Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 194 posts

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#21

Post by xwdv »

While I will say congratulations, I hope you also appreciate how lucky you are. I cringe at some of the decisions that were made and how close you may have came to absolute ruin not just for yourself but your family as well. I hope the lesson people take from this isn’t “Never give up” but rather that startups are harder than you think and posting on forums is more of a crap shoot than a guarantee of any useful traction. Calculate that risk carefully to yourself and dependents and see if it’s really worth it.

Imagine if you were trying to launch right around the beginning of 2020. The HN of the 2020s is becoming a much less forgiving crowd than that of 2013.

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#23

Post by 29athrowaway »

I have seen Webflow ads...

- One ad features a developer saying "no", repeateadly.

- Another ad features a developer talking in an absurdly complicated manner.

Now you come to this forum, mostly used by developers to say "thank you"?

Wow, I mean, after being insulted by your ads in a daily basis now you suddenly feel gratitude?

There are many ways to sell your product that do not involve insulting developers.

Stop your anti-developer behavior, then come here with your kumbaya crap.

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#24

Post by kitcar »

Congrats!

Just a heads up, as a semi-happy webflow customer: your customer service chat bot / the way you hide methods to contact customer service is very frustrating. The first time I ran into a technical issue I almost considered just cancelling my account and moving elsewhere because I couldn't figure out how to speak/chat with a human. There are many services I spend less money on monthly that have infinitely better customer service. Ultimately a friend provided me with your support email and I got a response there, but was shocked that wasn't listed anywhere on your website that I could easily find..

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#25

Post by staunch »

Congrats on the startup success and (more importantly) I hope your daughter is well.

There's a really valuable lesson here for would-be YC founders:

> We had high hopes about getting into YC for the winter batch, but were rejected since we only had a non-functional demo of a product and zero traction.

...

> This amazing traction helped us get into YC several months later...

Same founders - traction = YC rejected

Same founders + traction = YC accepted

The same thing happened with Dropbox. So don't trust what YC says about how they evaluate founders themselves, trust what they actually do. Which is evaluating startup quality largely based on traction, just like every other investor does.

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#26

Post by jldugger »

grecy wrote: post #20

[flagged]

Because we _let_ people choose cheap plans, and don't use federal taxation to shift the costs to the wealthy. And we tie health insurance to employment, so all those fringe benefits you were unaware of suddenly cost real money when you start your own biz.

If OP had been required to carry a stronger insurance policy, their runway would have been even shorter. And if the tax regime gifted Americans universal health care, it would likely mean OP would have a smaller savings, if any at all.

Perhaps it's a testament to how healthy the jobs market is in SV that 'I'll just get a job' as a fall back plan if you run out of cash is plausible.

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#28

Post by Scramblejams »

Amazing story, glad you made it.

Potential customer here, and I have a question. I'm a programmer, very happy making backends, setting up the infra, maintaining it, and so on. I often want to make web pages, but I just hate dealing the web front-end stack.

Is this product a good fit for me? I could visually design the website, avoid getting my hands dirty with HTML/CSS/JS, then have an easy way to connect it with a backend I'd make?

If this isn't a good fit, any suggestions?

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#30

Post by dvt »

Congratulations! The Webflow co-founders personify the perfect combination of persistence, grit, and a bit of luck. I know nay-sayers will start parroting "survivorship bias," but these kinds of stories motivate me :)

Cheers, and thanks for the inspiring words!

Post reply on HN