I built my first website with Yahoo Geocities. It was ugly. But, I was so proud of my creation because but I made it. Today anyone with a computer and access to the internet can build a website using tools far more powerful than Dreamweaver from two decades ago. One of those tools is Webflow, where designers, coders, and marketers can easily build fully responsive, bespoke websites. In this episode, Bryan Chou, Co-Founder of Webflow, shares the early genesis and growth of Webflow.
In episode 81, you’ll learn:
- Bryan’s transition from CTO to Head of Growth at Webflow
- How Webflow got their first 1,000 customers
- How Bryant and the growth team created tight feedback loops to accelerate their growth
- An early mistake with Webflow’s referral program
Tweet Some Quotes from This Episode
My team is always striving to have a super good understanding of what our customers want, what they’re motivated by. – @bryantchou from @GrowthToday podcast. Get the full podcast episode 👇 Click To Tweet I think the most important aspects of marketing, especially in the early stages of a startup is product marketing. – @bryantchou from @GrowthToday podcast. Get the full episode 👇 Click To Tweet You can't just rely on the strength of your product unless you have a ton of network effect. You have to invest heavily in marketing. – @bryantchou from the @GrowthToday podcast. Get the full episode 👇 Click To TweetOur sponsor for this episode
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My Takeaways from This Episode
- Use your company’s mission to maintain the momentum of your growth. I think a lot of the conversation talks about starting and accelerating growth, and not enough about maintaining momentum. As Bryant said, they made sure they maintained momentum by living true to their company mission, which is to allow more people to harness the potential of the internet through building software on the web. The end goal is to help people create more businesses and put more money in people’s bank accounts.
- To build a product people love, Have a deep understanding of what your customers want and what motivates them. That’s what Bryant said that his team always strives to do. For Webflow, their customers are looking at their websites as a primary means to generate more business. So, capturing leads, having excellent SEO is all about growing their business with their website. That’s where the Webflow team prioritized in terms of building features.
- Be open to brand new experiments. While growing Webflow, something that Bryant told his team all the time is that no one has ever built Webflow before. No one has ever attracted the kind of Webflow customers. No one has ever marketed Webflow in the past. So, everything that they did, they should think of it as a brand new experiment.
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About Bryant Chou
Bryant is a serial entrepreneur and technologist, having built several successful businesses in the mobile advertising and web design & digital publishing space. He is currently the Head of Growth and Co-Founder of Webflow, a software company that gives designers and developers the power to design, build and launch responsive websites visually, while writing clean, semantic code for them. Webflow has over 70,000 customers powering websites for the Fortune 2000, as well as thousands of small to medium size businesses.
Key Discussion Points
- 9:31 – What Webflow actually is and how it helps people
- 16:06 – How the team at Webflow built and polished their product
- 19:33 – The process they added the interaction feature to Webflow
- 24:08 – How Webflow enabled entrepreneurs to grow their business
- 29:01 – The importance of creating a tight feedback loop
- 34:25 – Why it’s important to understand your customer’s needs
- 39:29 – How Dell and other enterprise companies are benefiting from Webflow
- 44:03 – Webflow’s aim for the future
- 49:58 – Bryant’s one piece of advice to marketers and founders
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