September 1, 2024 • 33 mins
Meet Lucas Josefiak, the 26-year-old co-founder and CEO of Widgetbook!
In this conversation, Lucas dives deep into his journey:
From Inspiration to Impact: Discover the story behind Widgetbook and how it's empowering millions of Flutter developers.
Building a Dream Team: Learn how Lucas found his co-founders and fostered a thriving company culture.
In-person vs. Remote : Which one do you think Lucas might prefer?
The Hustle is Real: Hear what keeps Lucas motivated and the challenges he tackles as a young entrepreneur.
Visit Widgetbook: https://www.widgetbook.io/
What is Flutter? Flutter is the the most popular cross-platform framework in the world(acc. To JetBrains 2021 State of Developer Ecosystem survey).Flutter is an open source framework developed and supported by Google.
In this conversation, Lucas dives deep into his journey:
From Inspiration to Impact: Discover the story behind Widgetbook and how it's empowering millions of Flutter developers.
Building a Dream Team: Learn how Lucas found his co-founders and fostered a thriving company culture.
In-person vs. Remote : Which one do you think Lucas might prefer?
The Hustle is Real: Hear what keeps Lucas motivated and the challenges he tackles as a young entrepreneur.
Visit Widgetbook: https://www.widgetbook.io/
What is Flutter? Flutter is the the most popular cross-platform framework in the world(acc. To JetBrains 2021 State of Developer Ecosystem survey).Flutter is an open source framework developed and supported by Google.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Everyone, Welcome to a brand new episode of Startups Still Say,
hope you're all doing well. Today's episode I'm actually super
excited about because of the first episode be doing it
in person with our guests. And today's guest happens to
be Lucas Josephi from widget Book. He happens to be
(00:33):
someone whom I know for the last two years, someone
whom I've admired for doing his startup at a very
young age, took on a big risk and jumped in
into the world of startups. So we'll be talking to
Lucas today about his journey, what widget Book does, and
some of the inputs that he can share with the
(00:54):
world of startups. So Lucas, first of all, welcome to
Startups Still Say.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Thanks. I love for having me Anthony.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
It's a pleasure, So Lucas, so let's get things kicked off.
I mean, I know you for a couple of years now.
For those of you who don't know about the Flutter community,
Flutter is a technology or an open source framework from
Google which I used to be part of. I'm still
I am, and I ran into Lucas while we were
(01:27):
collaborating on with both of our companies, and I happen
to be here at a conference called flutter Con in Berlin.
Lucas was kind enough to be part of this particular
podcast and tell us about his journey. So, Lucas, I
know you as the CEO of widget Book. I know
you as this smart, exuberant CEO of a company, a
(01:49):
guy who loves outdoors from all your adventures in California
and here as well. And I know you'll like to
party a bit as well. But other than that, I
don't know anything else about you. So tell us a
little bit about yourself and maybe tell us about what
led you to start visit book as well.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah, happy, happy to share it. Thanks for the kind words.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
So, as you already said, I'm Lucas, co founder and
CEO of ridget Book.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I'm an entrepreneur and.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I'm really curious and in general about a lot of things.
I think that's curiosity and then led me into the
part of on the part of entrepreneurship. Other than that
I already mentioned, I really love to spend time outdoors
away from the laptop as well. Helps me to relax
(02:43):
and get a clear head. But to answer your question,
how I am got in the world of startups. How
I got through what I'm doing today is I was
inspired and mainly by my by my uncle and so
my ankle's not an entrepreneur, but he also took a
(03:04):
big risk because he moved with his family away from Germany.
So I'm originally from from Germany. My my uncle as well,
and he moved to Canada and with his family. I
think he was like his late twenties or early thirties,
twenty or something years ago. And then just when I
(03:24):
finished high school, I visited him in Canada and it
was an amazing experience being abroad really for the first time.
I spent a few weeks there, I had another internship
and the first time away from home, away from the family,
and so I could really see, okay, what kind of
other life you could also live. And then when I
(03:46):
started studying, and it was just very very quickly, Okay,
entrepreneurship is the path I am I really.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Like to go for. And so I actually have a
business background.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
So I studied international business, so business with like German,
English and French, so I had some languages with it
as well, and I didn't particularly like my studies too much.
It was it was good that you kind of learned
how to sell yourself and how to talk, but I
also wanted to at some point then have some real skills,
(04:20):
and that's why on the side.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
I also learned how to code.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
I have to say, I'm not the best developer, so
I can't get things to work. But I'm very happy
that today have a team that does it a lot better.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Than when I can.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
But very early in my studies, I founded the corporate startup,
which basically was a company that came to the university
and they had a challenge prepared for the students. So
what they did is I think they brought like twenty
people with twenty employees from that corporate, twenty students together
(04:54):
in one room and you had teams of fours always
two students and two people from the corporate and two
days of solving the challenge. And my team did quite well,
and I then gave a representation of what we did.
The corporate liked it a lot, and we're like, hey, Lucas,
would you like to help us on the project. I
was like, sure, let's do it didn't have much to lose,
(05:16):
and I was like eighteen nineteen years old. It actually
became quite successful in that in the corporate, and I
was very excited because we were supposed to get shares
as well and first handed sales. At some point we
had a webpap as well, and I was like curious.
I was like, sure, I learned hard the code A
bit can also build that WebP I suppose, and turned
(05:39):
out to work really well. I hold that corporate, but
unfortunately that corporate went into financial struggles which led to
the CEO being the CEO being fired. New CEO came
basically erased the entire board, and then it was decided
that all innovation projects that don't exist for more than
(06:06):
two years are going to be spinned into the company. Again,
not a spin off that I and also the team
was looking for, soa no shares. Instead, they offered me
quite a good compensation for that for that young age,
but I declined because I was like, no, I really
want to do my own stuff at that age.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
And I then started to build web apps because I
enjoyed doing it. And when I was at the startup,
and then.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I stumbled upon something that I like JavaScript developers, it
must be familiar with it. Suppose the storybook tas one
of the most popular packages in the JavaScript.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Or React each system.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
And at some point I then met today my C
my CTO and co found agains at basically the University
incubator and immediately clicked with quite a good connection, and
Yes told me about fluttery and YenS was super passionate
about flattery, basically predicted its going to be the Future's
gonna be huge, and I checked it out and I
(07:09):
was like, Yin's yeah, copy right, sounds sounds really interesting.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
And then we started building Flutter apps.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
And as I told you, I'm not the best developer,
so I always try to stick to the things I know.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
And there was no storybook for Flutter, so we first
of all the build it just for ourselves.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
And then at some point some of our web development
friends switched to Flutter as well, and they were like, hey,
lucas we build a storybook for flatter.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Can we share with us. We're like, sure, let's do it.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Let's oversource it, and we immediately build a Discord server
as well to support the few users that.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
We thought we're gonna we're gonna get.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Pretty much overnight, people kept swarming in the server and
we were like, oh, okay, it's something that not only we.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Need, but that also other people are looking forward to
to have.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
And then we started interviewing our discord server and asked them, Hey,
how would.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
You like us to improve the product for you? And
I immediately also had the idea of.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Building something more than just this source package around it
because storybook for everyone that is not familiar with it,
it allows you to catalog all of your widgets from
your website and my overview, it allows you basically to
build your design system in code, and it's a great
developer tool, but it's also only developer tool, so it
(08:39):
doesn't allow any collaboration with designers product managers. Qtas is
basically only for developers, and I was looking for something
more holistically, and we interviewed the discord.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Server for it and they were like, yeah, amazing, do it.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
And then around two years ago we decided to quit
our job do it full time and.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Here we are today, awesome Lucas, so glad I could
understand the entire story behind widget book. I knew you
were adventurous, Like I said, I mean amazing story. And
I was also going to ask you about, I mean,
how you found your co founder. You already answered that question.
So it's for two years since you started, now, twenty
(09:24):
twenty two since you started.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
I mean the open source package is something that we
started around twenty twenty one already, but it wasn't full
time then, so back then we were still doing other
things on the side, and we then incorporated the company
in twenty two.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Great. So obviously you had a plan when you started
widget book, when you quitated jobs and jumped into this.
Has everything gone, asked per plan? Or how many times
have you had to start and stop and start art again?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I mean everyone is saying startup, it's like a roller coaster,
and I have to say, yeah, quite quite accurate. So
a lot of times. But the question is always, let's say,
how often you really have to throw anything away and
start fully fun scratch And fortunately, to that extent we
(10:29):
we didn't have to do it. But of course we
had a lot of stuff that we tried that didn't work,
but fortunately we had more stuff that that worked in
the end.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
That's why I'm I'm still sitting here and it can
talk to you about which book but two.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
In the end give you give you just uh some
examples for for us, for example, we we thought that
building the first paid version of widget books, so in
the end you also in the end you need to
have money to have food in your fridge and to
(11:12):
pay our rent, and building just an over source package
doesn't do the trick. And that's why for us it
was quite clear, okay, we have to come up with
a paid version of widget book. And what is quite
obvious to do for us is I mean, I already
told you you can build your own design system with
widget book, and you can just host the widget book
(11:33):
made accessible for everyone, so that also designers, create testers,
product managers, everyone can look at it.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
And just hosting is something you can also easily do yourself.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
And that's why we thought initially, okay, it might take
us quite long until we get the first revenue because
you can just host it yourself. But we very quickly
found out, okay, there are a lot of companies that
are just interested in hosting, they just don't want to
do it themselves. And that's why we were able to
(12:06):
capture some revenue a lot sooner than we expected, and
we were like, okay, great that to raise venture capital
and scaly immediately, and we did manage to raise venture
capital then quite quite soon basically to get to a
state where our customers were really happy with the cloud.
(12:27):
That then took a lot longer than we expected because
Justice hosting it's nice, but the current product so basically
now nearly two years in the future. Now the product
is great. Now our customers are really happy with it,
but it really took us some time to build the
features that our customers were actually looking for. And that's
(12:49):
why it's always kind of hard to predict. And so
whenever you're building something that didn't exist before, it's quite
difficult to predict how long will it take you to
build it versus if you're just building just now in
parenthesis here, if you're just building something that already just before,
(13:10):
if you're building just another app, and then you might
have the challenge of finding.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
A better business model.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
But for us, it was basically okay, the business model
is quite straightforward and also quite straightforward and finding customers
for it. It's really difficult to build it, and it
took longer.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Than expected for the Cloud awesome.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
So you've talked a little bit about you know, mentor
funding so to speaks. I mean, what stage of the
company are you in two years in I mean, did
you have to bootstrap and start the company and you
found funding along the way. I mean, you know, for
those people who are listening to this, I mean, what
sort of help do you need at all with any funding?
(13:53):
Funding at all? Reading a stand right now.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
So what we did, and.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
That is something that is specific for the country that
we started in, but I'm quite sure also exists in
other countries.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
In Germany, we can get government brands if.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
You're if you're starting out as as a young entrepreneur,
well for us, for example, in German it's called Germany,
it's called the Exist Founders Grant, And basically you're writing
a business plan for the idea that you're having, and
then you're submitting it. It gets approved or rejected, and
(14:35):
then you have enough money to fill your fridge and
pay your rent.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
But it's of course not.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Much money, so it doesn't get you any further than this.
But the great thing is if you're young, you don't
have much responsibilities. For me, for example, I didn't have children,
I didn't have a wife, I didn't have a mortgage
to pay, so it was it was good enough for me.
And then we basically had one year time so we
(15:05):
are three founders, and that grant allowed us to pay
ourselves a small salary and also to buy a MacBooks
with with with good performance to actually build a product
in a in a good enough way.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
And that's how we started out. But as I said,
might be different for other countries.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Awesome, man. I'm also assuming you don't put too much
in your fridge either, so you have a lot less
to buy in your flesh.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah, that's that's true, even though i'm as as you know,
I'm two meters tall or in a six feet six
so I actually have to eat a lot.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Awesome, So I know for a fact, Lucas, I mean
in the last two years, I mean, you know, you've
grown in confidence. Like you said, you know, you had
some stops and starts, and yesterday in floodat On your
presentation was a testament to your growth. You had three
live customers on the stage with you to talk about
(16:12):
how they're using bridget Book, the impact you had on
you know, their app development journey. Can you tell us
a little bit more about the growth you growth path
here on and what you're expecting to do before I
say the end of this year.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, happy, happy to share it.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
So I mean, first of all, you talked about the
presentation yesterday, and anyone here that is building their own tool,
I can highly recommend when you're giving a presentation at
some conference, bring customer literary stage. It gives not only
you and your team a great confidence boost and quite
(16:54):
a proud moment, but it also shows other potential customers
in the audience that what you're building is quite legit.
Because you, as a founder of course always biased and
will always say, yeah, my product is great. I mean,
no founder will ever go to stations with like, yeah,
my product is ship don't don't use it. But when
(17:15):
customers are saying it outside is they basically they're not
paid to do so in the end they are paying
you for for for the product that is.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
That is just more molegit. So quick tip here. But
other than that, I already.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Said that we have an open source package in the
core and our source package really made it in the
Flutter community. So our open source package is really popular.
So we have a few thousand companies that are using
the open source package to build their own design system,
and these are from the range from startups to enterprises.
(17:58):
Agencies do it as well. On every content the continent
and Wichi book is is being used so not only
in Europe, heavily in the US by big companies as well,
also in Asia, even in Africa. Basically every everywhere in
the world, whichibook is being used already in the over
source packet and then on the cloud. We also have
(18:23):
a lot of companies that already trust us there. And
the amazing thing here is in the past, which a
book was available in close beta, so you could sign
up for the access to wigi balalk Cloud, but you
had to answer eight questions and depending on how you
answer those questions, you either were allowed to already get
(18:45):
access to wigipook or not. And what Anthony mentioned, so
yesterday on stage I also could proudly announce that Wigi
book Cloud is now publicly generally available, so anyone can
now just go to the website, sign up for the
access to cloud and then sell on board and get
(19:06):
the excess. I mean, of course we're also happy to
help with democrats if you like, but no longer need it,
and that's why we're we will definitely see a lot
of growth now because a lot of companies that were not.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Able to try which Cloud in the past no fund we.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Can That is incredible. Yeah, I mean I could not
agree with you more about the fact that I mean,
you know you have a live customer testament on the stage.
I mean nothing can beat that.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Right.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
You can put all you want within double quotes on
the website, but having them in front of your prospects
in the audience and saying here are my happy customers. Uh,
that is that is really nicely done. So great story locas.
I mean, obviously as a CEO, you continue to think
(19:58):
about not just today, You've got to think about what's tomorrow,
what's the next six months, what's the next two years,
three years? So with that in mind, I mean, what
keeps you up at night? I know you do a
lot of outdoors to relax, or what what keeps you
up at night to keep visiting book going?
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Pretty much? What what doesn't keep you up at night?
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Right?
Speaker 3 (20:23):
So, in the end, as a as a CEO, you
like not everything is It's just nice because if you're
it's a regular employee, at some point at your day
you go home and then you can kind of turn
(20:45):
off your head, do something, do something else, and then
just come back.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
To work and your your boss might tell you, Okay,
these are the priorities. You can work on them.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Fine, But if something doesn't work at Widget Book, ultimately
it's it's my responsibility. So I can never escalate something
to someone else. So I mean, the great thing is
that I have I have amazing co founders and that
(21:13):
have their own areas of responsibility. So for example, something
is broken in the product, again, this doesn't come to
me and it's like Lucas, you need to fix it.
So that's something that's good where I have the ends
on the on the on the technical side, or Julius
with with finance and illegal but if there's issues with customers,
(21:33):
with investors, those things that in the end could potentially
kill the company, I would say unfortunately, but also fortunately
my my responsibility. So I am in the end in UH,
in charge and can can just not say if the
if the house is burning, yeah I don't care.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
I just go home that that doesn't work. And then
it's also a question of your or of your mindset.
How much UH do you care about about the the product,
the startup that you're building, how much are you caring
about your team?
Speaker 3 (22:12):
And for me the past two years, I've basically done
done nothing else than than than building widget Book.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
In the end, it's a huge time commitment that that
I've been having. And the people that are.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Working at the wigit Book also are really really close
to me. So these other people I've seen more than
anyone else in my in my life.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
And I really really really want to make this work.
And fortunately we are. We're on a good path.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
But there have also been times where I've got a
bit harder, and we also had to take difficult decisions
that were just necessary for for the business. So we
for example, also had to lay off employees where it
didn't work.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Culturely anymore.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
And Lisa, of course decisions that are necessary, but that
are the decison that you don't want to take. You know,
it's crucial for the business, but I would much rather
have enjoyed, i don't know two to go for workout
or to or to go outdoors than having to lay
(23:40):
off an employee for example.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah, So my next question was is going to build
on something you said, which is culture? Right, as a
super young entrepreneur and maybe with very little experience of
building the company, where did you draw inspiration from? What
sort of culture you wanted in the company? You know
how to keep everybody's moral high. And like you said,
(24:06):
I mean, if it's not a culture fit, I mean
you got to identify that quickly and fix that they
for it becomes a bigger problem. But I mean as
a CEO, I mean, what sort of culture did you
want to put together?
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yeah, so I think here you you don't get an
answer that that fits for for everyone. So I think
you just have to be authentic as a person and
in the end as a team. And so for for us,
for example, I mentioned I have I have two more
co founders, and I mentioned already is our CEO, and
(24:45):
then we also get Julius, and Julius and I already
know each other for what is it now, eight years,
So we basically started studying together the first day and
it immediately clicked. So we are very similar our personality wise.
With the ends it also clicked very very easily. So
(25:07):
we three get along really well. And for us it
was pretty much easy to work together personality wise, and
we were then just looking for people that are meeting
the same energy, shared the same values, and it was
something that was very important for us early on.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And then.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
A heck, and that might be an unpopular opinion, especially
along a tech audience, but I really believe in having
the team in office, especially in the early days, it
just helps a lot. And for for us, for example,
we after we reste our funding ground, which took the
(25:52):
decision of moving with the company to another city, so
we are we started in a smaller city in Germany,
but then we moved with the company to build in
and the main reason was it really allowed us to
have the team on site because to to get the
best talent in the flatter community, we decided to also
hire from abroad and we brought together an amazing team and.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Brilin was just more.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Attractive there and then we had the chance to for
having the team on board. And what also helped a
lot is that we also hired people that we we
knew before or that wemainly knew before.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
So by example, for.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Example, we got Aura, who is a good developer expert
for Flutter, has like twenty k follow us on Twitter,
so really a popular in the community as well, and
I knew her from a FATA conference, so I pretty
much how Anthony and we are talking about the photo
here right now. That's also I got to know Aura
(26:51):
and if you know the people already from some experiences before,
if you already had to beer with them, then you
might know immediately okay that can work or or can't work.
So that's why I would always suggest hiring people that
you know from some experiences before, or at least had
(27:16):
had recommendations from people that you know in trust, and
then try to spend as much time as possible in
person with these people, at least in the in the
early days, and at some point if the company's case,
of course go go even for remote but I think
having at least sometime with them in the office definitely helps.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
That's awesome, Lucas. I mean, obviously you got to have
your own personality and h you know, your your own
stamp stamp on it that you are thinking. But at
the same time, I mean you've you've also used kind
of rule books so to speak, on taking some best
practices and using some people have known well in the
(28:01):
community and manly in one bone. So it's kind of
a number of best practices so to speak.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Good.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Yeah, And the one thing that I that I'd also
like to add is that especially if you're if you're
a first time founder and you're raising munchie capital.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
I would really advise you to to not only go
for for the for the vcs, for the funds, but
also to the angel investors for your for your business
that can that can just help you with their with
their advice because these are experienced entrepreneurs, they really know
how to do stuff and and then build a close
(28:45):
relationship and with those investors. I mean when you select
them for your business, you already believe they could add
substantial value and you should of course challenge them before
they invest because they will be your ound for some time.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
It's easy to it's difficult to get them out. That's
why do your diligence there on the investors. But as
long as you do it, they are there to help.
After After the investors, you know you're they are even
monetarily incentivized to help you, and that also helped is
(29:23):
helping us.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Yeah, you bring up a great point, Lucas. I mean,
you know we spoke about culture on your team. From
my experience in the startup world, I mean, the culture
is super important for your investor community as well. You know,
if you have the wrong mindset with your investor community,
that can totally derail your day. And your job as well,
(29:46):
So that's a that's a super important point. And then
so last question for you, Lucas, I mean you're I
mean I already mentioned you're a young entrepreneur. You already
have a given a bunch of not gets two people
as advice. But if there's folks in college or anyone
thinking of starting a company, anything else you'd like to
(30:08):
add in terms of advice before they jump in to
start a company, just do it.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
So I think there it also depends on their personality.
So are there are people who are less or more
likely to overthink? And in the past I definitely try
to perfect things often and really try to always find
(30:41):
the best solution for something that's definitely not the way
to go. So unfortunately that changed and now I'm a
lot more like you know, eighty twenty So always twenty
percent effort can get eighty percent.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Done. I mean, of course there are situations where it
needs to be one hundred percent, but in the end,
you just need to try.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
And in the end, if you fail with something, then
try to fail rather quickly because then you can just
stand up and try again. And the great thing is,
if you're young, you already had that you don't have
any responsibilities, So there's.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Like there's no drawback in founding when you're young.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
So either it becomes successful and then you're already settled
very early in your life, or you and now in
parenthesis again you fail, but then you had a great experience. So,
especially if you're optimizing for for learning at a young age,
I think there's nothing else you can do to learn quicker,
(31:44):
and especially if you're if you managed to raise fastal capital,
you can learn from very experienced entrepreneurs then and also
usually startup founders support each.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Other a lot.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
So I'm super happy and great full that I have
amazing other startup friends where we like very openly sharing everything.
And of course in the end, you always have to
keep in mind that it's a lot more likely to
fail than to than to really succeed with it.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
So what then you just try again and uh And
in the end, I believe, if you're young, just do it.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
That is so cool, Lucus. I mean, I I I
have to say, I kind of guessed you were going
to say just do it, just just knowing you, so
I kind of preempted that that was coming. But what
an awesome episode Lucas. Thanks so much for sharing all
your insights today with the community here. It's startups, they'll say,
(32:54):
I will always be sharing for widget book, and I'll
be sure to give of everyone the details of widget
books website how they can reach out to you. All
of that, thanks so much for joining us, and for
those of you listening, thanks so much for listening. Thank
you
Speaker 2 (33:26):
M
Everyone, Welcome to a brand new episode of Startups Still Say,
hope you're all doing well. Today's episode I'm actually super
excited about because of the first episode be doing it
in person with our guests. And today's guest happens to
be Lucas Josephi from widget Book. He happens to be
(00:33):
someone whom I know for the last two years, someone
whom I've admired for doing his startup at a very
young age, took on a big risk and jumped in
into the world of startups. So we'll be talking to
Lucas today about his journey, what widget Book does, and
some of the inputs that he can share with the
(00:54):
world of startups. So Lucas, first of all, welcome to
Startups Still Say.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Thanks. I love for having me Anthony.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
It's a pleasure, So Lucas, so let's get things kicked off.
I mean, I know you for a couple of years now.
For those of you who don't know about the Flutter community,
Flutter is a technology or an open source framework from
Google which I used to be part of. I'm still
I am, and I ran into Lucas while we were
(01:27):
collaborating on with both of our companies, and I happen
to be here at a conference called flutter Con in Berlin.
Lucas was kind enough to be part of this particular
podcast and tell us about his journey. So, Lucas, I
know you as the CEO of widget Book. I know
you as this smart, exuberant CEO of a company, a
(01:49):
guy who loves outdoors from all your adventures in California
and here as well. And I know you'll like to
party a bit as well. But other than that, I
don't know anything else about you. So tell us a
little bit about yourself and maybe tell us about what
led you to start visit book as well.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah, happy, happy to share it. Thanks for the kind words.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
So, as you already said, I'm Lucas, co founder and
CEO of ridget Book.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I'm an entrepreneur and.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I'm really curious and in general about a lot of things.
I think that's curiosity and then led me into the
part of on the part of entrepreneurship. Other than that
I already mentioned, I really love to spend time outdoors
away from the laptop as well. Helps me to relax
(02:43):
and get a clear head. But to answer your question,
how I am got in the world of startups. How
I got through what I'm doing today is I was
inspired and mainly by my by my uncle and so
my ankle's not an entrepreneur, but he also took a
(03:04):
big risk because he moved with his family away from Germany.
So I'm originally from from Germany. My my uncle as well,
and he moved to Canada and with his family. I
think he was like his late twenties or early thirties,
twenty or something years ago. And then just when I
(03:24):
finished high school, I visited him in Canada and it
was an amazing experience being abroad really for the first time.
I spent a few weeks there, I had another internship
and the first time away from home, away from the family,
and so I could really see, okay, what kind of
other life you could also live. And then when I
(03:46):
started studying, and it was just very very quickly, Okay,
entrepreneurship is the path I am I really.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Like to go for. And so I actually have a
business background.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
So I studied international business, so business with like German,
English and French, so I had some languages with it
as well, and I didn't particularly like my studies too much.
It was it was good that you kind of learned
how to sell yourself and how to talk, but I
also wanted to at some point then have some real skills,
(04:20):
and that's why on the side.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
I also learned how to code.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
I have to say, I'm not the best developer, so
I can't get things to work. But I'm very happy
that today have a team that does it a lot better.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Than when I can.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
But very early in my studies, I founded the corporate startup,
which basically was a company that came to the university
and they had a challenge prepared for the students. So
what they did is I think they brought like twenty
people with twenty employees from that corporate, twenty students together
(04:54):
in one room and you had teams of fours always
two students and two people from the corporate and two
days of solving the challenge. And my team did quite well,
and I then gave a representation of what we did.
The corporate liked it a lot, and we're like, hey, Lucas,
would you like to help us on the project. I
was like, sure, let's do it didn't have much to lose,
(05:16):
and I was like eighteen nineteen years old. It actually
became quite successful in that in the corporate, and I
was very excited because we were supposed to get shares
as well and first handed sales. At some point we
had a webpap as well, and I was like curious.
I was like, sure, I learned hard the code A
bit can also build that WebP I suppose, and turned
(05:39):
out to work really well. I hold that corporate, but
unfortunately that corporate went into financial struggles which led to
the CEO being the CEO being fired. New CEO came
basically erased the entire board, and then it was decided
that all innovation projects that don't exist for more than
(06:06):
two years are going to be spinned into the company. Again,
not a spin off that I and also the team
was looking for, soa no shares. Instead, they offered me
quite a good compensation for that for that young age,
but I declined because I was like, no, I really
want to do my own stuff at that age.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
And I then started to build web apps because I
enjoyed doing it. And when I was at the startup,
and then.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I stumbled upon something that I like JavaScript developers, it
must be familiar with it. Suppose the storybook tas one
of the most popular packages in the JavaScript.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Or React each system.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
And at some point I then met today my C
my CTO and co found agains at basically the University
incubator and immediately clicked with quite a good connection, and
Yes told me about fluttery and YenS was super passionate
about flattery, basically predicted its going to be the Future's
gonna be huge, and I checked it out and I
(07:09):
was like, Yin's yeah, copy right, sounds sounds really interesting.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
And then we started building Flutter apps.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
And as I told you, I'm not the best developer,
so I always try to stick to the things I know.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
And there was no storybook for Flutter, so we first
of all the build it just for ourselves.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
And then at some point some of our web development
friends switched to Flutter as well, and they were like, hey,
lucas we build a storybook for flatter.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Can we share with us. We're like, sure, let's do it.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Let's oversource it, and we immediately build a Discord server
as well to support the few users that.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
We thought we're gonna we're gonna get.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Pretty much overnight, people kept swarming in the server and
we were like, oh, okay, it's something that not only we.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Need, but that also other people are looking forward to
to have.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
And then we started interviewing our discord server and asked them, Hey,
how would.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
You like us to improve the product for you? And
I immediately also had the idea of.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Building something more than just this source package around it
because storybook for everyone that is not familiar with it,
it allows you to catalog all of your widgets from
your website and my overview, it allows you basically to
build your design system in code, and it's a great
developer tool, but it's also only developer tool, so it
(08:39):
doesn't allow any collaboration with designers product managers. Qtas is
basically only for developers, and I was looking for something
more holistically, and we interviewed the discord.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Server for it and they were like, yeah, amazing, do it.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
And then around two years ago we decided to quit
our job do it full time and.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Here we are today, awesome Lucas, so glad I could
understand the entire story behind widget book. I knew you
were adventurous, Like I said, I mean amazing story. And
I was also going to ask you about, I mean,
how you found your co founder. You already answered that question.
So it's for two years since you started, now, twenty
(09:24):
twenty two since you started.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
I mean the open source package is something that we
started around twenty twenty one already, but it wasn't full
time then, so back then we were still doing other
things on the side, and we then incorporated the company
in twenty two.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Great. So obviously you had a plan when you started
widget book, when you quitated jobs and jumped into this.
Has everything gone, asked per plan? Or how many times
have you had to start and stop and start art again?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I mean everyone is saying startup, it's like a roller coaster,
and I have to say, yeah, quite quite accurate. So
a lot of times. But the question is always, let's say,
how often you really have to throw anything away and
start fully fun scratch And fortunately, to that extent we
(10:29):
we didn't have to do it. But of course we
had a lot of stuff that we tried that didn't work,
but fortunately we had more stuff that that worked in
the end.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
That's why I'm I'm still sitting here and it can
talk to you about which book but two.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
In the end give you give you just uh some
examples for for us, for example, we we thought that
building the first paid version of widget books, so in
the end you also in the end you need to
have money to have food in your fridge and to
(11:12):
pay our rent, and building just an over source package
doesn't do the trick. And that's why for us it
was quite clear, okay, we have to come up with
a paid version of widget book. And what is quite
obvious to do for us is I mean, I already
told you you can build your own design system with
widget book, and you can just host the widget book
(11:33):
made accessible for everyone, so that also designers, create testers,
product managers, everyone can look at it.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
And just hosting is something you can also easily do yourself.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
And that's why we thought initially, okay, it might take
us quite long until we get the first revenue because
you can just host it yourself. But we very quickly
found out, okay, there are a lot of companies that
are just interested in hosting, they just don't want to
do it themselves. And that's why we were able to
(12:06):
capture some revenue a lot sooner than we expected, and
we were like, okay, great that to raise venture capital
and scaly immediately, and we did manage to raise venture
capital then quite quite soon basically to get to a
state where our customers were really happy with the cloud.
(12:27):
That then took a lot longer than we expected because
Justice hosting it's nice, but the current product so basically
now nearly two years in the future. Now the product
is great. Now our customers are really happy with it,
but it really took us some time to build the
features that our customers were actually looking for. And that's
(12:49):
why it's always kind of hard to predict. And so
whenever you're building something that didn't exist before, it's quite
difficult to predict how long will it take you to
build it versus if you're just building just now in
parenthesis here, if you're just building something that already just before,
(13:10):
if you're building just another app, and then you might
have the challenge of finding.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
A better business model.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
But for us, it was basically okay, the business model
is quite straightforward and also quite straightforward and finding customers
for it. It's really difficult to build it, and it
took longer.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Than expected for the Cloud awesome.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
So you've talked a little bit about you know, mentor
funding so to speaks. I mean, what stage of the
company are you in two years in I mean, did
you have to bootstrap and start the company and you
found funding along the way. I mean, you know, for
those people who are listening to this, I mean, what
sort of help do you need at all with any funding?
(13:53):
Funding at all? Reading a stand right now.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
So what we did, and.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
That is something that is specific for the country that
we started in, but I'm quite sure also exists in
other countries.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
In Germany, we can get government brands if.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
You're if you're starting out as as a young entrepreneur,
well for us, for example, in German it's called Germany,
it's called the Exist Founders Grant, And basically you're writing
a business plan for the idea that you're having, and
then you're submitting it. It gets approved or rejected, and
(14:35):
then you have enough money to fill your fridge and
pay your rent.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
But it's of course not.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Much money, so it doesn't get you any further than this.
But the great thing is if you're young, you don't
have much responsibilities. For me, for example, I didn't have children,
I didn't have a wife, I didn't have a mortgage
to pay, so it was it was good enough for me.
And then we basically had one year time so we
(15:05):
are three founders, and that grant allowed us to pay
ourselves a small salary and also to buy a MacBooks
with with with good performance to actually build a product
in a in a good enough way.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
And that's how we started out. But as I said,
might be different for other countries.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Awesome, man. I'm also assuming you don't put too much
in your fridge either, so you have a lot less
to buy in your flesh.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah, that's that's true, even though i'm as as you know,
I'm two meters tall or in a six feet six
so I actually have to eat a lot.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Awesome, So I know for a fact, Lucas, I mean
in the last two years, I mean, you know, you've
grown in confidence. Like you said, you know, you had
some stops and starts, and yesterday in floodat On your
presentation was a testament to your growth. You had three
live customers on the stage with you to talk about
(16:12):
how they're using bridget Book, the impact you had on
you know, their app development journey. Can you tell us
a little bit more about the growth you growth path
here on and what you're expecting to do before I
say the end of this year.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, happy, happy to share it.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
So I mean, first of all, you talked about the
presentation yesterday, and anyone here that is building their own tool,
I can highly recommend when you're giving a presentation at
some conference, bring customer literary stage. It gives not only
you and your team a great confidence boost and quite
(16:54):
a proud moment, but it also shows other potential customers
in the audience that what you're building is quite legit.
Because you, as a founder of course always biased and
will always say, yeah, my product is great. I mean,
no founder will ever go to stations with like, yeah,
my product is ship don't don't use it. But when
(17:15):
customers are saying it outside is they basically they're not
paid to do so in the end they are paying
you for for for the product that is.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
That is just more molegit. So quick tip here. But
other than that, I already.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Said that we have an open source package in the
core and our source package really made it in the
Flutter community. So our open source package is really popular.
So we have a few thousand companies that are using
the open source package to build their own design system,
and these are from the range from startups to enterprises.
(17:58):
Agencies do it as well. On every content the continent
and Wichi book is is being used so not only
in Europe, heavily in the US by big companies as well,
also in Asia, even in Africa. Basically every everywhere in
the world, whichibook is being used already in the over
source packet and then on the cloud. We also have
(18:23):
a lot of companies that already trust us there. And
the amazing thing here is in the past, which a
book was available in close beta, so you could sign
up for the access to wigi balalk Cloud, but you
had to answer eight questions and depending on how you
answer those questions, you either were allowed to already get
(18:45):
access to wigipook or not. And what Anthony mentioned, so
yesterday on stage I also could proudly announce that Wigi
book Cloud is now publicly generally available, so anyone can
now just go to the website, sign up for the
access to cloud and then sell on board and get
(19:06):
the excess. I mean, of course we're also happy to
help with democrats if you like, but no longer need it,
and that's why we're we will definitely see a lot
of growth now because a lot of companies that were not.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Able to try which Cloud in the past no fund we.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Can That is incredible. Yeah, I mean I could not
agree with you more about the fact that I mean,
you know you have a live customer testament on the stage.
I mean nothing can beat that.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Right.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
You can put all you want within double quotes on
the website, but having them in front of your prospects
in the audience and saying here are my happy customers. Uh,
that is that is really nicely done. So great story locas.
I mean, obviously as a CEO, you continue to think
(19:58):
about not just today, You've got to think about what's tomorrow,
what's the next six months, what's the next two years,
three years? So with that in mind, I mean, what
keeps you up at night? I know you do a
lot of outdoors to relax, or what what keeps you
up at night to keep visiting book going?
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Pretty much? What what doesn't keep you up at night?
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Right?
Speaker 3 (20:23):
So, in the end, as a as a CEO, you
like not everything is It's just nice because if you're
it's a regular employee, at some point at your day
you go home and then you can kind of turn
(20:45):
off your head, do something, do something else, and then
just come back.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
To work and your your boss might tell you, Okay,
these are the priorities. You can work on them.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Fine, But if something doesn't work at Widget Book, ultimately
it's it's my responsibility. So I can never escalate something
to someone else. So I mean, the great thing is
that I have I have amazing co founders and that
(21:13):
have their own areas of responsibility. So for example, something
is broken in the product, again, this doesn't come to
me and it's like Lucas, you need to fix it.
So that's something that's good where I have the ends
on the on the on the technical side, or Julius
with with finance and illegal but if there's issues with customers,
(21:33):
with investors, those things that in the end could potentially
kill the company, I would say unfortunately, but also fortunately
my my responsibility. So I am in the end in UH,
in charge and can can just not say if the
if the house is burning, yeah I don't care.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
I just go home that that doesn't work. And then
it's also a question of your or of your mindset.
How much UH do you care about about the the product,
the startup that you're building, how much are you caring
about your team?
Speaker 3 (22:12):
And for me the past two years, I've basically done
done nothing else than than than building widget Book.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
In the end, it's a huge time commitment that that
I've been having. And the people that are.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Working at the wigit Book also are really really close
to me. So these other people I've seen more than
anyone else in my in my life.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
And I really really really want to make this work.
And fortunately we are. We're on a good path.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
But there have also been times where I've got a
bit harder, and we also had to take difficult decisions
that were just necessary for for the business. So we
for example, also had to lay off employees where it
didn't work.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Culturely anymore.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
And Lisa, of course decisions that are necessary, but that
are the decison that you don't want to take. You know,
it's crucial for the business, but I would much rather
have enjoyed, i don't know two to go for workout
or to or to go outdoors than having to lay
(23:40):
off an employee for example.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah, So my next question was is going to build
on something you said, which is culture? Right, as a
super young entrepreneur and maybe with very little experience of
building the company, where did you draw inspiration from? What
sort of culture you wanted in the company? You know
how to keep everybody's moral high. And like you said,
(24:06):
I mean, if it's not a culture fit, I mean
you got to identify that quickly and fix that they
for it becomes a bigger problem. But I mean as
a CEO, I mean, what sort of culture did you
want to put together?
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yeah, so I think here you you don't get an
answer that that fits for for everyone. So I think
you just have to be authentic as a person and
in the end as a team. And so for for us,
for example, I mentioned I have I have two more
co founders, and I mentioned already is our CEO, and
(24:45):
then we also get Julius, and Julius and I already
know each other for what is it now, eight years,
So we basically started studying together the first day and
it immediately clicked. So we are very similar our personality wise.
With the ends it also clicked very very easily. So
(25:07):
we three get along really well. And for us it
was pretty much easy to work together personality wise, and
we were then just looking for people that are meeting
the same energy, shared the same values, and it was
something that was very important for us early on.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And then.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
A heck, and that might be an unpopular opinion, especially
along a tech audience, but I really believe in having
the team in office, especially in the early days, it
just helps a lot. And for for us, for example,
we after we reste our funding ground, which took the
(25:52):
decision of moving with the company to another city, so
we are we started in a smaller city in Germany,
but then we moved with the company to build in
and the main reason was it really allowed us to
have the team on site because to to get the
best talent in the flatter community, we decided to also
hire from abroad and we brought together an amazing team and.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Brilin was just more.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Attractive there and then we had the chance to for
having the team on board. And what also helped a
lot is that we also hired people that we we
knew before or that wemainly knew before.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
So by example, for.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Example, we got Aura, who is a good developer expert
for Flutter, has like twenty k follow us on Twitter,
so really a popular in the community as well, and
I knew her from a FATA conference, so I pretty
much how Anthony and we are talking about the photo
here right now. That's also I got to know Aura
(26:51):
and if you know the people already from some experiences before,
if you already had to beer with them, then you
might know immediately okay that can work or or can't work.
So that's why I would always suggest hiring people that
you know from some experiences before, or at least had
(27:16):
had recommendations from people that you know in trust, and
then try to spend as much time as possible in
person with these people, at least in the in the
early days, and at some point if the company's case,
of course go go even for remote but I think
having at least sometime with them in the office definitely helps.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
That's awesome, Lucas. I mean, obviously you got to have
your own personality and h you know, your your own
stamp stamp on it that you are thinking. But at
the same time, I mean you've you've also used kind
of rule books so to speak, on taking some best
practices and using some people have known well in the
(28:01):
community and manly in one bone. So it's kind of
a number of best practices so to speak.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Good.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Yeah, And the one thing that I that I'd also
like to add is that especially if you're if you're
a first time founder and you're raising munchie capital.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
I would really advise you to to not only go
for for the for the vcs, for the funds, but
also to the angel investors for your for your business
that can that can just help you with their with
their advice because these are experienced entrepreneurs, they really know
how to do stuff and and then build a close
(28:45):
relationship and with those investors. I mean when you select
them for your business, you already believe they could add
substantial value and you should of course challenge them before
they invest because they will be your ound for some time.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
It's easy to it's difficult to get them out. That's
why do your diligence there on the investors. But as
long as you do it, they are there to help.
After After the investors, you know you're they are even
monetarily incentivized to help you, and that also helped is
(29:23):
helping us.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Yeah, you bring up a great point, Lucas. I mean,
you know we spoke about culture on your team. From
my experience in the startup world, I mean, the culture
is super important for your investor community as well. You know,
if you have the wrong mindset with your investor community,
that can totally derail your day. And your job as well,
(29:46):
So that's a that's a super important point. And then
so last question for you, Lucas, I mean you're I
mean I already mentioned you're a young entrepreneur. You already
have a given a bunch of not gets two people
as advice. But if there's folks in college or anyone
thinking of starting a company, anything else you'd like to
(30:08):
add in terms of advice before they jump in to
start a company, just do it.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
So I think there it also depends on their personality.
So are there are people who are less or more
likely to overthink? And in the past I definitely try
to perfect things often and really try to always find
(30:41):
the best solution for something that's definitely not the way
to go. So unfortunately that changed and now I'm a
lot more like you know, eighty twenty So always twenty
percent effort can get eighty percent.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Done. I mean, of course there are situations where it
needs to be one hundred percent, but in the end,
you just need to try.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
And in the end, if you fail with something, then
try to fail rather quickly because then you can just
stand up and try again. And the great thing is,
if you're young, you already had that you don't have
any responsibilities, So there's.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Like there's no drawback in founding when you're young.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
So either it becomes successful and then you're already settled
very early in your life, or you and now in
parenthesis again you fail, but then you had a great experience. So,
especially if you're optimizing for for learning at a young age,
I think there's nothing else you can do to learn quicker,
(31:44):
and especially if you're if you managed to raise fastal capital,
you can learn from very experienced entrepreneurs then and also
usually startup founders support each.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Other a lot.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
So I'm super happy and great full that I have
amazing other startup friends where we like very openly sharing everything.
And of course in the end, you always have to
keep in mind that it's a lot more likely to
fail than to than to really succeed with it.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
So what then you just try again and uh And
in the end, I believe, if you're young, just do it.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
That is so cool, Lucus. I mean, I I I
have to say, I kind of guessed you were going
to say just do it, just just knowing you, so
I kind of preempted that that was coming. But what
an awesome episode Lucas. Thanks so much for sharing all
your insights today with the community here. It's startups, they'll say,
(32:54):
I will always be sharing for widget book, and I'll
be sure to give of everyone the details of widget
books website how they can reach out to you. All
of that, thanks so much for joining us, and for
those of you listening, thanks so much for listening. Thank
you
Speaker 2 (33:26):
M
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