Andrew Wilkinson
Founder of MetaLab design agency, with clients ranging from Slack & Tumblr to Disney, Google & Walmart.
Discussion
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Andrew Wilkinson
@awilkinson · Founder/CEO of Flow
I started my design agency, MetaLab, by accident back in 2007. I quit my job and figured I'd freelance for a couple weeks while I looked for something new. Within the first month, I'd landed a couple startups as clients and hired my first employee, and never looked back. Over the years, we've worked with a ton of notable startups, including Shopify, Tumblr, Slack, and Coinbase, as well as Fortune 500's like Apple, Disney, Google, and Walmart. Today, we have over 140 employees and have diversified into a variety of businesses including Flow (our project management software), Designer News (a social news site for designers), and Pixel Union (beautiful one-click ecommerce templates). Ask me anything!
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William Wilkinson
@willw · Designer
Does it make you uncomfortable living in your baby brother's shadow?
Jack Smith
@_jacksmith · Serial Entrepreneur & Startup Adviser
Hi Andrew. I was just wondering - does Metalab typically push to get equity in the clients (e.g. Slack) that the company works with, or would you just prefer to get paid in cash?
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Andrew Wilkinson
@awilkinson · Founder/CEO of Flow
@_jacksmith Hey Jack. Sometimes, but it's tough. I've noticed that when you take sweat equity instead of cash, clients often treat you differently—like you're now their business partner and have an obligation to do unlimited work for them in perpetuity. What I do now, is charge full price for the work, then say "if this goes well, I'll invest $X amount". If we like working with them, I take that money and invest it, but it feels like I've invested cash, which makes it much more straightforward.
I'll never forget the time Uber emailed us in 2009 and we quoted them $5,000. They said it was too expensive for them, and walked. Should have taken equity...
Jack Smith
@_jacksmith · Serial Entrepreneur & Startup Adviser
@awilkinson thanks for the transparency and sharing the Uber story!
Gregoire Segretain
@gregoiresgt · Product Designer @Save
@awilkinson Hello ! I'm a young french Product Designer in very very fast growing startup. I'd like to know if you have an advice for me because I'm starting to build my first team of designers. I've never done that before an I just wonder if you have an experience to share about building a designer team from scratch ! voilà :)
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Andrew Wilkinson
@awilkinson · Founder/CEO of Flow
@gregoiresgt Oh wow. Good for you, man. Exciting times.
1. First off, don't hire people you know. It makes it really hard to give harsh feedback.
2. Hire people for their potential, not where they're at today.
3. Don't hire divas. If you get attitude when you give them feedback, run the other way.
4. Try them out first. We always try working with all our potential hires on a small project before we hire them full-time.
5. Always call references. There's probably a reason the designer has only lasted 9 months at his last 3 jobs.
Be prepared for this:
Alejo Rivera
@alejoriveralara
Hey Andrew! How did you first get Flow off the ground? How did you get the first 100 customers?
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Andrew Wilkinson
@awilkinson · Founder/CEO of Flow
@alejoriveralara We originally built Flow because I wanted a better way to manage our team. At the time, we had about 10 employees and the other tools I was using started to break down. We built it as an internal tool to share tasks and delegate to one another, then realized that other people might want to use it. We did a beta, and to our surprise thousands of people started using (and loving) it. When we finally took it live, we hit $16k of MRR in the first 3 weeks due to our passionate beta user base. Zero marketing. Zero growth strategy. Just a great product and an engaged user base.
Over and over again, I've learned that you can't market your way out of a sub-par product. No amount of growth hacking is going to grow a poor product. Focus on building something that people rave about, and everything else will fall into place.
Ben Jennings
@benjennin_gs · Product Designer
Current trends suggest design talent is driven more towards startups than smaller agencies. Broadly speaking, do you think design practices that focus solely on client services will become extinct in the future?
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Andrew Wilkinson
@awilkinson · Founder/CEO of Flow
@benjennin_gs @benjennin_gs I think there will always be a need for outside thinking. There will always be companies that can't hire the best designers, or can't hire enough of them to accomplish their goals. Big companies bring legal in-house too, but there will always be law firms. Agencies are going to have to change and adapt, but I think they will continue to exist.
I think we're especially well positioned because we're one of the only agencies in the world that can build end-to-end. We have top designers, developers, and strategists, and can literally take an idea and turn it into a killer product. Most people can do one—design, for instance—but are weak on the other pieces. This gives us a solid competitive advantage when we're competing with other agencies.
David Politi
@davidrpoliti · UX, generic
Tell us about how Victoria's design community compares against that of, say, NY, SV, etc
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Andrew Wilkinson
@awilkinson · Founder/CEO of Flow
@davidrpoliti There are tons of amazing designers in Pacific Northwest, but honestly, I find that so much of the socializing/collaboration happens online these days, that location is pretty irrelevant. Most of the best designers I know lead quiet lives in the middle of nowhere :-)
Ana Isabel
@isagadala
Hi @awilkinson. With Flow, how do you decide which features are the most important to build at any given moment? Specifically, how do you choose between working on making current functionality work better vs adding new features?
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Andrew Wilkinson
@awilkinson · Founder/CEO of Flow
@isagadala That's always a struggle. We all love working on new features, but often the best results come from tweaking and improving what we already have instead of moving on to another half-baked feature.
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
@awilkinson During your career to date, what has been your a) most challenging moment and how did you overcome it? b) proudest moment and why? c) most surprising moment?
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Andrew Wilkinson
@awilkinson · Founder/CEO of Flow
@ems_hodge A) Suddenly having all of my invoices go unpaid in November 2008 because of the financial panic. I just scraped by, but it was a valuable lesson on the importance of having cash reserves and keeping fixed costs down.
B) Proudest moment was the day I realized that the company didn't really need me. I had put so many great people in place, that I could let others step in and grow it, and just focus on coaching and helping them think through problems. It's great knowing that I can work on the business, instead of in the business.
C) Most surprising moment: I'll have to think on that. Probably the time my wife freaked me out with a fake spider in our bed 👻
Jacqueline von Tesmar
@jacqvon · Community, Product Hunt ✌️😻
What industries would you place your bets on in the next 10-20 years?