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- [00:03]
A
This is Founders Talk, an interview podcast hosted by me, Adam Stakoviak, and we profile founders building businesses online as well as offline. And if you found this show on itunes, we're also on the web at 5 by 5 TV founderstalk. If you're on Twitter, follow Founders Talk and me, Adam Stack. Today's guest is Andrew Wilkinson, the founder of Metalab. Enjoy the show. I'm joined today by Andrew Wilkinson. He is the founder of metalab metalabdesign.com he's in Victoria, British Columbia. He's an awesome dude. He's an interface designer. Done some really fun stuff with his studio. And Andrew, I'm a huge fan of yours, dude. So thank you for coming on the show with me.
- [00:54]
B
Yeah, Adam, of course. Thanks for having me.
- [00:56]
A
And as I understand you got started in this, this gig with Metalab, I guess in 2006, but what I guess before that, give us some history about where you came from. Did you go to school? Were you part of startups? What got you into this mode to start up your own design studio?
- [01:15]
B
Yeah, so I grew up in Vancouver and my dad was an architect and he had an all Mac office. So I would always go into his office and fool around with the computers. And I got really into computers and tech and stuff. And when I was in 10th grade, my dad merged with another architecture firm and so we ended up moving to Victoria. And for any of you that don't know Victoria, Vancouver is quite a large major metropolitan city, which I loved. And we moved to Victoria, which is smaller. It's like the capital city of BC, about 300,000 people. But to me, it felt like moving to the boonies. I didn't know anybody. It was where my grandparents lived and so we moved out. And the one perk of doing that was that my parents felt pity, you know, had pity on us and they got us cable Internet. And so I basically just locked myself in my room for the summer and was nerded out. Didn't really know anybody. And I ended up meeting this guy from Hawaii and he was another Mac nerd. And we decided that we were going to start writing a blog or, you know, this is kind of the time before blogs even existed. So it was just the tech news site.
- [02:34]
A
What year was this again?
- [02:36]
B
This was. Oh God, this was in 2001.
- [02:39]
A
Okay, that was definitely before you were.
- [02:40]
B
Blogging then late 2001, way back when. And so there was this website called Mac Teens. Incredibly, incredibly nerdy. But the idea was that it was kind of a community and tech site. For and by teenage Mac users. And so anyway, I got really into that and I started writing articles and reviewing stuff and our audience grew and we broke some stories. We started selling advertising. Not enough to do anything with really, but enough for us to cover our bills and have 100 bucks here and there make it worthwhile. Yeah. And we got review units at the time. This is amazing to me. And it also enabled me to go down to San Francisco for Macworld. And so I got to travel and out of it, I mean, I got to interview for Phil Schiller, a bunch of Apple execs. I got to meet Steve Jobs. I went to a private. Before any of the Apple stores opened. The first one was the one I believe it was. The first one was in New York and I went to the press opening of the Apple New York store with about 15 other people and got a private tour with Steve Jobs and got to shake his hand and felt like I was going to crap myself every moment of it. But it was really just an amazing experience for a Wiener sick 16 year old who's just kind of stumbled into this.
- [04:04]
A
So you were 16 when you got started then. That's crazy. Yeah. Hey, before we keep going on, I hear some sort of scratching when you're, I don't know if there's, if you're rubbing on the mic area or something like that, but I hear some scratching and listeners, if you're hearing this, that happens sometimes. So I apologize about that. That does take place a little bit.
- [04:26]
B
Is it this?
- [04:27]
A
Yes, that. That's the sound.
- [04:29]
B
I think it's the mic on my headphones. So I'll just hold it out. Do you hear it now?
- [04:34]
A
Do you have a beard?
- [04:36]
B
A little bit.
- [04:37]
A
Little bit. That's probably what it is then. Yeah. Hold it down a little bit and you'll be. Yeah, now you sound perfect.
- [04:41]
B
You don't hear it now?
- [04:41]
A
Okay, you sound perfect. So you went to New York, you're 16 years old, you started a blog with a friend who was also a Mac nerd. You got to meet Steve Jobs. And you know, truth be told, now your Skype handle, can we say your Skype handle?
- [04:56]
B
Sure.
- [04:57]
A
It's Cult of Jobs. I wasn't sure if you're, you know, it's Cult of Jobs. And I was thinking you must be a big fan of Steve Jobs and obviously you're a designer, what you've done with Metalabs. So that's, that's kind of wild. So you got to meet one of your heroes way early on in your career. That's, that's amazing.
- [05:13]
B
Yeah, no, I was, I think I was really fortunate. And you know, it's not like I got to know him personally or, you know, even had a chance to have a real interaction with him because he was in press mode. But it really did make an impression on me and it was a really cool, cool experience. The problem was from there I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I didn't really think that I wanted to start a blog. That wasn't my passion necessarily. But I ended up graduating from high school and deciding, you know what, I'm going to go to journalism school, maybe I'll try this out. And so when I graduated, I went to Toronto. I went to Ryerson, which is widely considered the best journal at journalism school. Yeah, it was a big deal for journalism. And so I moved out to Toronto and I did that for about five months and it just wasn't working. On the first day of class they basically said, you know what, this is a tough industry. You're going to be making like 35 grand a year for like the first 10 years. You're going to have to go bust your hump at some newspaper in the middle of nowhere to make a name for yourself. And that just wasn't jiving for me. I mean, I was used to running my own thing and, you know, doing a lot of creative writing and stuff. So I ended up moving back home after five months and I went and I lived in my parents basement and I was so depressed, I had no idea what I was going to do with myself. And so at this time I'm working in a coffee shop and I'm just kind of feeling terrible. And I decided that, you know, I'd never really built anything. I'd written about tech and I'd been really involved in the community, but I never actually built anything with my hands. And so I decided that I would learn how to, you know, how to do HTML and css. I read a couple books, I started fooling around in Photoshop and I managed to get a job, amazingly, within about two and a half weeks, which I entirely chalk up to my preternatural ability to do well in job interviews. I don't know how I pulled that off because I was completely unqualified. So anyway, I worked for this company for a couple months and then I bounced to another one, another design firm. But I was really just doing like data entry and very basic work. And just from observing the way that things were going at the company, I realized that I Saw them making a lot of choices that I wouldn't make. And I was constantly kind of thinking, oh, hey, we can grow this business, we can do better. But I wasn't really allowed any say and I ended up getting frustrated and I kind of quit in a huff. I had a bad meeting with my boss and I quit and. And I realized I had $500 in the bank and I had to make my rent within the next week. And so I ended up just kind of starting Metalab. I came up with a name and I had a couple sleepless nights building my portfolio and getting everything together. And I just started sending out emails to as many people as I could and looking on job boards. Shortly thereafter, I was able to land two contracts. One with a startup in New York called Mogulus, which was turned into Livestream, and another in San Francisco, which sold a while ago, called Offermatica. And within about three weeks I was waking up whenever I wanted. I was making about three or four times what I was making before I was able to start contracting out work. And I just kind of, I really got lucky. I think it was mostly timing.
- [08:44]
A
That is amazing to me how you can just. This world that we're in today, you know, like, I don't know if it's always been like that, where you could just kind of make it like that, you know, just kind of just jump into it. And that's the unique thing about the web world especially. And you can. We'll probably talk about this more with the explosion of mobile and what that's doing and having new devices like the iPhone, the iPad to design and develop against, and just the prolificness of what we have available to us and how you just jump in. Yeah, but like you said, also get lucky too, in a sense.
- [09:16]
B
Yeah, I think a lot of it is. Some of it's timing and some of it, you know, definitely the experiences that I had running that tech blog helped. I was a good writer and I knew how to do phone calls and all that kind of stuff. But I think the coolest thing, the gift that we have is that we can look as big as we want to. So even though I was a 19 year old whose voice cracked, sitting in my apartment in my boxers, I could look like a relatively large design agency because the website is all anyone was going off of and I was dealing with people remotely. So here I am doing meetings with people saying, oh yeah, that's how we like to work in our process. And all this kind of stuff just kind of bumbling my way through it, but it was. Yeah, I think it was just you realized pretty quickly that you. You can basically look however you want. You can look as big as you want. No one needs to know how. How many employees you have or where you're located or anything like that.
- [10:16]
A
It kind of reminds me of something that was set in a movie called Boiler Room. And I'm trying to recall, why am I having a brain fart? I can't recall who said it, but he says, act as if. Right. Can you help me out? Do you remember the movie?
- [10:32]
B
Totally, totally. Yeah. I don't remember the exact line, but I think that's very true.
- [10:36]
A
Yeah. Act as if. Act as if you're the owner of the company. Act as if you're somebody more badass than you are right now. That's something the web world can let you do. But you can only fake it for so long. You still have to own up. You had good design behind you. What do you think? I guess before we go too deeply into your story, what is Metalab? I guess now it probably has a different meaning to you or a different way you say who you are, but it probably changed since 2006. But what is Metalab for the listeners that don't know who it is?
- [11:07]
B
It started out really just me doing consulting work. So I think one good choice that I made early on was to decide to focus on a niche. We weren't going to do print design. We weren't going to do brochure websites, we weren't going to do anything like that. We were going to focus on web startups and interface design. And I think that put us in a unique position. So essentially I started pitching this idea. We're an interface design agency. And so we built this really great consultancy where five years later, we're working with companies like Google, Disney, NBC, Jawbone, Ted. Just amazing organizations, which I'm staggered by, I just would never have thought at the time. So we built that, and then we also built a very successful software business as well as a digital goods business at the same time. Metalab has become a bit of a weird little empire.
- [12:03]
A
Yeah, you're doing interface work for clients at the same time you're building your own products. Prior to actually pushing the record button for this call that everybody's listening to, we had a chance to talk about how you've actually broken up your company. Tell us about how your company's actually broken up to this day right now.
- [12:21]
B
So, yeah, the way we started, we originally. So we're a consultancy, we're focused on client work. And we decided that we didn't want to take any venture capital or anything like that. We just wanted to bootstrap our own products and build them in our spare time. So during the day, I would be doing client work, and then, you know, couple hours a night, we started working on our first piece of software. I think it was in 2008, late 2008. Not a good time to be building things, let me tell you, because the economy is crumbling and everything else, but this was the light at the end of the tunnel. So I would spend my evenings working on Ballpark, which was basically something that we built to scratch our own itch. So we were receiving 20 emails a day from various people that wanted to work with us. And we didn't have an easy way to keep track of all the estimates we'd sent out, where our deals were at, that kind of stuff. And so we built this very simple web app to use internally to keep track of that stuff. And then we started sending out estimates to clients, and they were going, whoa, cool. This looks really neat. What are you guys using? And at that point, we realized that we added a real piece of software on our hands. So we added invoicing and a couple other features, and we released it to the public. So at that point, it was just, we're a consultancy, and in our spare time, we're building, you know, we're building some of these apps. But then in the last couple years, the software business has grown very significantly, to the point where it didn't make sense to try to juggle two things. We didn't want our clients to receive subpar service just because our servers crashed or something like that. We built Flow in. Jesus, when was it? 2010, I think. In the process of doing that, we actually divided it out as its own company. So our software companies split up. So we've got our consulting company, we've got our software company, which does Ballpark and Flow. And then we've got our Tumblr theme, and now Shopify theme business, Pixel Union. Each of these companies has its own staff, its own payroll, but we all kind of work in the same umbrella and share ideas, share an office, that kind of thing.
- [14:40]
A
Did you just stumble into? I guess this is Ballpark. The first app was more of a homegrown thing because you needed it, and you just sort of turned it into an app because people demanded it. Is that more or less what happened?
- [14:52]
B
Yeah, definitely.
- [14:53]
A
And then what about Flow? How do you get into this? I mean, give us an intro to Flow. You kind of intro'd what ballpark is, but what exactly is flow?
- [15:01]
B
So, I mean, really, when we started building it, the last thing I wanted to do was make yet another to do app. I had no interest. It's a crowded space. But basically, in 2009, I had a kind of productivity breakdown. I was managing. Suddenly I had gone from a one man to six, and then 10, and then 15. And I was really struggling to keep my head above water just using email. And so I got really obsessed with gtd. I read the book. I even had like a you actually can pay GTD coaches. You do a weekly phone call with these guys from David Allen's company, and they talk to you about your workflow and they coach you through your troubles and stuff. And so I was hardcore. I got really into it and I was using Omnifocus, but I realized that the problem with Omnifocus was that it was just on my desktop and I couldn't delegate to anyone. And so I got really frustrated because I ended up having to use all these different tools. I would use Omnifocus to manage everything that included me. But then as a company, we had to use Basecamp. And then if I had a single task, like let's say I had to ask somebody to take some documents to the lawyer, I had to send them an email, and then I had to remember to follow up with the email. And Omnifocus, it just meant lots of back and forth recursively recreating tasks. So my friend Tom Robinson is one of the guys who made Cappuccino, which is a framework that got bought by Motorola a little while ago, but it essentially allowed people to build Coco apps or objective C apps in the browser. And he had kind of said to me, like, hey, you guys should try building something with this. So one of our devs had some spare time, so I just said, like, you know, hey, let's just try building a simple to do app. So we started doing that. We realized Cappuccino wasn't really doing it for us. It just wasn't far enough along. But the app, we started to kind of build some features that we really liked around delegation. We started using it as a company, and then we realized, like, okay, this is actually, again, this is a real product. We should do something with this. And so we started hiring a bunch of people and investing a lot of energy into building this app. And 10 months later, we had Flow, which is, I guess I describe it as basically, it's a way to get things done with anybody in your life. So it brings every kind of project and every person in your life into one place. So I can delegate to my personal assistant, I can collaborate on a project with my girlfriend, I can deal with a home renovation or an important project with my team at work all in one place. And it's all firewalled and separated, so there's no more jumping between apps or personal and work. It's all in one place.
- [18:01]
A
You said you kind of invested in new hires. How much dollars did you put into this at first? What kind of sources of validation did you use beyond your own actual needs and probably even seeing some of the earlier versions of it and getting excited. What were some of the things that you used to validate to say, okay, we truly be a smaller shop, but grow 15 people or grow 12 people? Because I think you got like 12 people on staff just on flow, right?
- [18:28]
B
Yeah, we do now. We do. At the time it was, I think there was four kind of core people. We had a front end developer, two Rails developers, and then a designer, Luke, who actually was my first employee way back when, and then he ended up going to New York, taking a job and we pulled him back onto the project for Flow, which was great to have him back. But in terms of validation, I mean, we just used it internally and we realized like, hey, this is really useful. Why hasn't anybody done this? We didn't really, you know, we did a little bit of a pilot program. We shared it with a couple other companies, we shared an office with another web development firm and we'd get them to test it out and see what they thought. But really we just kind of took a gamble. I don't really, I've always been relatively unconcerned with risk. I think, you know, I'm in my 20s, this is the time to do it. And I generally trust my gut and I mean, so far that's served me well. You asked in terms of dollars we spent so building ballpark, we did that very, very lean. I think in total over a year, we only spent $30,000. It was just me and a part time Rails developer, a little bit of help from a friend doing front end flow. We went big. I think we spent about $550,000 or something like that, which was definitely a big check for us to write. But at that time the business, the consulting business, had grown enough that it wasn't really a huge issue.
- [20:03]
A
When did Flow start? What was that, in 09 or was it in 10?
- [20:07]
B
It was 2010. So we launched I think we launched April 2011 and it was about nine months to beta and we're in beta for two months or so. We just kind of had an invite only beta to start getting some feedback. But it's been amazing. I mean, we've seen just like hockey stick growth, especially in the first couple months. When we first got out there, it was the sort of thing where we really saw validation. Then suddenly we got on TechCrunch, Daring Fireball, Mashable, all those guys, and we literally went from zero revenue to about $20,000 within the first three weeks. So that was amazing. It's just continued to go from there. So it's been really successful.
- [20:52]
A
Where did you learn how to. Like you said, with learning design and learning other things you've learned before, you kind of dive into like gtd, you kind of went nuts about it. But where did you learn how to build business? Like, is this something you just threw yourself at or did you have any mentors? What is your secret sauce here? I mean, $550,000 check thrown down. I mean, you're probably doing some great design. Like you said, you're doing work for Disney and other people, but where did you get the chops to do all this?
- [21:22]
B
Well, yeah, it's a really difficult question. I think there are various. Some of it's through osmosis. I think my father, he was an entrepreneur, he started his own company. But as a kid, he'd always say, whenever I'd come up with any kind of idea, he'd be coaching me. He'd be saying, okay, how could you turn this into a business? What would you do? I helped this old lady that I met, I helped her out with her computer and immediately the first thing my dad says is, oh, you could start this company where you do this consulting stuff with all these old people and then you could go to old folks home and you could market it to them. And I think so I kind of grew up with that mode of thinking.
- [22:05]
A
Being how to make it a business, basically.
- [22:07]
B
Exactly. But in terms of, I think Jason freed from 37signals says that making money is a skill that you learn. I think building a successful, profitable business is really the challenging part. And I think it's really just something you learn from trial and error. I mean, ballpark, it still doesn't make us a lot of money. It's a very small product. We love it, we think it's great, but it's just not. It's not a crazy moneymaker. And I think 90% of that is due to marketing. Marketing and just not knowing. We just didn't know what to do. We were so young, and we were just kind of starting out, and so we didn't necessarily fail, but we stumbled and we didn't optimize it. And so every time that we've built something new, I think we get better and better at it. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's been great. And definitely reading. I read a ton. A lot of business and stuff, and I just try and talk to people. I think a lot of this industry really is. It does come down to who, you know, to some degree. I'm just able to call up, you know, amazing entrepreneurs who have done it all before and are a couple years ahead and kind of have, like, an informal advisory board, essentially. So, you know, like being able to call the guys from Shopify up and say, hey, you know, how do you guys do your AdSense or your Google AdWords advertising? Or, you know, Anthony Casalenta from Squarespace, Always helpful for anything. So, you know, these guys are out there. You just gotta connect with them.
- [23:37]
A
It's funny you mentioned that. I'm gonna pause for a second and say that Anthony, I invited him on the other show I ran for a while. They're called the Web 2.0 show. And I haven't gotten back in touch with him again to invite him on to Fonors Talk. But I've always been a fan of Squarespace. But you said you have this informal advisory board, and I didn't have this on my notes to ask you this question, but. But what do you do there? Do you just have a question? You're like, let me. Like, how many people are on this list? Who's on this list besides the people you mentioned?
- [24:06]
B
Okay, so, yeah, I don't have. When I say informal, I mean very informal. It's this sort of thing where, yeah, there's buddies, people I'll randomly call up. But, yeah, my kind of primary people that I talk to a lot. We recently just made our first angel investment in my friend Stuart Bowness's company, Mediacorp. I'm not sure if you've seen it, but it's basically a way for anybody to start their own video site and monetize it.
- [24:33]
A
I have heard of minicore.
- [24:34]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really cool. So I'm an investor in his company, but we're also very good friends. And he's local. He's here in Victoria. We actually shared an office. He's probably my closest confidant in terms of business stuff. And we just have kind of come up together. The Tumblr guys are great. I've been friends with David for a couple years and John, who's their CEO. They're always extremely helpful. Yeah, I mean, there's lots of people who have been great, but again, it's the sort of thing I just will randomly call them up and I try and make sure that I actually have something to say back and can contribute to them. Sometimes I can.
- [25:16]
A
So let me ask you a question that maybe your dad would have asked you then. So how could you turn that into a business?
- [25:21]
B
Well, I think there are some people doing some interesting things with that. I know you interviewed Dan Martell, and I won't say anything, but I've talked to Dan and it seems like a problem that he's looking at pretty hard, and I think he could do some interesting stuff with it.
- [25:37]
A
You might be doing something interesting, though, Clarity. Is that what you're speaking of?
- [25:40]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's neat. I checked that out recently, and I think that's a really cool concept. But again, I don't know. I think it has to be. Whenever something becomes a financial exchange, I think the relationship totally changes and the advice that you get changes. So for me, I mean, Anthony Castellenta, like, it's not like I walked up to him and went like, oh, hey, man, I really love your work and I really want to. I need your help. I want you to be my mentor. We just kind of hit it off and had a drink together and ended up talking for three hours and had a lot in common. And so these are guys I'm not. I view them as peers. It's not like they're these guys who I'm sitting down, wise old men that I'm sitting down with once a week and picking their brains. But I just don't think that. I don't think that if you start to make it into a monetary thing, I just don't think it's the same.
- [26:31]
A
Yeah, I'm right there with. There's actually a future guest. Peter Cooper has given me quite a bit of advice. We've had a couple conversations, and prior to those Skype conversations, I didn't even really know Peter. I knew him from a couple tweet exchanges or friends that are friends and something like that. But he's not the only person I've ever gotten advice from. But he's an example I can use because he's going to be an upcoming guest on Founders Talk. But just like that, like, people ask me how do I get people on this show? In your case, you shot me an email. But most cases I'm just asking people to come on the show. And a lot of times just meeting people is just being human. Right? Just asking and saying hello.
- [27:11]
B
Exactly. And I think that's one thing that I always find so bizarre. I mean, even like recently. So we're, you know, we're in Victoria and we're one of the, I would say we're one of the cooler, younger companies in town, but we kind of fly under the radar. We're not really in on the scene here. We don't talk about it a lot, but there are people that I end up like. We recently interviewed somebody, a front end developer, and she's saying, oh, I've been following your work for years and it's really cool. And I'm just kind of thinking like you knew about us for years, why don't you just get in touch, why don't you reach out? And she's kind of going, oh, you know, I was intimidated. And the thing is like we were talking about before you hit record, I mean, people just, people think that these people are untouchables, that they're just going to delete your email or anything, but they're just as human as anyone else. We're all just dudes and we've all been in that position before. So pretty much anytime any young entrepreneur, or old entrepreneur for that matter, emails me, I'm totally attentive. I love giving advice and I found that most most successful entrepreneurs do.
- [28:20]
A
So do you have a Clarity FM account then? Speaking of Dan Martell, I think I'm.
- [28:25]
B
Signed up, but I'm not actually, I haven't actually. As soon as he does it, I will totally do that. But yeah, we'll see.
- [28:32]
A
That's what I was thinking like from this show, if. I mean, this show will get listened to a number of times. You might even have somebody pick it up three months from now and listen to this conversation we're having. But if they want advice from you anytime in the future, what's the best way to. This is more of an ending kind of call question. But this isn't the end. But if somebody wants to get advice from you, what's the best way to reach out to you?
- [28:52]
B
Just email me, really, or tweet at me or something. Find me an email. It's andrewetalabdesign.com and just keep it short. I think one big problem that a lot of people have is they write really long, thoughtful emails which are great and I love reading them, but when I look at them I go, oh damn, there's an hour of my time. And so I file them away and I don't get back to them for two months. Think simple, quick questions, that kind of stuff. And also just offering value. I mean, having something that would be of interest to me that we could talk about. Or maybe someone, let's say someone really knows SEO, saying, hey, I'd love to help you out with your SEO. I need some advice though. I mean, that's always great too. But really, I love talking about this stuff.
- [29:36]
A
Let's take a turn to a different direction and talk about, I guess, some of the stuff we talked about a little earlier with building metalab. You wrote this article in NET magazine and there's a lot of good topics in here that I'd like to dive into a little deeper, maybe a little deeper than you've talked about in this article. We both know based on this call that you're a one man band. When you first started out, you're the person that had the idea to start it, started everything else, learned how to run your own business. You got to thank your father for being an entrepreneur as well and giving you some of the early advice that he did. Being a one man band at first, when you, what are some of the things you can give advice on against the unsustainability of being a one man band and when you should grow to being more than just yourself.
- [30:23]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think one big problem in this industry is that a lot of people, they wear how hard they work, how little they sleep as a badge of honor. And for me, I did the same thing for a long time when I was starting out doing consulting work. I truly felt that I could do the best job and that while I needed people to help me, while I needed front end developers to help out and back end developers because that wasn't necessarily my specialty, I did have this sense that I should take everything on my own shoulders because it'll turn out the best that way. What I realized is that that was really just being dishonest with myself because I get very excited about things. When I'm interested in something, I just dive in and I obsess over it. But that only vision. Yeah, exactly. But it's laser focused and it only lasts briefly. What would happen is I'd start a consulting project and I'd be super excited about it and I'd do the homepage and I'd do some key interface stuff and then the client Would follow through and say, okay, now we need to do 20 more pages. And. And I would just kind of blank, you know, blackout. I just wouldn't want to do it. And so I personally, I mean, I really embraced that eventually and I started bringing on more designers to kind of help me with the follow through and all that kind of stuff. And I realized that the output overall is much, much better when I had more people to delegate to. And it's a really difficult skill to learn because, you know, you're still thinking based on the simplest things. Oh, man. Should I be the one talking to our lawyer? Should I be the one dealing with these things? Because you feel like people are going to miss things. But what I realized is that what we tried, we tried at first getting designers, and we'd get these designers in and they'd do. They'd mess up a project and what would happen is I'd go, okay, this is proof that this doesn't work. I would swoop in, I'd take over, and that would keep happening. What we realized is that we need to let people put out their own fires. And that if someone understands that they messed up and they fix it, they won't. Sorry. They won't mess up again. Sorry. Sorry about that. They won't mess up again. And so we've really tried to embrace that. And now, five years in, I literally don't. I mean, I don't touch anything that I don't need to. So I'm still very involved in the design process with all of our products and our consulting and everything. Everything still goes through me. But you, I don't. Geez, I don't even fill up the gas in my car sometimes. I delegate absolutely everything in my life. And I really try and trust the people, Hire good people and trust them to do what they need to do and only bother me if there's something that really does need my feedback or whatever. But I've really embraced that. And the idea behind that is that there's all these things in my day where I would be pulled out of the office to go do errands and all these simple things in my life. Why wouldn't I give that to somebody else who actually enjoys doing it and give them a job in the process and save myself thousands of dollars in billable hours and all sorts of other things that I can focus back on consulting or building my company? A lot of people see that stuff as lazy. They hear that you have a personal assistant and they scoff. But for me, it's a Matter of numbers.
- [34:02]
A
I was going to ask you. Some would say the exact opposite, that some would say, don't buy a brand new MacBook Pro. This is a little off topic, but I'm going to circle it back. Don't buy the latest greatest because you should be saving more money for your business because you might have rougher times. Don't hire somebody for that job unless you've done it before or don't hire anybody for that job at all because for whatever reason. So, I mean, you've been fortunate enough to be able to have success early enough to have the bankroll, probably to actually bring on some extra employees. But what about times whenever you're in a tougher position financially and not able to delegate or not able to even afford somebody to delegate to? What do you do then?
- [34:46]
B
Well, I mean, I started out the way that I did it originally was I'd get a development design project and it would, you know, let's say the budget is $10,000. I knew that was guaranteed income. And so I would be able to say, okay, I'm going to contract this. So I would find somebody that I liked working with and I would contract that work to them. And the liability for me was minimal. But I had the help that I needed and it allowed me to take on a lot more projects because if I tried to do the front end or the back end, it would take me three times as long. So that kind of enabled me to increase my bandwidth. And I did that for the first, the first kind of two and a half, three years. We were just doing contractors and I didn't delegate as much as I do now. Once we got to a size where we were able to, we really, we are very aggressive about growth and hiring. And we found that even with the guys that run my company, I have three guys. Mark heads up the consulting business, Liam heads up Pixel Union, and Luke heads up the software company. And even with those guys, I really am always pushing them to hire right before we need it. And so we like to have people waiting in the wings. We have a lot of resources. But yeah, I mean, it's scary sometimes. I mean, when the economy goes sour, it's scary to have $100,000 payroll to deal month. I mean, that's scary. But it's also enabled us to make far more profit than we ever would. And I think at this point we're in a position where we've really diversified ourselves so that if the software business failed or had a really bad month, the consulting or Pixel Union can Cover that and vice versa. So even if two of our companies fail, we've always got one that can kind of COVID everybody. So. So it's okay. But I understand that a lot of people can't necessarily do that.
- [36:54]
A
Yeah, it's tough to. And that's kind of nice, too, that you've diversified in that way where when one side is a little shorter, the other side can pick it up or make up, I guess, in different areas. It's a unique position you're in there. And it's kind of like you said a little bit earlier, it's not luck to get there, but sometimes you're just in the right position or the right place, the right time to. To be fortunate the way you've been fortunate. Now, we've talked a lot about, I guess, business in a sense, and how you've become a little successful or maybe really successful. I guess it depends on your perspective. But you've also done some pretty fun things out there, and you're really good at design. I don't know if this is a hot topic for you, but I thought this was kind of unique. Whenever I was checking out some things to talk about, there's a couple of them, and they both kind of tailor into design because that's obviously what you are, right? Design studio.
- [37:47]
B
Yeah.
- [37:48]
A
One is your page. You're killing me, Zappos. And it was like a letter to Tony Hsieh. What brought this on and how much effort did you put into this even before you actually published this?
- [38:00]
B
So, yeah, that was basically. I guess that was in 2010, I think. But I kind of. I have a habit of when I see bad design or what I perceive to be bad design, I really like to, you know, sit down for an evening and just kind of redesign it. I did it a while ago, I think. I did it in 2008 with Facebook. Facebook released a new design, which I really didn't like. And so I tweaked it and I emailed it to Mark Zuckerberg, who forwarded it to his designers. And I ended up meeting a bunch of those guys and having a bit of a debate with them and stuff. So I'd done that before, but basically I went to Zappos and everyone's talking about Zappos is this amazing company with this great culture. And I was really impressed by their story. And then I went to their website and there was just so many sloppy things going on, like poorly compressed images and really odd type margins and just very confusing choices. And so I decided, screw it. I'LL spend an evening redesigning this. So I did a simple redesign and I emailed it to Tony Hsieh and posted this public letter and stuff. And it was, you know, it was a cool experience. I mean, it got posted all over the place. And I didn't get a response directly from Tony Hsieh, but I talked to their head of their design team and we kind of chatted about where they're headed and they showed me some of the stuff they were working on with the redesign and stuff. But yeah, it was really just a. It was a fun little. Fun little thing. I like to ruffle people's feathers now and then.
- [39:39]
A
I was wondering, was this a marketing experience or was it really just you having fun in one evening and you're like, my friends are out, I'm chilling at home. Zappos is cool, but their site sucks. Let me waste five hours and put up a page and do this little marketing. What did it do, marketing wise, in terms of bringing in? Did you see a traffic spike? Did you see. You said you didn't get a letter back from Tony Hsieh, but you talked to their design team. What did it turn out in like, maybe your dad would say, how did you turn this into a business? How did you make money from.
- [40:08]
B
It was kind of, I would say it was inadvertent marketing. But any time that we're, you know, I definitely do. Well, not any press. I definitely believe that any press is good press to some degree. So we did like, for instance, we did this thing called Tumblyes a couple years ago and the idea was that we would make a tumbler for people for $999, which we, you know, to me, I was like, wow, that's so cheap. It's a two page design. We're going to code it, we're going to customize everything. Let's try out and see if we can do it. And it was just a colossal failure. And we got written up on TechCrunch and they were saying it was for trust fund kids and they can't believe how expensive it is. And so that was pretty funny. But through that we became the guys that people go to for Tumblr. Everyone went, okay, Metalab, they're the Tumblr experts. So we started getting a lot of work doing that stuff for the Zappos thing. We definitely saw a big boost with that. And yeah, it was this sort of thing. I think anything to gain exposure is definitely worth it, but it certainly wasn't something that I was thinking like, oh, yeah, this is going to be like our big 2010 marketing extravaganza or anything like that.
- [41:25]
A
Yeah. That's funny that you would say, or that they would say that 999 is for trust fund kids, because, I mean.
- [41:33]
B
I thought it was ridiculous.
- [41:34]
A
Yeah, that's crazy. I think $1,000 for your level of design and it's on Tumblr, it's reliable platform.
- [41:41]
B
And I mean, every single project we lost so much money and not so much, but we would almost always go over budget every. I think we did about 20 of those at that rate. And we found that, you know, everyone wants a couple different designs and they want to tweak it and everything else. And so it just wasn't a sustainable business in any way.
- [42:01]
A
So you said you have Pixel Union. Was this like an early experiment to evolve into what Pixel Union is today?
- [42:08]
B
So, yeah, what happened was David Karp, who's the founder of Tumblr, he actually was visiting Victoria. And so we went out for dinner and we started chatting and kind of talking about Tumblr and stuff, and he kind of encouraged us to do some themes. And so we built this theme called Fluid. Again, I just designed it in a night and sent it off to one of our developers and we posted it up on their theme garden. And within about six months, we were the number one theme. And we had like, I think we still, we have like some insane amount. I don't know what it is, but it's over a million people are using this theme. So we were like, again, you know, we got a little bit of exposure through that for Tumblr stuff. So when Tumblr decided to launch their app, or, sorry, their theme store, we were the first in line. So they reached out to us and they said, hey, we need you guys to build some themes for this. And at the time I was kind of thinking like, oh, this might be cool. We'll make a couple grand a month selling themes on here. So when it launched, we're basically just blown away. We just started doing gangbusters sales and we realized pretty quickly that there was a real business there. And so I started building a team around it. So I brought on Liam to kind of head it up, and we started hiring designers and developers in about a year. It's been about a year and a half, I guess, since we started doing that, and it's now a million dollar business.
- [43:43]
A
What is this iOS? What happened? In 2007, this thing came onto the scene. We know already that Steve Jobs is one of your Heroes from early on you got to meet when you're 16, you were fortunate enough. What is iOS and what is this changing for software? You're in the software business, you're in the interface design business. But what is this doing to software, having the iPad? And obviously there's other platforms too, not just the iPhone and the iPad. But what is happening right now in the software world?
- [44:13]
B
Well, I think it's just making it so much easier to deliver this stuff. I mean, in the past you're dealing with originally CDs and DVDs and all that kind of stuff. And even web apps are kind of hard for people to understand. I talked to even my dad about what we do and I don't know if he totally understands what a web app is or how it works. And so I think what's beautiful about iPhone applications is they've got this whole ecosystem. It's a challenge certainly to do well in it because there's so much noise out there, there's so many people competing. But I think it's really kind of like a democratization. Suddenly it's so easy to do this. Just like it was easy a couple years ago for me to start, start the company. Now it's really easy. If you've got basic development skills and stuff, you can become multimillionaire without really any investment. Just a little bit of your time, a little bit of marketing and there you go.
- [45:17]
A
You said earlier that Meta hasn't taken any VC funding. What do you think VCs say to something like that for something like you saying something like that?
- [45:27]
B
I think they think we're stupid. I think a lot of people, I mean, it really depends on who you talk to. I mean, I talked to a lot of my friends who have bootstrapped their companies and now they're sitting pretty and they're making more money than they know what to do with and they own 100% and they can do whatever they want every day. But then there's always. There's two different worlds. There's the bootstrappers and then there's the startup guys. And we've worked with a lot of the startup guys. I think the big problem with VC money is that you're looking at a three to five year exit, which is fine if you want to be a serial entrepreneur. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, certainly, but it's just not for me. I like to hold on to the things that I build and I like to play the long game. And so for us it just hasn't been something that we've needed or really wanted. I mean, we've had a lot of, lot of venture capital firms come and talk to us, and I think we could certainly do a round if we wanted to, but we just haven't really seen the need. We've essentially, with our company, we've built our own incubator. So we've got these companies and they're all profitable and they all spit off a whole bunch of money every month. And we can choose if we want to start a new company. We just incorporate one and we put $20,000 into a it and we start, we get going. And until I see an opportunity where I realize that having $10 million in the next three months is going to be critical to the growth of a company, I just don't think that I would really look to vc.
- [47:10]
A
I guess I've got one, maybe two more topics I want to talk to you about before we got a couple questions from some friends on Twitter that have have a couple little unique questions for you. But Steve Jobs, somebody near and dear to your heart, said, good artist copy, great artist deal. You've actually had to deal with something like this. I'm not sure how sensitive this topic is, but we talked a little bit before we actually hit the record button on the great Mozilla debacle and what this all translated into, from what I understand, they essentially took your website design and used it for Jetpack and they contacted you about it. But what happened here and why do you think that they took your design? Is it because it's just so badass, or is this because they thought they were liberated enough to do so?
- [48:01]
B
Yeah, it was. Honestly, it was kind of a. It's just a really funny story. We, you know, no hard feelings towards them or anything like that, but we found it kind of astounding. So what happened? We were contacted by the Jetpack team for an estimate. They wanted to do some design work with us. And so Mark contacted them and he had a phone call and sent off an estimate. And they ended up coming back to us and just saying, sorry, guys, this is more than we can afford right now. And so that was fine. They walked off. And then maybe like three months later, I get this link on Twitter and someone said, oh my God, look at this. And we go to check out the new Jetpack design, and it's literally the Metalab website, like Pixel for Pixel with our logo removed, and they've swapped a couple content areas. But we looked at it and we literally Took our PSD and we laid it over and it matched up exactly. They'd taken our image assets, everything. And you know, it's not like let's say Walmart did this or somebody who's using it to make astounding amounts of money. I would be really infuriated. But we just found this so bizarre. It was just so blatant that they'd copied this. And so I emailed Aza, Raskin and some other guys there and just said, this is ridiculous. But I made a blog post about it because I was just so flabbergasted.
- [49:30]
A
Now you were on Hacker News, you were on TechCrunch.
- [49:34]
B
We were all over the place. And it was bizarre. I mean, the responses that we got, I mean, a lot of people were on our side, but there are a lot of people saying like, oh, quipping whiners, like, you know, open source, your designs, you know, all those kind of troll guys. But anyway, yeah, it was bizarre. So we ended up talking to John Lilly, who's the CEO of Mozilla, and he apologized and you know, we. It was fine. It was just, it was hilarious.
- [49:59]
A
So this wasn't a joke, it was for really? Really, we're going to do that?
- [50:01]
B
Oh, yeah, no, they had it all coded up and stuff. It was insane. They'd featured it in one of their videos and they said, oh. Their response was like, oh, we were just going to use this. It was a prototype. It was just like a filler design. But they featured it in their videos and all their marketing materials and stuff. So I just didn't buy that.
- [50:23]
A
That is so wild. I wonder if the person who made the decision to, I guess, be a great artist and steal from you. I wonder if they got fired.
- [50:33]
B
I don't know if he did. I think it was like a front end developer they kind of blamed. They said like, oh, it was like a guy like a rogue agent acting on his own. But the funny thing about it is they saw the designs, they went to our website, they knew what it looked like. But yeah, anyway, no hard feelings or anything like that. I think we're all good.
- [50:53]
A
So I just got two more questions for you. Friends on the Twitter have asked one. I think he's a design student. He says since we're talking about design, he said, what did you do to learn design? And how do you use such simple design but yet be so effective with it? And do you have any tips for students?
- [51:15]
B
Yeah, I think like making money or business or anything else, it's just a process of Doing it over and over and over again. I think, I mean the whole Malcolm gladwell thing, the 10,000 hours to reach mastery, I really do think it's true. I put in the time for the first three years of running the company. I was up every night until 5am just designing stuff non stop. And I think you reach a point where you're just able to kind of synthesize things to make them easily understandable. And it's very simple things. I mean, I often look at, I look on Dribbble and I see a lot of incredibly impressive design up there. Like I'm blown away by the level of detail and I kind of am going like, how the hell did this guy do this? I have no idea how to do this in Photoshop, but when I actually see the design or the interface, it's not immediately easily understood or there's poor visual hierarchy. I think that's one thing that I see a lot. And so I think being able to focus on, on taking things away or making things smaller or, you know, really simplifying elements, that's kind of where we've shone. But yeah, that's, it's, it's tough. I think it's really just the sort of thing that you do have to put in the time with and do it over and over again and might.
- [52:39]
A
Even be a mutual friend of ours. But his name is Chris Bowler. He is the gentleman that runs or I guess previously ran Fusion ads.
- [52:46]
B
Yeah, they sold, I think. Yeah.
- [52:48]
A
And you might even see this because he cc'd you on Twitter. He says, how do you get your hair to stay in place so nicely?
- [52:56]
B
A ridiculous, ridiculous amount of hair gel.
- [53:00]
A
For the listeners out there. Check the show notes. I'm going to post a link to. I hope you don't mind, please tell me right now if you do, but I'm going to post a link to the Net magazine article that you did because I think that's one of the. Probably that might be the image of you that he might be thinking of about your hair and how you have it so perfectly wavy and in place and it looks so nicely, as he.
- [53:21]
B
Puts it, Photoshop as well.
- [53:23]
A
Photoshop, yeah, Photoshop. We didn't get to talk too much about Steve Jobs, but I mean, you know, we talked about design there a little bit in terms of what he had meant to you. You got to meet him early on and you have this, from what I understand, you even posted about a giant photo of him in your office. But in closing, Steve Jobs, what can you say about this? Phenomenal, man. Man.
- [53:47]
B
So, yeah, he. He was definitely. I mean, when we talk about, you know, my dad being influenced, all that kind of stuff, I mean, I just idolized him. I, you know, had read everything about him. I would. I just looked. I totally looked up to him. And I. I think I kind of. I. I think I. I wanted to recreate that kind of that amazing level of accomplishment that he had. He always talked about putting a dent in the universe, and I grew up really wanting to do that. And that's kind of changed, I think, for me, for a long time. Sorry. A little while ago, that changed for me. So for the first couple years of running my company, I would just drive myself into the ground. I would work weekends, I'd work really late. And I didn't do it because I wanted just to work hard. I did it because, you know, I felt like I wanted to change the world. I wanted to do something really exciting. I wanted to grow my company. And I felt like that would somehow, you know, make me happier, better, or whatever it is. And after three years of doing that, I got really burnt out. And I, you know, I realized, like, oh, my God, I'm. I'm not, you know, building a social network. I'm very alone in my life. What am I doing here? And I did a lot of soul searching and thinking about why I wanted to do this. And one of the guys I thought a lot about was Steve Jobs, because he's done all this amazing stuff. He truly did change the world. And I do think that he just had just amazing taste more than anything else. But one thing that really became clear for me, especially in reading his biography, is that it's just not for me. He lived this amazing life, but he drove himself into the ground every single day. And it sounded like he was quite unhappy and treated people poorly in the process. His goal was amazing, and he accomplished it, but that just doesn't sound very enticing to me. And I guess what I take from it is that I want to be just as maniacal about detail and execution and that sort of thing, but I really don't want to be loathed by my employees or, you know, have a mercurial temper or, you know, have to get a biographer to write a book about me so that my kids will know why I did what I did. So, yeah, I think he, you know, just an amazing, amazing guy. But I realized that that's a tough path to take. Definitely.
- [56:32]
A
I like what you had to say about there, about Steve there. I think that you're exactly right. He led a life of success, but at the expense of so many other things that are precious to all of us. Among the things you said, like social network, kids, and I guess, ultimately health in a sense. I mean, who knows?
- [56:54]
B
Totally.
- [56:54]
A
So I think anybody who's listening out there, would you just say that success for you or happiness for you is to enjoy what you're doing, but not at the expense of the people that you love or those that matter to you.
- [57:07]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think flow. The reason flow is called flow. There's a psychologist whose name I can't pronounce. It's Mihaly something or other. It's a very long string. It's Polish. But the idea of flow, basically, it's when you have those moments where you're in the zone where everything drifts into the background, where you lose track of time and you're challenged, but, you know, you have mastery of the thing that you're doing. So it could be chopping wood, or it could be designing something great, or, you know, being in a deep conversation with somebody, but that. What I realized a couple years ago is that that was really what mattered. And as long as I did that in some form or another, every single day, that I could be really happy. And so, yeah, I mean, I think accomplishment and business and all this kind of stuff is interesting because when I was younger, I kind of felt like, okay, so all you got to do is make a couple million dollars and have a successful business and make sure everyone in your industry knows your name and you'll be happy. But I got to know through our consulting business and just through the social network, a lot of people who, you know, they'd sold their company for a lot of money or they'd done really well, and ultimately I realized that they are just as happy as I am and that we all adapt to. We kind of go back to a default level of happiness, it seems. And so I realized that, you know, accomplishment didn't really matter. And so now I don't necessarily look at business as something that, you know, I need to do. I don't need to make a dent in the universe. I don't really care to make a dent in the universe. What I do care about is doing great work every day, employing great people and spending my time with them and having a group of friends who I care about and have a lot in common with. I've just been so much happier since I let go of that kind of treadmill of success.
- [59:08]
A
Man, that is awesome. I'm so glad you said that. I'm even proud to have you on the show to say something like that because that, that to me is really just the way to live. And you almost said what I would want to say. I didn't know I'd want to say it like that, but that's the exact kind of life I want to live. I want to do great work every day and I want to be around the kind of people that I enjoy being around. I guess I care about making a dent in the world, but in a whole different case, I don't live to make a dent in the world. And if I do, then that's great.
- [59:36]
B
Absolutely. And you realize that someone who's a millionaire just wants to be a billionaire and someone who's a billionaire wants to be a multi billionaire. There's always going to be someone the next rung up. And so you always have this low level anxiety. I think people just don't look down often enough. They don't look down and go, whoa, look how far I've. Look how far I've come. This is amazing. They're always looking up at the next thing and always having that low level anxiety around that.
- [60:01]
A
Yeah, there's nothing new under the sun, that's for sure. No, I'm glad you mentioned Flow, though, because I didn't realize that that's where you got the name from. But in episode 43 of the Web 2.0 show, I had a chance at FOA 2008, Ryan Carson's previous event company. He did that. So Kathy Sierra was there and we had a chance to chat with her about creating passionate users. And she has this little phrase she says called allowing your users to kick ass. And she mentioned the state of flow in this book called Flow. I think that's what you were referencing to. I can't pronounce his name either. I think it's Mahali. I don't know how to say his name.
- [60:37]
B
Z, Y, H, something or other. You never know.
- [60:40]
A
It's a long last name. But for the listeners, I'll post this link in there because I think that's a. That book is on my wish list. It's 10 bucks at Walmart. So it's a good book to get to, but it's definitely about being at a level of focus. And that's so wild that you named your app around that. I didn't even think to ask you how you got the name Flo.
- [60:59]
B
Yeah.
- [61:01]
A
But Andrew, it was a pleasure to chat with you. We've chatted for about an hour and 10 minutes. I know that sometimes these shows run a little longer, but from what I've heard from the feedback I've gotten from my listeners is that they want to hear it all. Not so much. Have a condensed version of Andrew in 30 minutes. So I give them what they want to hear and plus, I get to take some benefit of learning about what you enjoy doing in your life and why. So thank you so much, Andrew, for coming on the show to share with us all that you're doing. I think the only question I didn't ask you, you might even be bummed out about it, is what do you have going on at Super Secret?
- [61:39]
B
Right. I was waiting for that. I was thinking about that before I came on and there's nothing I can really talk about. We've got a really, really exciting new Flow feature, but we also have so many competitors to flow and I know they would love to hear about what it is. It's launching in about three weeks to a month, but I just can't talk about it right now. But just watch our Twitch, check our blog. We've got something big in the works.
- [62:09]
A
Awesome. So follow Andrew on Twitter. Follow Metalab on Twitter. And it has something to do with Flow. So that's your super secret thing? I don't know. I guess that's the way we'll close the show. So anything else you want to talk about, Andrew?
- [62:25]
B
No, that's great. Thanks so much for having me, Adam.
- [62:28]
A
It's been a blast. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
- [62:30]
B
Thanks.
- [62:33]
A
Sa.