Lucas Josefiak - Co-founder & CEO, Widgetbook

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 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

Thanks. I love for having me Anthony.

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 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

Yeah, happy, happy to share it. Thanks for the kind words.

So, as you already said, I'm Lucas, co founder and CEO of ridget Book.

I'm an entrepreneur and.

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 and get a clear head. But to answer your question,

Like to go for. And so I actually have a business background.

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, and that's why on the side.

I also learned how to code.

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.

Than when I can.

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 in one room and you had teams of fours always two students and two people from the corporate and two

And I then started to build web apps because I enjoyed doing it. And when I was at the startup, and then.

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.

Or React each system.

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 was like, Yin's yeah, copy right, sounds sounds really interesting.

And then we started building Flutter apps.

And as I told you, I'm not the best developer, so I always try to stick to the things I know.

And there was no storybook for Flutter, so we first of all the build it just for ourselves.

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.

Can we share with us. We're like, sure, let's do it.

Let's oversource it, and we immediately build a Discord server as well to support the few users that.

We thought we're gonna we're gonna get.

Pretty much overnight, people kept swarming in the server and we were like, oh, okay, it's something that not only we.

Need, but that also other people are looking forward to to have.

And then we started interviewing our discord server and asked them, Hey, how would.

You like us to improve the product for you? And I immediately also had the idea of.

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

Server for it and they were like, yeah, amazing, do it.

And then around two years ago we decided to quit our job do it full time and.

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 twenty two since you started.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

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.

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?

Yeah?

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 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.

That's why I'm I'm still sitting here and it can talk to you about which book but two.

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 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

And just hosting is something you can also easily do yourself.

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

A better business model.

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.

Than expected for the Cloud awesome.

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? Funding at all? Reading a stand right now.

So what we did, and.

That is something that is specific for the country that we started in, but I'm quite sure also exists in other countries.

In Germany, we can get government brands if.

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 then you have enough money to fill your fridge and pay your rent.

But it's of course not.

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 that's how we started out. But as I said, might be different for other countries.

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.

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.

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 how they're using bridget Book, the impact you had on

Yeah, happy, happy to share it.

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 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

That is just more molegit. So quick tip here. But other than that, I already.

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. 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,

Able to try which Cloud in the past no fund we.

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.

Right.

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 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

Pretty much? What what doesn't keep you up at night?

Right?

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 off your head, do something, do something else, and then just come back.

To work and your your boss might tell you, Okay, these are the priorities. You can work on them.

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 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.

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?

And for me the past two years, I've basically done done nothing else than than than building widget Book.

In the end, it's a huge time commitment that that I've been having. And the people that are.

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.

And I really really really want to make this work. And fortunately we are. We're on a good path.

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.

Culturely anymore.

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 off an employee for example.

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, I mean, if it's not a culture fit, I mean you got to identify that quickly and fix that they

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 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

And then.

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

Brilin was just more.

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.

So by example, for.

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 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.

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 community and manly in one bone. So it's kind of a number of best practices so to speak.

Good.

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.

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

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 helping us.

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, So that's a that's a super important point. And then so last question for you, Lucas, I mean you're I

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 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.

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.

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.

Like there's no drawback in founding when you're young.

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, 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.

Other a lot.

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.

So what then you just try again and uh And in the end, I believe, if you're young, just do it.

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, I will always be sharing for widget book, and I'll be sure to give of everyone the details of widget

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