From Selling to Facebook to Growing a New Business: A Founder's Journey | Koen Bok (Founder and CEO of Framer)

Join us as we explore Koen's journey, from building Sofa to its exciting acquisition by Facebook, to his latest venture, Framer. Discover the challenges and opportunities of creating a platform that empowers people to build professional websites without code. You'll learn from Koen's experience and insights into the world of software companies, and find out how the next generation will use and build software without needing to know how to code.

Koen is the Founder and CEO of Framer, a platform to build professional websites. Koen used to work at Facebook as a product designer and previously founded a company called Sofa a software/design company, that was acquired by Facebook.


We delve into the following topics with Koen:

Path to founding a company

• How Koen made his way into the world of startups and how he came up with the idea for Sofa, then Framer?  
• How do you explain Framer to a 5-year-old? 
• When starting a company, what do you think are the most important things to do first to be successful? (Create a product, build a team, find capital, or something else?) 
• What do you know now that you wish you had known when starting out? 

Building a product

• What was the hardest part about the 0 to 1 phase of Framer? What’s your advice for new founders going through it today? 
• How much effort do you put into your work perfecting things before launching products? 

Speed

• How important do you think the speed of execution is for startups? 
• How do you stay close to customers and prioritize your product backlog at Framer? 

Finding product market fit

• What do you think about GTM for horizontal, built-yourself-type products? 
• When did you know you had a true product-market fit with Framer? 
• The startup is full of challenges, What have been the hardest challenges you have faced so far? 

Team

• What are some key decisions you made, or beliefs you hold when making hiring decisions? 

Community

• How have you guys nurtured the community around Framer? It's amazing how helpful, knowledgeable, and open everyone is. 
• How do community and education fit within growth? Should you even be investing in the community? 

The Future of no-code

• How will the new generation of kids learn the software? will they build their own? 
• What does the world look like in 5 years for the no-code ecosystem?