today. Translation: Webflow has achieved AGI internally.
- pixel_popping 4mo ago
  One more iteration, I swear.
mcrk 4mo ago
tl;dr We've raised a lot of money and VC's are pushing for exit. It's now or never. Rebrand, slap on agentic AI and pray to google gods for a quick buyout.
sorry_outta_gas 4mo ago
[dead]
mathgeek 4mo ago
Misleading headline. This is layoffs, not a redesign.
- falcor84 4mo ago
  Well, to be fair, they didn't say "redesign" anywhere, and Webflow is the name of the company, so I don't find it too strange that the "evolution" of a company involves layoffs. Maybe I'm just too jaded to these "An update on ..." announcements, but this really didn't strike me as bad. At the very least, they announced the layoffs in the very first paragraph, rather than beating around the bush.
camillomiller 4mo ago
>> We’re at an inflection point, both as a company and as an industry. The way businesses build for the web is changing fast. AI is rewriting the rules for how marketing teams create, test, and optimize digital experiences. And the companies that move decisively through moments like this are the ones that come out ahead. I work in exactly this field and I make relevant revenue. I absolutely do not think this is in any way true nor proven by actual needs. In fact this is not even happening as described. Companies like webflow are following blindly an empty promise with the hope at some point it becomes self-fulfilling, disregarding their people and sacrificing any morals on the altar of growth for growth’s sake and investors pressure. All this to say, more concisely: fuck Webflow as well.
jffry 4mo ago
> "...we made the difficult decision to restructure Webflow’s team and operating model. As a result, many of our Webflow teammates are leaving the company today." Leaving implies agency. You've fired these people. Using a euphemism that implies they had a choice in this matter is disingenuous and not "owning this decision"
- paxys 4mo ago
  "Some of our employees are taking a forced voluntary separation"
dminik 4mo ago
> As a result, many of our Webflow teammates are leaving the company today What a disgusting way to phrase that.
- falcor84 4mo ago
  Why? How would you as a leader would announce this in a way that better reduces bad feelings?
  - re-thc 4mo ago
    > How would you as a leader would announce this in a way that better reduces bad feelings? Step 1, stop using AI as an excuse?
    - ryandrake 4mo ago
      Step 2, don't use "leaving the company" as a euphemism for "getting laid off", as the former implies employee agency and choice they don't actually have. The entire post is a green-beige sludge of corpspeak, euphemisms, and AI slop. Who fucking talks like this anyway?
  - dminik 4mo ago
    Well, first of all, stop lying. These people aren't leaving the company. They were fired. They were removed. Leaving sounds voluntary. Then, this might be a cultural thing, but I don't want niceties and flowery language. Give it to me straight. It's not "we're rebuilding". We're not rebuilding anything. We're broke. If you're broke just say that.
  - nullpoint420 4mo ago
    Alternatively, can you explain why you believe this statement reduces bad feelings? Put yourself in the shoes of those who have been laid off. Defend your position, I’m tired of, and will not play defense.
  - paxys 4mo ago
    Direct and to the point. This is the opposite of that.
ErneX 4mo ago
Wix is also doing layoffs: https://www.gurufocus.com/news/8881760/wix-plans-major-layoffs-amid-financial-challenges https://www.gurufocus.com/news/8881760/wix-plans-major-layof... Never used either, but these are similar “no code” platforms, right?
- cdolan 4mo ago
  Yes, but webflow is far more featured and robust than Wix.
cdolan 4mo ago
I couldnt get through the corpo-speak and AI slop But I am a webflow customer looking at ripping it out of our stack and just having it maintained by our team with alternative tools, powered by Claude/Codex. I planned to follow some flavor of this -https://x.com/anitakirkovska/status/2053941736049967285?s=20 https://x.com/anitakirkovska/status/2053941736049967285?s=20 We currently pay almost $5k/year for hosting/licenses and its just not feeling worth it. (disclaimer - still believe Webflow is 10x Wordpress!)
- dnnddidiej 4mo ago
  Wordpress + AI tho?
  - cdolan 4mo ago
    Wordpress is an incredible dumpster fire with Matt at the helm, no way
    - dnnddidiej 4mo ago
      It is open source. Just clone and ignore drama.
whitesp__ce 4mo ago
the amount of "restructuring" Webflow has gone through is wild
embedding-shape 4mo ago
> We’re going to lead by example. Our own marketing team will be among the first proof points for what a modern marketing organization can look like when it is paired with AI agents in its day-to-day work. Interesting that it's not the development team that gets to start with using AI agents (unless they are already?), but instead the marketing team. I guess long-term quality matters less there, you just want something OK fast, then LLMs actually makes a lot of sense, it is basically what we've ended up calling "slop" anyways, and marketing seems like a natural fit. Interesting contrast compared to "I think Anthropic and OpenAI have found product-market fit" from the other HN submission right now, as that one claims mostly software engineers are using agents, meanwhile Webflow starts with the marketing team, I'm guessing they see it as obvious somehow.
rwhitman 4mo ago
I've known Webflow for a while as a business, and even pitched it to large companies like Maersk and Nielsen as a Wordpress alternative. I was on the sales side so it always seemed like a great cloud option that was in the territory of Squarespace but far more control for enterprise development. However... I recently put my old frontend hat on and opted for Framer to build a new website, seeing if I could sketch it out in GPT + Claude then had it give me instructions to translate to a modern cloud CMS. While I find Framer, Webflow, etc, significantly more aligned to my brain than say Squarespace or Wix, overall, they are incredibly frustrating and full of tedious little proprietary quirks that drive me goddam insane. You need to learn the interface but still also need an understanding of how breakpoints and CSS positioning work among other things. The preview website artifact that Claude Design spat out was pretty dang good and was written in simple vanilla semantic HTML/CSS with no dependency overhead. Its a little rough around the edges and clumsy on details but an appropriate starting point for both beginners and enterprise. A company like webflow has to be looking at this and sweating bullets. Wish the initial reaction to AI-driven threats these days wasn't to gut the company in favor of agents. Yes Claude Code + Claude Design are awesome but none of these products are perfect and they all still have a place to coexist within the market
dnnddidiej 4mo ago
I'd love the various fired people this year to form a new huge company.
- cindyllm 4mo ago
  [dead]
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
nticompass 4mo ago
Maybe it's just me, but I hate the word "agentic" so much.

50 points by rocketpastsix 4mo ago

paulfri 4mo ago

What a ghoulish title for a layoff announcement.

new_account_101 4mo ago
[dead]

rvz 4mo ago

> As a result, many of our Webflow teammates are leaving the company today. Translation: Webflow has achieved AGI internally.

pixel_popping 4mo ago
One more iteration, I swear.

mcrk 4mo ago

tl;dr We've raised a lot of money and VC's are pushing for exit. It's now or never. Rebrand, slap on agentic AI and pray to google gods for a quick buyout.

sorry_outta_gas 4mo ago

[dead]

mathgeek 4mo ago

Misleading headline. This is layoffs, not a redesign.

falcor84 4mo ago
Well, to be fair, they didn't say "redesign" anywhere, and Webflow is the name of the company, so I don't find it too strange that the "evolution" of a company involves layoffs. Maybe I'm just too jaded to these "An update on ..." announcements, but this really didn't strike me as bad. At the very least, they announced the layoffs in the very first paragraph, rather than beating around the bush.

camillomiller 4mo ago

>> We’re at an inflection point, both as a company and as an industry. The way businesses build for the web is changing fast. AI is rewriting the rules for how marketing teams create, test, and optimize digital experiences. And the companies that move decisively through moments like this are the ones that come out ahead. I work in exactly this field and I make relevant revenue. I absolutely do not think this is in any way true nor proven by actual needs. In fact this is not even happening as described. Companies like webflow are following blindly an empty promise with the hope at some point it becomes self-fulfilling, disregarding their people and sacrificing any morals on the altar of growth for growth’s sake and investors pressure. All this to say, more concisely: fuck Webflow as well.

jffry 4mo ago

> "...we made the difficult decision to restructure Webflow’s team and operating model. As a result, many of our Webflow teammates are leaving the company today." Leaving implies agency. You've fired these people. Using a euphemism that implies they had a choice in this matter is disingenuous and not "owning this decision"

paxys 4mo ago
"Some of our employees are taking a forced voluntary separation"

dminik 4mo ago

> As a result, many of our Webflow teammates are leaving the company today What a disgusting way to phrase that.

falcor84 4mo ago
Why? How would you as a leader would announce this in a way that better reduces bad feelings?
- re-thc 4mo ago
  > How would you as a leader would announce this in a way that better reduces bad feelings? Step 1, stop using AI as an excuse?
  - ryandrake 4mo ago
    Step 2, don't use "leaving the company" as a euphemism for "getting laid off", as the former implies employee agency and choice they don't actually have. The entire post is a green-beige sludge of corpspeak, euphemisms, and AI slop. Who fucking talks like this anyway?
- dminik 4mo ago
  Well, first of all, stop lying. These people aren't leaving the company. They were fired. They were removed. Leaving sounds voluntary. Then, this might be a cultural thing, but I don't want niceties and flowery language. Give it to me straight. It's not "we're rebuilding". We're not rebuilding anything. We're broke. If you're broke just say that.
- nullpoint420 4mo ago
  Alternatively, can you explain why you believe this statement reduces bad feelings? Put yourself in the shoes of those who have been laid off. Defend your position, I’m tired of, and will not play defense.
- paxys 4mo ago
  Direct and to the point. This is the opposite of that.

ErneX 4mo ago

Wix is also doing layoffs: https://www.gurufocus.com/news/8881760/wix-plans-major-layoffs-amid-financial-challenges https://www.gurufocus.com/news/8881760/wix-plans-major-layof... Never used either, but these are similar “no code” platforms, right?

cdolan 4mo ago
Yes, but webflow is far more featured and robust than Wix.

cdolan 4mo ago

I couldnt get through the corpo-speak and AI slop But I am a webflow customer looking at ripping it out of our stack and just having it maintained by our team with alternative tools, powered by Claude/Codex. I planned to follow some flavor of this -https://x.com/anitakirkovska/status/2053941736049967285?s=20 https://x.com/anitakirkovska/status/2053941736049967285?s=20 We currently pay almost $5k/year for hosting/licenses and its just not feeling worth it. (disclaimer - still believe Webflow is 10x Wordpress!)

dnnddidiej 4mo ago
Wordpress + AI tho?
- cdolan 4mo ago
  Wordpress is an incredible dumpster fire with Matt at the helm, no way
  - dnnddidiej 4mo ago
    It is open source. Just clone and ignore drama.

whitesp__ce 4mo ago

the amount of "restructuring" Webflow has gone through is wild

embedding-shape 4mo ago

> We’re going to lead by example. Our own marketing team will be among the first proof points for what a modern marketing organization can look like when it is paired with AI agents in its day-to-day work. Interesting that it's not the development team that gets to start with using AI agents (unless they are already?), but instead the marketing team. I guess long-term quality matters less there, you just want something OK fast, then LLMs actually makes a lot of sense, it is basically what we've ended up calling "slop" anyways, and marketing seems like a natural fit. Interesting contrast compared to "I think Anthropic and OpenAI have found product-market fit" from the other HN submission right now, as that one claims mostly software engineers are using agents, meanwhile Webflow starts with the marketing team, I'm guessing they see it as obvious somehow.

rwhitman 4mo ago

I've known Webflow for a while as a business, and even pitched it to large companies like Maersk and Nielsen as a Wordpress alternative. I was on the sales side so it always seemed like a great cloud option that was in the territory of Squarespace but far more control for enterprise development. However... I recently put my old frontend hat on and opted for Framer to build a new website, seeing if I could sketch it out in GPT + Claude then had it give me instructions to translate to a modern cloud CMS. While I find Framer, Webflow, etc, significantly more aligned to my brain than say Squarespace or Wix, overall, they are incredibly frustrating and full of tedious little proprietary quirks that drive me goddam insane. You need to learn the interface but still also need an understanding of how breakpoints and CSS positioning work among other things. The preview website artifact that Claude Design spat out was pretty dang good and was written in simple vanilla semantic HTML/CSS with no dependency overhead. Its a little rough around the edges and clumsy on details but an appropriate starting point for both beginners and enterprise. A company like webflow has to be looking at this and sweating bullets. Wish the initial reaction to AI-driven threats these days wasn't to gut the company in favor of agents. Yes Claude Code + Claude Design are awesome but none of these products are perfect and they all still have a place to coexist within the market

dnnddidiej 4mo ago

I'd love the various fired people this year to form a new huge company.

cindyllm 4mo ago
[dead]

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

nticompass 4mo ago

Maybe it's just me, but I hate the word "agentic" so much.