CEO of Framer: Why Designers Should Become Founders

1. 0:00 – 0:34

   Intro to Jorn van Dijk, the CEO and co-founder of Framer

   1. AEAaron Epstein0:00

      Today, we're joined by Jorn van Dijk, the CEO and Co-founder of Framer, the leading website design platform. Jorn has spent the past decade pushing the boundaries of interactive design, and today, we'll dig into his founder story and hear his advice for how to adapt in an AI world. Welcome to another episode of Design Review. [upbeat music] Welcome, Jorn.

   2. JDJorn van Dijk0:28

      Thank you. Thank you for having me.

   3. AEAaron Epstein0:29

      Yeah. Thanks so much for joining. Maybe you could start out by telling us what is Framer, and give us the current

2. 0:34 – 1:06

   Framer’s Scale: $2B Valuation, 120 People around the globe

   1. AEAaron Epstein0:34

      state of the company.

   2. JDJorn van Dijk0:34

      For sure. So Framer is a web design platform used by professional designers and startups to build their entire dot-com. We just raised a Series D over the summer, um, at a $2B valuation, and we're roughly 120 people across Europe, and about a third in the US now.

   3. AEAaron Epstein0:52

      You know, one of the things that I think we have in common is we both share a mission to encourage more designers to become founders, and, and that was certainly the path that you took. I'm curious, w- what do you think it was about your design background that set you up well to become a founder and start this company?

3. 1:06 – 1:49

   Jorn’s Design Roots

   1. JDJorn van Dijk1:06

      My background is in traditional graphic design, so I went to, uh, design school for about four years, and then I went to art academy after that. The Netherlands has pretty rich culture of both graphic design and art academy, uh, so a lot of typography, uh, poster design is coming out of the Netherlands. And, um, especially after art academy, it was a little... I was looking for what to... how to apply my skills. I was really drawn to, to, honestly, the Macintosh at the time, and sort of, like, iconography and the type of software that was built on that, and that's really what got me interested in making software and products in the first place.

   2. AEAaron Epstein1:41

      Amazing. It, it seems like growing up in the Netherlands, uh, there's, like, a rich culture of design and caring about high-quality products and things like that. Where does that come

4. 1:49 – 3:43

   Why Dutch Design Culture Is So Strong

   1. AEAaron Epstein1:49

      from?

   2. JDJorn van Dijk1:49

      Yes, it's true. Uh, we do have a rich history of that. I think especially, um, for graphic design and typography, there was a m- a phase in the, let's say, um, '70s and up where, uh, the government actually used a lot of subsidies to, uh, sponsor graphic design for things like the postal office, the navy, things like that. They all have pretty forward-thinking design solutions, and a lot of sort of, like, design systems thinking was applied back then to those projects. And, uh, and so yeah, it's, it's like one part of, of what made the Netherlands sort of like a breeding ground for, for graphic design.

   3. AEAaron Epstein2:28

      At what point did you realize that design could maybe become a career? Was it always a career path that you had in mind, or was it something that you sort of stumbled into?

   4. JDJorn van Dijk2:36

      A little bit of both. So I think... I mean, we're, uh, 20 years ago, the, the... It's when, when I got into design.

   5. AEAaron Epstein2:43

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JDJorn van Dijk2:44

      Um, and, and I think, you know, just getting exposure to the Macintosh as a platform and the products that were being built on it was a big part. But honestly, for me, it was like I was just drawn to the aesthetics of all of that, all of those, uh, products, uh, first and foremost, and really wanted to figure out, how do I also make stuff like that? Like, I couldn't really... From school and there wasn't really any tutorials online. There's like probably no YouTube 20 years ago. And so it was really kind of hard to figure out, okay, how do you... How does the Aqua interface of 20 years ago, how's that, how's that made? Like, what, what tool was used to do that? And the answer was Photoshop.

   7. AEAaron Epstein3:22

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JDJorn van Dijk3:22

      Uh, everything was Photoshop 20 years ago. But that sort of, like, curio- curiosity kind of set me up to discover more of, okay, there's software, and it's being built by developers, and some care for how it looks and others don't. Um, some are obsessed with user experience, and, and others don't, and I kind of found that field very, very interesting.

5. 3:43 – 4:39

   Sofa: The Studio That Shaped Jorn (and His Co-Founder)

   1. AEAaron Epstein3:43

      And I know one of the early big steps in your career was, uh, joining Sofa. Tell us more about what was Sofa, and how did you get involved there?

   2. JDJorn van Dijk3:51

      For sure. Um, so when I graduated from art academy, I was really just looking for kind of like-minded people, um, because there wasn't a ton of that going on all the way back then. There wasn't a startup culture. Um, there wasn't any... VC funding was unheard. Like, it, it just didn't exist.

   3. AEAaron Epstein4:09

      Yeah.

   4. JDJorn van Dijk4:09

      So it was mostly trying to find people close to me that had a similar interest in, in, in software and building software and in exploring what you could achieve with, uh, with interface design. And so that's how I discovered, um, Sofa. They kind of like, uh... My co-found- my now co-founder, Koen, started that company just four months before I discovered-

   5. AEAaron Epstein4:29

      Yeah

   6. JDJorn van Dijk4:30

      ... uh, uh, heard about them. And, um, I was their first employee, and we kind of, like, built it out, built it out from there.

   7. AEAaron Epstein4:36

      Say more about what you were doing and some of the clients that you were working with,

6. 4:39 – 6:13

   Building Mac Products: Checkout, Versions, Kaleidoscope

   1. AEAaron Epstein4:39

      uh, with Sofa.

   2. JDJorn van Dijk4:39

      So our ambition with Sofa really was to build our own software, and so we built a couple of products. Um, one was called Checkout, and then the other one's called Versions. And then the last one that we built was called Kaleidoscope. Um, and so one was kind of... Checkout was a point-of-sale system, and then Versions and Kaleidoscope were developer tools. Uh, Versions was a Sub- Subversion client, so kind of predecessor to, to Git, and Kaleidoscope was a way to, uh, view the differences in, in files. Could be code files or, uh, images. Building those products out, we realized like, well, it's gonna be pretty hard to build a product and then immediately make money. And so what ended up happening was that we built those products, and they kind of served almost as a, as an app to other companies that-

   3. AEAaron Epstein5:24

      Mm

   4. JDJorn van Dijk5:24

      ... looked at those products and said, "Well, that looks good. I want my, my software to look like that."

   5. AEAaron Epstein5:29

      Did you have a lot of people using those products?

   6. JDJorn van Dijk5:31

      I think with all three products, we kind of had, um, early adoption. Um, Versions was the one that was the most successful-

   7. AEAaron Epstein5:37

      Mm-hmm

   8. JDJorn van Dijk5:37

      ... um, because it was a developer solution.

   9. AEAaron Epstein5:39

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JDJorn van Dijk5:40

       But Checkout, yeah, we were, um... Uh, the Apple store in, in Amsterdam, uh, ran on Checkout, and so we had a couple of those, uh, sort of key customers early on. And over the six years that we ran Sofa, I think in the third or the fourth year, we became profitable with the software.

   11. AEAaron Epstein5:56

       Mm.

   12. JDJorn van Dijk5:56

       And so in the first four years, we were doing a lot of agency work next to it.Um, to fund us getting good enough with, or, or making enough money with the software.

   13. AEAaron Epstein6:06

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JDJorn van Dijk6:06

       And so some of the clients that we worked for, uh, were TomTom in the Netherlands and, uh, Mozilla in the US.

7. 6:13 – 7:24

   Apple Design Awards And A Game Changing Email

   1. AEAaron Epstein6:13

      And then a, a surprising thing happened, which is, uh, Facebook reached out to you.

   2. JDJorn van Dijk6:18

      Yeah. Well-

   3. AEAaron Epstein6:19

      As a design agency, and, you know, you kind of had these products that were very unrelated to Facebook. Like, how did that come about? And tell us the story of what happened there.

   4. JDJorn van Dijk6:25

      For sure, for sure. So I think in the last two years before we, uh, got acquired by Facebook, we won our first Apple Design Awards.

   5. AEAaron Epstein6:32

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JDJorn van Dijk6:32

      Uh, for Checkouts, which are sort of like the Oscars for very usable and, and, and, uh, for, for the best software, I guess, on the Mac.

   7. AEAaron Epstein6:41

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JDJorn van Dijk6:42

      And then the year after, we won a Apple Design Award for Versions, uh, the server version client. And so that gave us a little bit of, you know, moment in the s- first, first moment in the spotlight.

   9. AEAaron Epstein6:52

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JDJorn van Dijk6:52

       Like, "Here's a team that's doing exceptional, exceptional design work." That's when we got a email from Mark, uh, asking if we wanted to come over to Palo Alto to, I remember very clearly, like, discuss a future partnership. And then, uh, so we're like, "All right, that sounds, it sounds, that sounds pretty interesting. We'll fly over to Palo Alto."

   11. AEAaron Epstein7:10

       Yeah.

   12. JDJorn van Dijk7:10

       We didn't really know what that would mean, but, um, that became very clear when we walked up to the reception and the lady said, like, "Oh, you guys must be from Sofa here for, for the acquisition." And we're like-

   13. AEAaron Epstein7:20

       [laughs]

   14. JDJorn van Dijk7:20

       ... Okay, that, that clears that up.

   15. AEAaron Epstein7:22

       Right.

   16. JDJorn van Dijk7:22

       So we're here for, for that.

8. 7:24 – 9:27

   Facebook Acquisition: Why They Wanted Designers

   1. AEAaron Epstein7:24

      Right.

   2. JDJorn van Dijk7:24

      Yeah.

   3. AEAaron Epstein7:25

      Uh, and did that happen quickly, or what was that process like?

   4. JDJorn van Dijk7:28

      You know, three to four weeks to figure out, uh, a, a good deal and figure out why they were interested in-

   5. AEAaron Epstein7:33

      Mm-hmm

   6. JDJorn van Dijk7:33

      ... in acquiring us in the first place. Um, and then it took probably another three to four months to iron everything out. Um, and we ended up moving our entire Amsterdam-based team over to Palo Alto.

   7. AEAaron Epstein7:45

      And what was their motivation?

   8. JDJorn van Dijk7:47

      So I think, um, uh, pretty early on, Facebook understood that, you know, they, they had a pretty dramatic adoption with, uh, with the platform, obviously, as, as everyone knows, and they were really good at hiring and onboarding, uh, product engineers. Um, but they were so good at that that they kind of like... The designers at the company at that time were just vastly, uh, outnumbered by the amount-

   9. AEAaron Epstein8:09

      Mm-hmm

   10. JDJorn van Dijk8:09

       ... of engineers. And I think the ratio was something wild, like, you know, one in 100 or one in, one on 200.

   11. AEAaron Epstein8:15

       Oh, wow.

   12. JDJorn van Dijk8:15

       So, so, so by now, this metric, I think people understand very clearly, and it was celebrated a couple of years ago. Like, oh, and IBM would celebrate that they had, like, on every 20 engineers, they would have 5 designers.

   13. AEAaron Epstein8:28

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JDJorn van Dijk8:29

       So that's, like, a much healthier ratio-

   15. AEAaron Epstein8:31

       Yeah

   16. JDJorn van Dijk8:31

       ... to build good products with. Um, but... And this is 20, 2011, so we're talking, like, 15 years back. I think no one were, was really thinking about that. So you just had designers to support all the software developments, but not a lot-

   17. AEAaron Epstein8:45

       Mm-hmm

   18. JDJorn van Dijk8:45

       ... and definitely not enough for all the surface area of a, of a platform like Facebook. And so part of the strategy, I think, from Mark, and Chris Cox was running product at the time at Facebook, uh, was that they basically said, like, w- w- who are all the, who are all the high-quality product design, you know, studios, agencies, products-

   19. AEAaron Epstein9:05

       Mm-hmm

   20. JDJorn van Dijk9:05

       ... um, that could be interesting for us to talent hire or, like, make acqui-hires out of and bring on board to, uh, design the future of, of the Facebook platform.

   21. AEAaron Epstein9:13

       I'm curious how the experience was different, especially from a design perspective, going from, you know, b- running your own agency, doing your own work, building your own products, to working on something like Facebook, serving, you know, the most users ever in the world-

   22. JDJorn van Dijk9:26

       Yeah

   23. AEAaron Epstein9:26

       ... in

9. 9:27 – 10:27

   Culture Shock: From 15-Person Studio to Facebook Scale

   1. AEAaron Epstein9:27

      a, in a single product.

   2. JDJorn van Dijk9:27

      A mild culture shock to-

   3. AEAaron Epstein9:29

      [laughs]

   4. JDJorn van Dijk9:29

      ... to transition from... Well, I mean, Sofa at the time were, like, 15 people based-

   5. AEAaron Epstein9:33

      Yeah

   6. JDJorn van Dijk9:33

      ... out of Amsterdam, obsessing over building Mac apps.

   7. AEAaron Epstein9:37

      Yeah.

   8. JDJorn van Dijk9:37

      Which, and, you know, if you look back, that was a, was a much smaller, uh, endeavor than Facebook ever became.

   9. AEAaron Epstein9:45

      Right.

   10. JDJorn van Dijk9:46

       But this was also one of the main motivations for us to, to go through with the acquisition, is we were very intrigued by, we have an opportunity now to go to Silicon Valley company.

   11. AEAaron Epstein9:56

       Mm-hmm.

   12. JDJorn van Dijk9:56

       Maybe, I think the, the biggest, uh, opportunity in Silicon Valley at that moment in time-

   13. AEAaron Epstein10:01

       Mm-hmm

   14. JDJorn van Dijk10:02

       ... to see how, how these folks built, built this business. Like, how do they go about building products? How do they go about scaling? How do they... For us, we really saw that as a, as a pretty unique learning opportunity.

   15. AEAaron Epstein10:15

       And then you spent a few years there.

   16. JDJorn van Dijk10:17

       We did.

   17. AEAaron Epstein10:18

       And then you made the decision to leave and, and ultimately started what became Framer. But take us through that process of deciding to start a company and, and how you came up with the initial idea.

10. 10:27 – 13:12

    Leaving Facebook: Intentionally Learning to Build a Big Company

    1. JDJorn van Dijk10:27

       Our intention was to really join Facebook and, and, and absorb as much as we could, um, about how to, how to, how to build a company like that-

    2. AEAaron Epstein10:36

       Mm-hmm

    3. JDJorn van Dijk10:36

       ... of that scale, really to then also take all those learnings and, and, and take a shot at, at building our own startup.

    4. AEAaron Epstein10:43

       Mm-hmm.

    5. JDJorn van Dijk10:44

       Um, one that could potentially, uh, be so successful that it would also have, you know, a right to IPO, if you will.

    6. AEAaron Epstein10:50

       And so that was intentional for you going in, is like, "We want to get all of these learnings because I know that I wanna do something."

    7. JDJorn van Dijk10:56

       Yes, it was intentional.

    8. AEAaron Epstein10:57

       Yeah.

    9. JDJorn van Dijk10:57

       Yeah. We probably went, uh, stayed at Facebook for two, two and a half years.

    10. AEAaron Epstein11:01

        Mm-hmm.

    11. JDJorn van Dijk11:01

        Um, so longer than we intended to stay. We learned a lot about both, you know, the culture at Silicon Valley, how scaling and building a large business like that kind of works. Um, and I think, like, some of the lessons of that were highly influential in how we built out Framer as a company.

    12. AEAaron Epstein11:17

        Mm-hmm.

    13. JDJorn van Dijk11:18

        I do think that working at such a successful company as Facebook, uh, it kind of warps your perspective of what's normal.

    14. AEAaron Epstein11:28

        Okay.

    15. JDJorn van Dijk11:28

        Um, and so for us, quitting that, uh, that company, it took, it took a, took almost a full year to sort of, like, readjust to, okay, but in reality, no people are building successful companies, and nothing is really working. And so it doesn't really matter that you have all these amazing ideas if you don't have this insane user base to, to experiment with.

    16. AEAaron Epstein11:50

        Right.

    17. JDJorn van Dijk11:51

        It was a big reality check for us.

    18. AEAaron Epstein11:52

        Yeah.

    19. JDJorn van Dijk11:53

        Um, and so it took a full year to sort of adjust to that. And also, I think one of the, the things that we, we were pretty intentional about as well is, is we wanted to pick something to work on that we really enjoyed.

    20. AEAaron Epstein12:07

        Mm-hmm.

    21. JDJorn van Dijk12:07

        Right? And so that's probably a good piece of advice-Still today is if you are either a, a subject expert on a certain topic or you're just insanely passionate about, you know, something XYZ-

    22. AEAaron Epstein12:20

        Mm-hmm

    23. JDJorn van Dijk12:20

        ... it's likely a good idea that if you go spend time in that area, you might have a higher chance of, of, uh, succeeding. Also, you can't really build a really successful company in a short amount of time. Maybe nowadays that's being challenged a little bit with-

    24. AEAaron Epstein12:37

        Mm-hmm

    25. JDJorn van Dijk12:37

        ... some of the companies that are just 20 employees and hitting these insane ARR numbers. But over the last 20 years, this has largely been true, and I, I also think that some of the successes that we see now are like, those are insane outliers. So you can hope to build an insane outlier of a company, but in general, I think it takes 5, 10, 15, 20 years to build something of substance.

    26. AEAaron Epstein13:00

        And you talk about, uh, working on something that you're passionate about and an expert at, and clearly for you, that was design.

    27. JDJorn van Dijk13:05

        Yeah.

    28. AEAaron Epstein13:05

        Was it obvious when you were starting that Framer should be a design tool, or was that something that took you a while to get to?

11. 13:12 – 18:37

    Early Experiments: Bitcoin App, Fashion App, Framer Prototype Tool

    1. JDJorn van Dijk13:12

       Yeah, it took us a while, and it was not, not that obvious. I think in that year, we were basically testing a bunch of different ideas, and so by me, I mean my co-founder Koen.

    2. AEAaron Epstein13:21

       Mm-hmm.

    3. JDJorn van Dijk13:21

       And we made our first hire, uh, Benj- Benjamin, uh, den Boer out of the Netherlands. And so the three of us were kind of rapid prototyping different directions of things that we thought were, were exciting.

    4. AEAaron Epstein13:33

       Mm-hmm.

    5. JDJorn van Dijk13:33

       And so in that first year, we built a Bitcoin app, which in hindsight, we could have also... That would have not been a bad, bad-

    6. AEAaron Epstein13:39

       That would've been pretty good.

    7. JDJorn van Dijk13:40

       Yeah. [laughs]

    8. AEAaron Epstein13:41

       But... [laughs] This is 2011, 2012?

    9. JDJorn van Dijk13:43

       2011, 2012.

    10. AEAaron Epstein13:44

        Yeah.

    11. JDJorn van Dijk13:44

        So we made a, you know, first wallet app, something that, uh, looked like a early version of maybe a Coinbase-

    12. AEAaron Epstein13:50

        Yeah

    13. JDJorn van Dijk13:50

        ... something that you would help, uh, would help you, um, buy crypto and, and, and trade in it. We discarded that. We're like, "Ah, this is too small. You need like a, a banking license for it. It's, it seems like a lot of overhead-

    14. AEAaron Epstein14:00

        Yeah

    15. JDJorn van Dijk14:00

        ... that we don't really enjoy."

    16. AEAaron Epstein14:01

        Mm-hmm.

    17. JDJorn van Dijk14:01

        Like, it's not really the type of company that we wanted to build. Then we built, um, sort of like a fashion app where we're always interested in, in online shopping and e-commerce. Uh, and so one of the things that we thought would be dope is if you could, um, instead of just like shop for random articles like a black sweater, you could like try it on yourself.

    18. AEAaron Epstein14:20

        Mm-hmm.

    19. JDJorn van Dijk14:21

        So we made a prototype of, you know, how do you get yourself into, into an, in a, into an iPhone app, and how do we get you to browse products in a, in a, in a online store-

    20. AEAaron Epstein14:30

        Mm-hmm

    21. JDJorn van Dijk14:31

        ... and then try them on yourself so you can sort of like make a, make a version of an outfit that you would really enjoy. Also discarded that.

    22. AEAaron Epstein14:38

        Mm-hmm.

    23. JDJorn van Dijk14:39

        And then with the third try, we're like, you know, we're al- already like six or nine months in, trying these different products and kind of building them out, but the way that we built them out was as prototypes.

    24. AEAaron Epstein14:48

        Mm-hmm.

    25. JDJorn van Dijk14:48

        And so at the end, we go like, "Well, if we are doing that prototyping," uh, which was also a, uh, big thing at, at Facebook, um, we... Why don't we try to build a product for that? And that became, after about a year, I think, the first version of Framer, which we called Framer Studio, and we put that on the market, and it kind of got adopted in the first year right away by people that were kind of like us.

    26. AEAaron Epstein15:13

        Mm-hmm.

    27. JDJorn van Dijk15:13

        And so, you know, product designers that had a limited amount of time to put a prototype together or demo of an idea to present to an executive or to use in a sales or in a, in a pitch, in a startup pitch or in a sales pitch even. So at the end of the, the first year, we're like, "Okay, we, we have something here." Um, designers at Dropbox were using it. Designers at Twitter were using it. Designers at Microsoft were using it, Amazon. At, at the end of the first year, we couldn't really believe, like all of these designers, product designers are using Framer Studio-

    28. AEAaron Epstein15:45

        Mm-hmm

    29. JDJorn van Dijk15:45

        ... our 12-month-old product-

    30. AEAaron Epstein15:46

        [laughs]
12. 18:37 – 23:52

    The Plateau: Why Framer Studio Hit a Ceiling Around $4–5M ARR

    1. AEAaron Epstein18:37

       And so, okay, so you launch Framer. It was growing. You had a lot of people using it.

    2. JDJorn van Dijk18:42

       Yep.

    3. AEAaron Epstein18:42

       And after a few years, it, it kind of tapped out and-

    4. JDJorn van Dijk18:46

       For sure

    5. AEAaron Epstein18:46

       ... yeah. Like, tell us more about that and what your thought process was at the time and, and how you evaluated what to do next.

    6. JDJorn van Dijk18:52

       When we raised the seed round, um, and we, after we raised a Series A, our, our entire hem- hypothesis was fairly... It's pretty easy to digest. We were just looking at, okay, so this is, let's say this is-

    7. AEAaron Epstein19:03

       Mm-hmm

    8. JDJorn van Dijk19:03

       ... the end-to-end design process. You start with a idea in your, in your minds. The idea needs to come out in a certain shape or form. Typically, people just make a sketch, right?

    9. AEAaron Epstein19:14

       Mm-hmm.

    10. JDJorn van Dijk19:14

        They just, like, draw something, make a drawing of a, or a picture or something. And then after that initial idea is out, now it's just a, uh, a matter of, like, adding fidelity all the way s- to the moment that it becomes clear that now it's good enough to be programmed, right?

    11. AEAaron Epstein19:29

        Mm-hmm.

    12. JDJorn van Dijk19:29

        An engineer is gonna take it over-

    13. AEAaron Epstein19:30

        Yep

    14. JDJorn van Dijk19:30

        ... and we're gonna put it in the, in the product. Um, and that was very true for Facebook at the time. We would have an idea. We would sketch it out. We would make it into a graphical mockup, um, using Sketch or Photoshop. Um, and then o- sometimes it would be prototyped. We thought, mm, if prototyping becomes just easy enough, it's not unlikely that, you know, if that is now at the very far end of the, of the, the, the creative process, it's not unlikely that it's gonna eat into all the other fidelity modes.

    15. AEAaron Epstein20:04

        Mm-hmm.

    16. JDJorn van Dijk20:04

        Because if prototyping is both powerful enough and easy enough, then why would you make a static mockup? Like, what, what's the benefit of having a bunch of different screens if you can tie those screens together and add more fidelity so that I can give you a phone, and instead of you looking at a picture and thinking, like, what needs to happen next, you just tap and swipe and-

    17. AEAaron Epstein20:26

        Mm-hmm

    18. JDJorn van Dijk20:26

        ... move, move thing, move things around.

    19. AEAaron Epstein20:27

        Yep.

    20. JDJorn van Dijk20:27

        So you... That was our assumption, and in hindsight I think we were, uh, a bit too early with, with that assumption.

    21. AEAaron Epstein20:33

        Mm-hmm.

    22. JDJorn van Dijk20:34

        S- we sort of, like, bet it on that that would happen.

    23. AEAaron Epstein20:38

        Mm-hmm.

    24. JDJorn van Dijk20:38

        And I think the other thing that we betted on was that we thought that the design profession would grow a lot more aggressively than it did.

    25. AEAaron Epstein20:47

        Mm-hmm.

    26. JDJorn van Dijk20:48

        So it, it, it definitely grew by a lot, but the, sort of, like, the designers' seat at the table, it's not like design took over the table.

    27. AEAaron Epstein20:55

        Mm-hmm.

    28. JDJorn van Dijk20:55

        It's like it, we now have a good seat at the table.

    29. AEAaron Epstein20:58

        Yeah.

    30. JDJorn van Dijk20:58

        And, uh, it, most companies value brand and the user experience, um, and what things look like aesthetically, but we didn't... Yeah, I think tho- those two things, like, the amount of designers in a company that are willing to prototype and the importance of prototyping in the, uh, creative process, I think we overestimated-
13. 23:52 – 25:30

    The Decision: Sell, Quit, or Pivot

    1. JDJorn van Dijk23:52

       that route.

    2. AEAaron Epstein23:52

       Yeah. At 5 million ARR, what changes did you make in order to, to get on the, the growth path that you wanted to get on?

    3. JDJorn van Dijk23:59

       So about after a year w- basically Koen and I, we sat down, and we're like, "We have to, we have to tu- we have to do something," right? Like, we just raised our Series B a, a year prior. We're kinda, like, getting stuck with, uh, revenue.

    4. AEAaron Epstein24:10

       Mm-hmm.

    5. JDJorn van Dijk24:10

       We have to figure out, like, what do we do? Because the ambition is to build aA really successful company, and the ambition is to get... We should be tripling the revenue this year and tripling the revenue the year after, and then maybe we can double and double again.

    6. AEAaron Epstein24:22

       Yeah.

    7. JDJorn van Dijk24:22

       Typically, companies pivot much earlier, right?

    8. AEAaron Epstein24:25

       Mm-hmm.

    9. JDJorn van Dijk24:25

       And so if you raise a Series A and Series B, you should have product-market fit, and things should be accelerating quite predictably. And for us, it kinda stopped. We kinda had, you know, only three options, if you think of it. Um, we could either sell the whole company.

    10. AEAaron Epstein24:39

        Mm-hmm.

    11. JDJorn van Dijk24:39

        We could quit, which would be pretty bad, but always an option, or we could pivot.

    12. AEAaron Epstein24:44

        Mm-hmm.

    13. JDJorn van Dijk24:44

        And so for us, it never felt like we have three options. We only re- we only have one option. We should, we should pivot-

    14. AEAaron Epstein24:50

        Mm-hmm

    15. JDJorn van Dijk24:50

        ... into something that we think can be much bigger. And so that's what we decided to do. Um, really trying to, to... In that process, we really just tried to bring everything back to the basics, right?

    16. AEAaron Epstein25:00

        Mm-hmm.

    17. JDJorn van Dijk25:00

        And so, um, we had to obviously make some adjustments to the organization and, and sort of, um, we had a whole commercial team that was selling our prototyping solution that we kinda had to part ways with. So we had, like, had to make the team a lot smaller-

    18. AEAaron Epstein25:14

        Mm-hmm

    19. JDJorn van Dijk25:14

        ... and then really think, "Okay, we have built a lot of interesting technology over the last four or five years. Can we leverage that somehow to solve a problem that m- a lot of people have?" And that was our starting point. So instead of saying, "Okay, we're just starting from scratch"-

    20. AEAaron Epstein25:29

        Mm-hmm

14. 25:30 – 34:55

    The Big Insight: People Hate Rebuilding

    1. JDJorn van Dijk25:30

       ... we had built a performant canvas that ran in the browser like Figma had.

    2. AEAaron Epstein25:34

       Yep.

    3. JDJorn van Dijk25:34

       We had multiplayer functionality. We had versioning history. Like, it was all functional and of pretty good quality. Like, we still, we still like building good products.

    4. AEAaron Epstein25:42

       Mm-hmm.

    5. JDJorn van Dijk25:42

       And so we're trying to figure out, "Okay, if prototyping's too small, what will be much bigger?" And so we started interviewing, uh, you know, hundreds of people, um, and just asking them. Instead of... And not even mentioning the technology that we have, but just, like, interviewing people and just m- asking more questions. Like, "What's a problem that you have?" And the big one that we uncovered, which was, you know, it's all so obvious, everything's obvious in hindsight, right?

    6. AEAaron Epstein26:05

       [laughs]

    7. JDJorn van Dijk26:05

       Was people hate rebuilding.

    8. AEAaron Epstein26:07

       Mm-hmm.

    9. JDJorn van Dijk26:07

       And rebuilding happens, happened all the time, still happens all the time, right?

    10. AEAaron Epstein26:11

        Mm-hmm.

    11. JDJorn van Dijk26:11

        Meaning, you have an idea, you make a sketch, and instead of it being usable, it needs to go some- someone else, and now that person needs to make it real. And that rebuilding is, is, is massively inefficient. It's, um, it's, basically, people, people or teams doing work twice. Like, you do the work of coming up with the idea, sketching it out, making it pretty, and then at the end, instead of being satisfied and now it's shipped, like, you can't ship it. Someone else needs to go and make it, make it a real thing.

    12. AEAaron Epstein26:38

        Right.

    13. JDJorn van Dijk26:38

        And so that's what we tried to solve with websites first, um, mostly because we couldn't really see a good way to go apps first. Uh, that seemed too complicated to start with. So we're like, "Okay, so instead of... Let's start with something that we think more people need, which is a website. Can we make it so that you can draw the website on your, on a, a visual canvas, uh, that feels like Figma or Sketch?" So it's, it feels like a design tool. At the end of that process, you click a publish button, and we make it a performant website for you.

    14. AEAaron Epstein27:10

        Mm-hmm.

    15. JDJorn van Dijk27:10

        That thing clicked. That was a aha moment for a lot of our, uh, early beta, beta testers is, like, this feedback loop, it's almost addictive.

    16. AEAaron Epstein27:18

        Yeah.

    17. JDJorn van Dijk27:19

        Like, it's, it's satisfying for people to draw something out, and then just being able to see it live a second later. And, um, and so we s- we had internal usage was really, really high, where, uh, which was promising signal. And then we saw, you know, early s- uh, small startups adopt it, designers m- using it more and more for portfolios and hobby projects, and that's when we kind of figured, like, this might be a, a winner.

    18. AEAaron Epstein27:43

        Yeah. How long did it take you to rebuild all of that? And then how soon after you launched it did it become clear to you that this was working, and this was gonna be the thing that was gonna take you to the next levels you wanted to get to?

    19. JDJorn van Dijk27:53

        Getting to the point that we knew we wanna, we, we, we need to pivot took longer than the pivot.

    20. AEAaron Epstein27:58

        Mm-hmm.

    21. JDJorn van Dijk27:58

        So it took about a full year to acknowledge, like, we need to do something.

    22. AEAaron Epstein28:01

        Yeah.

    23. JDJorn van Dijk28:01

        This is not working. And then executing from there to the new product was about nine to 10 months.

    24. AEAaron Epstein28:07

        Mm-hmm.

    25. JDJorn van Dijk28:07

        And we launched in, four years ago-

    26. AEAaron Epstein28:09

        Mm-hmm

    27. JDJorn van Dijk28:10

        ... in May, and, uh, we hit a million in ARR the December after that-

    28. AEAaron Epstein28:14

        Okay

    29. JDJorn van Dijk28:15

        ... so in just, um, seven or eight months. So we're, "Okay, this is, this is good."

    30. AEAaron Epstein28:19

        Yeah.
15. 34:55 – 44:25

    AI + Design: What’s Changing & What Isn’t

    1. JDJorn van Dijk34:55

       founder.

    2. AEAaron Epstein34:55

       Yeah. That's a good summary of it. Looking forward, uh, AI is reshaping a lot of things. Um-

    3. JDJorn van Dijk35:01

       It is

    4. AEAaron Epstein35:01

       ... I'm curious your take on, on how you think it's reshaping, um, the role of designer and just design in general going forward.

    5. JDJorn van Dijk35:07

       I'm mostly very excited about what's happening in the, in the AI space, but I'm surprised by the lack of, let's say, success that I see among professional designers. So I think, like, the, the learning curve to create something from scratch has been dramatically lowered, right?

    6. AEAaron Epstein35:28

       Mm-hmm.

    7. JDJorn van Dijk35:29

       Everyone can agree it's much easier to make a picture nowadays than it is 10 years ago.

    8. AEAaron Epstein35:32

       Mm-hmm.

    9. JDJorn van Dijk35:33

       10 years ago, to get something to look good, you had to spend an unreasonable amount of time on the internet trying to figure out how to operate anything from, like, Cinema 4D to Photoshop and lighting and understand real-world scenario. Like, how do you make something look exactly like you want?

    10. AEAaron Epstein35:50

        Yeah.

    11. JDJorn van Dijk35:51

        Now anyone can go into Midjourney and render whatever, uh, is on their mind.

    12. AEAaron Epstein35:57

        Mm-hmm.

    13. JDJorn van Dijk35:58

        And so if I look at all of the generative AI tooling that's been built, I'm still kinda surprised by the amount of really great work that I see designers produce with those solutions, if that makes sense. We've been doing a lot of AI-produced video ads at Framer.

    14. AEAaron Epstein36:17

        Mm-hmm.

    15. JDJorn van Dijk36:18

        I think they're, they are of a f- like, exceptional quality.

    16. AEAaron Epstein36:21

        Mm-hmm.

    17. JDJorn van Dijk36:21

        They're made by, uh, one or two people in our team that have embraced AI and are-

    18. AEAaron Epstein36:25

        Yeah

    19. JDJorn van Dijk36:26

        ... just really interested in what's at the, what's at the forefront-Of the capabilities of all these, all these models.

    20. AEAaron Epstein36:33

        Mm-hmm.

    21. JDJorn van Dijk36:33

        And they're really, like, trying to figure out, how do we make amazing content with this? I don't see that at scale yet.

    22. AEAaron Epstein36:39

        Mm-hmm.

    23. JDJorn van Dijk36:39

        I don't see this being embraced by all startups and all companies.

    24. AEAaron Epstein36:44

        Yeah.

    25. JDJorn van Dijk36:44

        And the overall quality of ads on the internet has dramatically 10X'd.

    26. AEAaron Epstein36:49

        Mm-hmm.

    27. JDJorn van Dijk36:49

        Which is weird, because it's never been easier.

    28. AEAaron Epstein36:51

        Mm-hmm.

    29. JDJorn van Dijk36:52

        Never been easier to make exceptional work with all this tooling.

    30. AEAaron Epstein36:55

        Yeah.

Episode duration: 44:25