Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
I am excited to introduce today's guest to you.
He is the founder of Metalab and Flow.
Metalab is a design agency that he founded when he was just 20 years old and has grown it into a business with over 60 employees.
And Metalab is also the design team behind Slack, which is now valued at $2.8 billion.
And Flow is a task management SaaS application for teams, which is used by companies like Etsy, Tesla, Adobe, and ted.
In this episode we talk about how my guest turned Metalab into a multimillion dollar design agency.
How he met and partnered with Stuart Butterfield, the founder of Slack.
How he's built not one, but three multimillion dollar businesses, how he learned to manage his anxiety and has used that to actually drive himself, and the advice that his father gave him which forced him to start growing his business.
And with that, let's bring on my guest who is Andrew Wilkinson.
Andrew, welcome to the show.
Andrew Wilkinson (01:38.780)
Thanks for having me, Omar.
Happy to be here.
Omer (01:41.420)
Now, I gave the audience a brief overview of your product and business, but tell us a little bit more about yourself personally.
Who is Andrew when he's not working?
Andrew Wilkinson (01:50.090)
Oh, God.
When I'm not working, I'm actually pretty boring.
I'm 30, 30 going on 60.
So I wake up in the morning, I go to the same cafe.
I read the New York Times.
I check my email.
Oh, God.
I read quite a bit.
I meditate.
I just started meditating.
Been really enjoying that lately.
But yeah, I don't do a lot.
I don't like traveling very much.
I live in Victoria, Canada, which is like a small, kind of a sleepy little city.
And I really enjoy it.
I live a quiet life.
Yeah.
Omer (02:28.290)
And we're just down the road from each other.
So Seattle isn't that far from you.
Andrew Wilkinson (02:31.370)
Yeah, absolutely.
Omer (02:32.330)
So I'm curious, what made you decide to start meditating?
Andrew Wilkinson (02:36.330)
Well, I'm generally kind of an anxious person, so, like, if I'm left to my own devices, I'll kind of ruminate and obsess about all the things I could or should be doing or should have done differently.
And I'd always heard about meditation and kind of dismissed it as like some hippie dippy thing.
But over the last couple years, I started reading.
There's suddenly all this really great science that's come out over the last couple years about meditation that actually shows that people who meditate, you know, have more gray matter in their brains and, you know, all sorts of positive things about attention and focus.
And so I figured I'd try it.
And I was very skeptical, but I downloaded this really great guided meditation app called Headspace and I just started doing it.
It starts you off doing it five minutes a day, and then you work your way up.
And now I'm at about 30 minutes a day.
And I found that it has enabled me to kind of get myself out of negative thought patterns.
So let's say I wake up and I check my email and I see an email that triggers something for me.
You know, oh, God, I need to deal with this and this or something bad is going to happen.
And, and I'm even, you know, let's say I get in the shower and I've got my brains running a mile a minute.
I can actually pull myself out of that.
Whereas previously I would have kind of descended into, you know, a big pile of stress and for no reason spent, you know, what could have otherwise been an enjoyable couple hours ruminating and worrying about something that's, that's interesting.
Omer (04:09.150)
I actually started meditating about a year ago and have been pretty consistent about 20 minutes every, every day.
I think I've only missed two days in the last year.
Andrew Wilkinson (04:19.380)
Oh, wow, you're better than me.
Omer (04:22.340)
I would say it's one of the best things that, that I ever did.
And I think I was like you as well in terms of very skeptical about it.
Didn't really, you know, see the, the benefits, even though I heard a lot of people talking about it.
But for me, I think it's just same as you.
It's just, just sort of really discovering some of the neuroscience behind it.
I don't know, it just almost kind of validated it for me that it was something that it wasn't just some new age thing.
There was, there was a lot of science behind it as well.
Andrew Wilkinson (04:53.440)
Totally.
And I, I, I read a great book by Dan Harris.
He's a, I don't know if you know him, but he's a, I think he was on like, CBS or NBC and he was a, like a talking head news anchor.
And he had a panic attack live on the air and took a leave of absence and, and discovered meditation and same kind of thing.
Very skeptical.
But he wrote this hilarious book called 10% happier, which I also read.
And that's, I would say that's a really great description of meditation.
Like, it really does.
It's not going to make you a million times happier.
It'll just make you a little bit happier, just a little more focused, a little bit more content.
So, yeah, I love it.
Omer (05:34.310)
Now, we like to kick things off with a success quote to better understand what drives and motivates our guests.
Now, I know you're not necessarily a quotes guy, so just tell me a little bit about what.
What drives or motivates you, what gets you out of bed to do what you do.
Andrew Wilkinson (05:51.390)
So when I was, like, in my early 20s, I was very much one of those, I want to.
I want to, you know, put a dent in the universe.
I want to do something big kind of people.
And like I said, I'm kind of.
I'm kind of anxious.
And I found that it kind of.
It drove me obsessively to build my business, and it was probably beneficial.
But since then, I've kind of changed my thinking where I've realized that, for me personally, at least, I don't really care about being a billionaire or being the next Steve Jobs or changing the world.
What I really care about is spending my time around people who I care for and enjoy being around and doing work that I really enjoy.
So, again, I'm kind of boring in that way.
A lot of entrepreneurs are obsessed with changing the world and doing big things.
For me, it really comes down to making myself and the people around me happy.
And so, for me, my idea of success is that I get to spend my time doing things that I enjoy, and that I get to employ and work with phenomenally intelligent, interesting, smart people who I enjoy spending time with, and I get to build really great products and services.
That's kind of what I love doing.
Omer (07:09.640)
So let's talk about Metalab.
You started that business when you were 20 years old.
And if I understand the story correctly, it started with an argument with your boss at the time.
Andrew Wilkinson (07:26.040)
That's right, yeah.
So I'll rewind a little bit and I'll give you the full, full story.
But basically, when I was in high school, my father announced that we were moving to Victoria.
I was living in Vancouver at the time.
And Victoria, as I mentioned before, it's a bit of a small city, and so it's a little bit like moving from New York out to Westchester or the suburbs or whatever.
And I was not very excited about that.
But we moved, and I didn't.
We moved in this one summer.
I spent my entire summer just on my computer.
Like, I didn't really know anybody in the city.
I hadn't made any friends yet, School hadn't started and so I'd always been really interested in technology and I really just dug into building websites.
I started teaching myself HTML and Expression Engine and some of these old content management systems.
And I ended up deciding that I was going to build a tech news site.
And I paired up with a guy from Hawaii who is also, you know, another 15 year old.
And we started this really, really nerdy website called Mac Teens.
And it was technology news by teenage Mac users for anyone basically.
And I never really thought it would turn into anything, but we started posting news and reviews of products and stuff and suddenly we started getting attention all over the web.
And so I was getting products sent to my house.
Like I would get the newest ipod sent and I would review it.
And for me I just thought I was living the dream.
I was getting free free tech stuff every day.
I got to go to the Macworld conference, I got to interview Steve Jobs.
So I had this really amazing experience at age, you know, 15 to 18 in tech.
And, and when I graduated high school, my dad said, you need to go to university, what are you going to do?
And when I look back on what I was doing, I was really managing a business.
So I had like a team of writers.
I was on the phone selling ads.
You know, my voice was cracking and I had acne all over my face.
But nonetheless I was selling ads to CEOs of tech companies.
And I figured that I was doing journalism.
That seemed like the most similar thing to what I was doing.
In retrospect.
I was running a business, but I didn't quite realize that.
And so I ended up going to journalism school for university.
And pretty much on the first day of school I realized I'd made a huge mistake.
My professors were all journalists and they all kind of said this is a wonderful career, but, but it's a really tough road.
If you want to make money, this is not the place to be.
It's a dying industry.
The newspapers are getting smaller and they kind of painted this very negative picture where I figured I was going to have to go and write hard news up somewhere in Alaska or something like that at some small town paper for 10 years to cut my teeth.
And so it was very different from what I had imagined.
I ended up dropping out, moving back home, feeling very dejected.
And I'd given away this website so I wasn't involved with it anymore.
And I was living in my parents basement and I just kind of had this like existential crisis.
I was trying to figure out what to do.
And I ended up picking up my bootstraps and getting back back at it.
And I got a job doing it was data entry for a small web development company here in Victoria.
And like, I am the worst employee ever.
Like, I was.
I was not very detail oriented.
I was literally filling out every.
So every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I would go through the local grocery store's brochure and I would manually have to fill it all out into their website.
So it was this very monotonous, dull job.
And one day my boss calls me over and he says, look, you know what?
You're a nice guy, we like you, but you keep making errors.
Like, this isn't really working out.
Either you need to shape up or you need to leave.
And I said to him, like, look, I think I could be a great designer.
I could be a great developer.
Can I do that instead?
And he just kind of said, you know what?
The job's the job.
And I thought, you know, fair enough.
But I walked out of there feeling kind of excited about it until I realized that I had $200 in my bank account.
And I immediately started scrambling because I realized that it would take me quite a while if I was going to go get a good job.
I was going to go to Google or Apple or a tech startup or something like that.
It was going to take me months to land a job.
And so I ended up going on to a whole bunch of, like, freelance job boards and making posts there and thinking like, I just contract while I look for a new job.
And I knew that if I pretended to be a legitimate business, like a design agency, I could probably charge like twice as much for my work.
And so Instead of charging $15 an hour, I charged $30 an hour, which I thought was totally crazy at the time.
And I came up with the name Metalab.
And I kept saying, we.
So yes, my team and I, and we can work on this.
And to my surprise, I managed to land three clients within the first month.
And within about a month and a half, I was making like four or five times the amount I had been making at this data entry job.
And I was just thinking, this is the best thing in the world.
And so I took that early momentum working with small startups and just kept growing from there.
And nine years later, like you said in the Intro, we have 60, 60 people.
We've worked with companies like Apple, Google, Disney, Walmart, you name it, as well as companies that are formerly formerly startups and now billion dollar companies like Slack and Coinbase.
So it's been a pretty wild ride.
Omer (13:35.110)
And Metalab now is a multimillion dollar business, right?
Andrew Wilkinson (13:38.470)
Yeah.
Omer (13:40.230)
And I think people should know that it's not the only million dollar plus business that you've created.
Right?
It's just one of them.
Andrew Wilkinson (13:48.070)
Yeah.
So I've started in a bunch of different businesses.
So basically when I first started Metalab, I very quickly realized that I was really enjoying building web apps.
But when I was doing client work, I often felt like I would have an idea for the product and my client would have a different idea and I would have to listen to the client.
It's their money and I'd fight for it, but ultimately it was their decision.
And so early on I decided I really liked the idea of making my own software.
And so after a couple years, I started working on my first SaaS product.
It's called Ballpark, it's actually still out today.
And it was like an invoicing and estimates product.
We basically found that as the business was growing, we were getting so much interest that managing just the number of quotes and estimates and proposals we're sending out was becoming very challenging.
And so we built a really simple SaaS product to manage that process.
We added invoicing and time tracking and that turned into a great little business.
And then we also started flow in 2011, which is like task management for teams.
And then I also started a business called Pixel Union, which was the first, I think we were the first people to build themes in Tumblr's premium theme store.
We did very well there.
And then we also still build e commerce templates for Shopify.
We do stuff for WordPress.
Basically, if you want to build an e commerce store, it's the best place to go and get a theme.
I've also done quite a bit of angel investing and invested in about 15 companies.
And even locally here in Victoria, I've invested in a brewery and a bunch of other fun projects.
So I've done a bunch of stuff.
Omer (15:38.640)
So going back to the early days, you got yourself some initial clients.
Where did you go next?
What was.
And this was just you by yourself at this point, right?
You hadn't hired anyone to help you do the work when you got these clients, or did you?
Andrew Wilkinson (15:59.730)
Well, it's just me probably for the first month and a half.
And then I hired my friend Luke to help me with JavaScript and front end.
And for the first five, for three or four years, it was just me and a couple contractors here and there.
Omer (16:15.190)
Okay.
And when I was doing the research for this interview, I came across something, some advice that your father had given you about hiring people.
Can you talk a little bit about that and how that kind of, I guess, lit a fire under you?
Andrew Wilkinson (16:33.030)
Totally.
So when I was first starting out, I remember my dad's always kind of been my, like, business confidant.
He had run a couple of businesses and had a bit of experience with that.
And so when I was first thinking about hiring people, I was looking at the idea of having a payroll.
And it really freaked me out because the business was very new and, you know, suddenly I was going to have people who were reliant on me for a paycheck.
Some of them had families.
You know, it was a really scary thing.
And so I, I went to my dad and his advice was just do it because it's going to force you to grow this business.
If you have a payroll and you have people relying on you, you have no other option but to grow it.
And so, yeah, literally put a fire under my ass.
And I give people that advice all the time today.
I think that one of the major things that holds a lot of creative services and agencies back is that their founders, they try and hold on to too much control and do everything themselves instead of building a team around themselves, often because they're scared of the idea of having so many people reliant on them.
Omer (17:42.590)
Okay, so how many years were you operating Metalab before you felt like you were getting some serious traction and you had a real, real business here?
Andrew Wilkinson (17:53.950)
Well, it's kind of, it's been a process of, you know, every year at the end of the year I'll look at our financial statements and go, what the heck?
How did this become like a multimillion dollar business?
At first it was, oh my God, how did I do $60,000 this year and then 250 and then a million and then up and up and up.
And so it's been a kind of slow progression.
I mean, I've been in business for nine years and so it's never the overnight success that everyone thinks it is.
It takes a long time and it's just slow and steady growth.
Omer (18:29.800)
Let's talk about the work that you did with Slack.
Can you tell me a little bit about how you got involved there?
Andrew Wilkinson (18:41.480)
Yeah.
So Stuart Butterfield, who's one of the co founders of Flickr, is actually from Victoria.
And so my dad had worked with his dad before and I think he'd been aware of us.
And I just got an email from him out of the blue.
Slack has offices in Vancouver, so they're nearby.
And he heard that we were talented, I guess, and fired us an email one day.
I always love when people ask us, you know, how did you land X client or Y client?
Because often they imagine like some sort of like Don Draper in Mad Men pitching, you know, going in for the big pitch.
Often we just get emails.
We'll get a one line email that says, hey, I like what you guys are doing.
Let's work together.
And it's usually that simple.
So we met with Stuart and we talked to him about what he was working on and thought it sounded cool.
And we, we engaged and it was great.
Omer (19:37.140)
And so.
So when you hooked up with Stuart, Slack was just an idea, right?
I mean, he just had some, I guess, some sketches or some wireframes or something.
Where was he with the business at the time?
Andrew Wilkinson (19:48.150)
So he'd gone off and he'd raised a bunch of money from Excel and some other people and he had started a game called Glitch, which is like a.
It was a browser based massive multiplayer game and it had failed.
And so when he came to us, as far as I knew, he was still working on the game.
And he basically came to us and said, hey, look, you know, I'm shutting down this game.
I'm working on something new.
And it's a team communication app.
And when he said it was chat, my eyebrows kind of went up.
Cause I kind of felt like it had been done before.
Like we had used Campfire and Hipchat for years and I wasn't really sure how he was going to innovate on it.
I knew we would have a big challenge if we were the ones to design it.
But I really didn't realize what he was sitting on.
There was a big opportunity there.
I mean, obviously now it's valued at 2.8 billion.
But when we first talked to him, he had a very, very early prototype and it basically just looked like a really lo fi version of Campfire in the browser.
So it's just like a simple hacked together prototype.
Omer (21:00.070)
And then you guys, your team designed and built the first version of Slash.
Andrew Wilkinson (21:05.310)
No, so we didn't build any of it.
We just designed it all.
Omer (21:08.210)
Got it.
Andrew Wilkinson (21:08.570)
Okay, so we did the, we did a lot, actually.
We did more than we would typically do for a lot of people.
We ended up doing the branding, we did the marketing site, we did the web app and the mobile app.
And you know, if you look at the product today, it's very clearly an iteration off of what we've done.
Like A lot of it has been unchanged, so it's been a very successful project for us.
Omer (21:34.600)
Yeah.
Are you still involved with those guys?
Andrew Wilkinson (21:36.680)
No, we're not involved anymore.
Omer (21:38.360)
Yeah, I was wondering what was going on there.
I mean, I'm surprised they didn't try to assimilate you guys into the company or something and keep you there, but.
Okay.
So, you know, I think it's a really interesting story of how, you know, you kind of decided to leave your job, build out this.
This business and.
And how it's grown and.
And become this.
This incredible success.
I mean, admittedly, not overnight.
As you said, it's taken nine years to get there, but even then, I think a lot of people listening to this are going to be thinking it sounds too easy.
Andrew Wilkinson (22:25.570)
Right?
Omer (22:26.130)
I mean, yeah, you know, you had sort of incremental growth each year, but sort of looking back, what were some of the hard times for you?
What were some of the times where maybe as you talked about being anxious, that you felt that anxiety or maybe was there a time where you just wanted to give up?
Andrew Wilkinson (22:46.390)
I don't think I've ever hit a point where I felt like I wanted to give up, because to me, giving up was going and working for someone else, and I knew how that had worked out for me.
Obviously, I'd get a better job than data entry, hopefully.
But to me, giving up was going and working for Google or Facebook or something like that.
Not to say they aren't both amazing organizations with great design teams, but I'm just not really programmed to wake up in the morning and work for someone else.
We've had a couple rough patches for sure.
I think anyone that's in design services will tell you that it's a very chunky business.
So you're either you either have too much work and you can't scale fast enough, or you are in a complete rut where you've overhiered and you don't have enough work for your team.
And so it's very up and down and it moves around quickly.
And so the highs are high and the lows are low.
We've been very lucky because we diversified the business, so we've felt a lot less of that.
One of the hardest times I can remember was in 2008.
We were working with a bunch of clients, and suddenly the rug got pulled out from the economy.
The stock market tanked by what, 40% or something?
And suddenly in November 2008, suddenly no one wanted to pay their invoice.
Suddenly everyone was really unhappy with the work.
Suddenly everyone wanted their deposits back and no one was paying.
And so I had a couple months there where I went into, oh, my God, time to buy potatoes and stick them under the floorboards, good times are over, all that kind of stuff.
So I've been through that experience before, but to be perfectly honest, I think I've been incredibly lucky.
I mean, I've made tactical misfires, strategic misfires, but I wouldn't say that I've ever actually been through a really, really challenging time in the business.
You know, we've had like, difficult employees before and stuff like that.
But I don't have one of those stories where, you know, we were on the brink of destruction and I went out and took $100,000 line of credit and saved the business.
I've operated quite conservatively over the last nine years.
Omer (25:05.300)
All right, that was part one of the interview with Andrew Wilkinson of Metalab and Flow.
