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Maciej Czajkowski

πŸ‘‹I'm Mac, CEO of WebWave, a growth hacker and basketball player. Ask me anything! πŸ’šπŸ“ˆπŸ€πŸ”₯

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Hey, PH community! I'm Mac, a full-time CEO :). In my free time, you can catch me playing basketball and sailing. I used to travel the world, but since I’ve got two small kids it’s much harder now to pack all stuff into a small backpack ;) Before I founded WebWave, I was a software developer and created websites for clients as a side hustle. I was ace with code, but lacked the imagination and creativity to design great websites. It helped me to realize engineers only slow the process. So I started creating a tool for designers so that they could make websites in a friendly and familiar environment. Since then, we have bootstrapped WebWave to over 500,000 users and 30 employees and now got #1 Product of a week on Product Hunt! Our superpower is that WebWave looks and feels more like a graphic design tool, Figma, Canva, or Photoshop, rather than other website builders. More here: https://www.producthunt.com/post... And now, let's chat about all the things around bootstrapping and managing the company, the SASS market, developer experience, UX and UI, web design, productivity, community building, and beyond. I am here to answer any and all of your questions in the next 48 hours. So fire away!
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Nok Moe
Congrats on your success! Also upvoted on your listing :) What would you think is your biggest factor to WEbwave's success?
Maciej Czajkowski
@nok_moe What comes over and over again in many conversations with our customers is the product itself, and that it's just different to what competition is offering. And the second factor is customer support. This is something very hard to build and maintain, but it's super important, especially in the beginning. Customer support not only helps our customers create effects, that they want at the moment. They are also responsible for gathering feedback and transferring that feedback to our product development team, so that we know what is expected. So maintain great contact with customers, and talking to them in many different ways, is in my mind most important.
Max Song
SpeechFlow
From 0 to 500,000 users, what failures have you and your team done? Thank Mac.
Maciej Czajkowski
@maxsong Literally a million of them. Building a company is going from one failure to another, like all the time. The thing is not to get depressed, learn your lessons, and go on. The biggest mistakes I've made so far are all related to building a team. First and foremost, I've always underestimated how other people are different to me in the way they work, in the way they think and what drives them every day. Second is I did too many operations myself instead of focusing on building a strategy and processes to ensure that strategy is executed. Third, hiring the wrong people, and managing them in the wrong way. I've always thought, that giving a person as much freedom of movement as possible will make them thrive. It turns out that without a clear strategy to follow this freedom confuses people and lowers motivation, because they just don't know what to do. So freedom is good, but there need to be a lot of guidelines, and a very detailed onboarding process that lasts for a couple of months to make sure, that a person knows what we're doing, where we're heading and how to help us.
Max Song
SpeechFlow
@mac_czaj I couldn't agree more. Challenge difficulties with the right people. Starting a business product is like taking part in an ultra trail running with no end.
Maciej Czajkowski
@maxsong I believe that a great, experienced and skilled leader can build companies with just anyone. He'll be able to guide them correctly. But if you do not have that experience, better motivated people with more initiative will help you greatly to cover your mistakes.
Sanjayan Subramaniam
Do you intend on creating a marketplace/community of third party contributors in Webwave such as theme builders, plugin developers etc?
Maciej Czajkowski
@alwaysbelearnin Yes, we are going to do that globally. We are from Poland, and we do have this community of 3rd party contributors here up and running very well. People are affiliating for WebWave, creating templates that are sold withing the app, and are applying to become WebWave experts. And of course, people are using WebWave to create websites for their customers. This is a full time job for some already here. And once we're well established globally, we will be rolling that out globally as well. Would you like to become one of our 3rd party contributors?
Yashank Goswami
Hi Mac, quick question, how do you get as many users as possible for your beta app? And at the same time, what's the best way to market the app? Thanks.
Maciej Czajkowski
@yashank_goswami1 We started locally in Poland. It took us a couple of years to reach product market fit. Because we were very low on cash, we had to do side projects, like software development for 3rd party companies, just to keep us afloat. But we finally reached break even. So we scaled to Romania. When we reached break even there we're now going global. And here we've started with AppSumo campaign. And now we're here on product hunt. We're also doing a lot of seo.
Lisa Kim
Movie Deep Search by AI Keytalk
Hi, Maciej. Thanks for posting this AMA :) First of all, congratulations on all your success. I have two questions. 1. Does Webwave have plans on expanding into an app builder too? 2. What is the secret ingredient to your success?
Maciej Czajkowski
@mycelebs_elle Thank you very much. But we're still far away from the success we're planning for :) 1) You can create PWA with WebWave. It's available out of the box, and you just need to create a website for mobile devices, and people will be able to add it as an app to their mobile device. 2) I think luck is the secret ingredient in all businesses :)
Matt
Hi Mac, I like using the product but have noticed other products are integrating with figma easily. Do you have any future plans to integrate with the figma eco sytem, or the ability to offer similar functions with wire frame/ moc up?
Maciej Czajkowski
@mattyt123 Our ultimate goal is to replace Figma in web design. We plan to make WebWave a tool, where you start from scratch, create all your wire frames / moc ups etc. just like you were working with Figma, and then instead of exporting your design to 3rd party tool you just click one button and your website is online ready to receive customers :)
Brennen Barney πŸš€ ClickStack.io
How did you find your first 100 users?
Maciej Czajkowski
@brennen_barney It was like 8 years ago when we launched public, so I don't think that advices from that period are still relevant. But I can tell you how we've found our first 100 users from a global market, which is what we're doing right now. I used Quora and other social media a lot to ask questions, present this tool to various people and get feedback. Because I think, that your goal in the beginning should not be getting users, but getting feedback. After you get positive feedback only then it's time to ask for money.
Brennen Barney πŸš€ ClickStack.io
@mac_czaj thanks! That makes a lot of sense.
Nilan Saha
Landings
How do you usually come up with new growth hacks? Or do you usually use well established playbooks?
Maciej Czajkowski
@nilans I think that if something is in a playbook, it's not a growth hack anymore :) Growth hacks are one of a kind tricks, that gives you one time advantage, and get you a lot of attention. Ideas come all the time. The important thing is to write them down for later assessment. Because If I don't write them down immediately, they just go away. That's why I go to all meetings with a notebook and a pen, and after that meeting I go through my notes. And I do not expect a single silver bullet growth hack to shoot us to the moon. I'm a fan of making a million small steps instead. So every small thing, every word changed on your website or every single new user counts for me.
Henry Hoe Yong Zhi
I have no idea how to develop a software. But I'd love to run a software business. Any tips?
Maciej Czajkowski
@hyzhenry Sure, it's even better this way. A lot of developers start their own tech companies because they can do the initial work themselves. But after a year of r two it turns out, that a good developer, who wanted to start a company has no time anymore to write code, and all his valuable skills are wasted. Instead he has to do marketing, talk with clients, make sure that you will not run out of money. He's doing all the things he has no idea about. And this is really hard transition for developers, trust me. I'm one of them. If you can afford to hire a developer to do that work for you, you'll be much better off in the long run. Take care of the business side of your company, and let developers do their work.
Louis Cirignano
FAM - Social Finance
Hey Mac, congratulations! What did you find to be the best channel for acquiring your first users?
Maciej Czajkowski
@fam_socialfinance Definitely it's social media and various communities. This is not really scalable, because it requires lots and lots of manual labor, but it gives you contact with customers, and you can get feedback and optimize your offering and your marketing strategy accordingly. Only once you've got enough positive feedback, and people are really starting voting with their wallets buying your product, you can move to PPC and scale.
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