IAM2565 – CEO Leads #1 Rated Headless CMS Platform in the World

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Dominik Angerer Teaser 00:00

So, we started building this prototype with the idea of allowing our customers to tell a story with reusable content modules, content blocks, right?

So, with those storytelling, with custom blocks, Storyblok was basically created because our idea was like, hey, you build up your Lego blocks, or basically your company sections or website sections.

And you can completely customize them with any technology in the market. That's what headless stands for. That you can really use the API and just get the data and use any technology.

Intro 00:34

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 01:01

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. And I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Dominik Angerer. Dominik, excited to have you on the show.

Dominik Angerer 01:09

Likewise. Thank you so much for having me.

Gresham Harkless 01:11

Yes, I'm super excited to have you on. And Dominik's doing so many phenomenal things that I'm super excited to kind of dive in and hear a little bit more about those awesome things.

And of course, the awesome things that he's been doing. But of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Dominik so you can hear about some of those awesome things.

And Dominik is the CEO and co-founder of Storyblok. For reference, Storyblok is the headless CMS category leader with clients that include Tesla, Netflix, Pizza Hut, and Adidas.

Storyblok is the number one rated headless CMS platform in the world. Dominik began working as a software developer at the age of 15 and soon launched a freelance consultant career with tech companies across Europe, including the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Austria.

By 19, he was leading teams focused on scaling e-commerce businesses. They identified widespread content challenges among clients.

Dominik and his co-founder co-founded Storyblok, a content management platform, in 2017. They bootstrapped it from two people to $1 million in annual recurring revenue by 2020.

Storyblok later raised $58 million in revenue venture funding, and last year, they closed a series C round of 80 million.

The company has since grown to 230 employees serving 200,000 customers in 130 countries as a fully remote organization.

What I really loved when I was preparing for this is that everything Dominik's been doing has been absolutely awesome.

They started out as a remote company, first approached from what I was hearing and reading before that was in vogue, and what everybody else is doing because we had to do it.

So, I thought that was really cool. One of the fastest-growing software companies in Austria.

And one of the things I really love is that his vision is centered around making it joyful and collaborative with features like AI-powered ideation room, concept rooms.

Everything they're building is super awesome and phenomenal. So, Dominik, excited to have you on the show. You ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Dominik Angerer 02:58

Oh, 100% and thank you so much for this amazing intro.

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Gresham Harkless 03:01

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's easy to read the intro. It's harder to probably do all the things that you've been able to do.

So, I guess to kind of kick everything off, let's rewind the clock, hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

Gresham Harkless 03:12

Sure. It actually starts with not wanting to do what we do now, like building a CMS. It actually was the main, main thing.

We both, Alexander and myself, we're at an agency, like we're building soft engineers, amazing projects, all different kinds of technologies, different use cases.

But all of them had somewhat of a CMS topic in the background. And we're using this old enterprise content management system from the Austrian Press Agency.

And at the time, they had an exclusive deal with the agency that we worked for. And when we found a small bug, imagine you find like a button is like slightly shifted or something like that.

We reported it back because one of our customers they were really annoyed by it, nothing major.

So, we asked him, like, hey, take like two, three months or so, it's totally fine. We're not in a hurry with this one. And usually, the reply that we get is something around the line.

Yeah, we'll put in a backlog, we'll work on it. Fine. So, what could the reverse thing that could happen on a bug report, right?

The worst thing that happened to us was that the reply from one of the engineers in that company actually replied with, hey, we're going to shut everything off in six months.

You want to find something else for your customers? And we literally like, what? What should we do? In six months, we had amazing brands already on platform.

We just re-platformed two other customers. We signed a five-year deal with that company as well at the time.

And that was the moment where we said, OK, that cannot happen again. We need to find something that works for us in the agency.

So, from this old content management system there, we tried to find something that is open source because we figured, OK, hey, we want to own the source.

We want to build it. And we want to extend on it and not have it shut down again, right? So that was in 2015, end of 2015, before we started any kind of thinking around the company.

We just wanted to solve that issue for us. And we tried WordPress, type of free, Drupal, and so on. From there, we realized no customer wants to pay for maintenance.

So, they don't want us to host the platform. So, we need to find something else. So, we looked into Acquia, into Sitecore, into Adobe Experience Manager, like enterprise version that have hosting included, maybe a cloud version of it as well.

So, we tried that. They started mid-six figures of ARR that you need to pay as a license.

So, we figured, okay, that's not what our customers want to pay for because most of them not only have a CMS, but also an e-commerce system, a search system, and some others all built in. So, you buy like 100%, you use 10%, and 90% is regret. So, it's really, really bad.

And we then… figured, okay, we have two months left, what should we do? So, we started building this prototype with the idea of allowing our customers to tell a story with reusable content modules, content blocks, right?

So, with those storytelling, with custom blocks, Storyblok was basically created because our idea was like, hey, you build up your Lego blocks, or basically your company sections or website sections, and you can completely customize them with any technology in the market. That's what headless stands for.

That you can really use the API and just get the data, and then use any technology. And it turns out we're not the only one that wanted to build that or wanted to use that.

And so, we launched it in 2017 with the storyblok.com domain. BLOK without a C because the domain was already taken.

That's the only reason, to be honest. We are soft engineers, so efficiency. And then we launched it. That's the beginning of Storyblok right there. Literally, a bug report that turned into a CMS.

Gresham Harkless 06:53

Wow, that's crazy. It's kind of like the quote-unquote accidental CEO. At the end of the day, I love hearing that story because at the end of the day, I still think if you're able to solve a problem and able to do it well and people are able to know about it, at the end of the day, you're still going to do very well overall, which is case in point in everything you all have been able to do.

Dominik Angerer 07:10

100%, 100%. And I mean, that's a little bit of the secret sauce that we tried to throw in there, right? We tried to build something not just for us, but for our customers.

Because Alex and I, we both are developers. We both are really okay-ish engineers. Alex is definitely better than I am. I can tell you that. That's why he's our CTO and I'm the CEO in the company.

But the really interesting thing is we always try to not just solve it fast, but for the people that use it on a day-by-day basis and in a CMS, like in a content management system like we are, the secret sauce is to both marry both the marketer and the developer with their use cases.

You have an API, you have workflows, automation, you have a lot of freedom for developers.

And you needed to combine that with an ease of use of a detour for really the people that are in there day in day out because like you have six months of development time for a large project.

But in reality, two and a half years, three and a half years after that, it's the marketer that sits in front of the CMS and shouts at it if it's really bad.

And we actually just had a study going out, I believe last week it was, where we tried to measure if we are actually a joyful CMS or not, by really understanding a scientific approach to joyfulness.

And turns out, we are actually joyful. So, there's a way you can scan that on your mimic and gastick in itself, how you use the system.

And we did an analysis of a little bit more than 20 individuals to really see people that have used CMS in the past. see how they use it, how the facial expression is, versus then giving them Storyblok without explanation, and just see what's going on.

And it turns out that people actually really, really, really like it. And the results were actually quite interesting because we did not think that out of those 30-minute sessions with each of them, we would get out numbers that show like 80% or plus actually really like it and really have a joyful experience. So, yeah.

Gresham Harkless 09:22

Yeah, that's absolutely awesome. I love that secret sauce. And I almost wonder if that is like the CEO hack, which is kind of like an app, a book or a habit that you have, something that can make you more effective and efficient.

Dominik Angerer 09:32

Like speed reading. That's the one thing like, it's so important because you can get so quickly up to speed on new topics and new information.

And it's just the way you can load your brain with information that really helps you because at one point you're chuckling hundreds of Slack messages, thousands of emails, LinkedIn messages here and there.

And then you have a lot of news that you need to understand, a lot of business impact on market itself.

And you need to still understand your product and the reviews that you get, plus the legal documents.

And I could keep going and going and going, because the day-to-day work is a lot of reading of SEO, at least in my case. If you can read faster, it's just time safe.

It helps a lot. And if you want to read something good that has always helped me in the last eight years, it's Culture Map. It's a yellow book. You can find it everywhere.

But this thing, it has nothing to do with financials. It has nothing to do with software engineering. It's purely about understanding that people all over the world are different.

And people perceive things different. People present things different depending on where they are.

Gresham Harkless 10:46

Yeah, absolutely. So, what would you consider to be a little bit more of what I call a CEO nugget? So, you might have already touched on this, but this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice.

I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your young business self.

Dominik Angerer 11:00

In the beginning, we figured out how well we can build a CMS. And I mentioned that we are not going to build an e-commerce system. I'm not going to build a search, and so on.

We did already. So, in 2017, where we're just the two people, like just Alexander and myself, and we just get some traction on the CMS, we're like, we can build it all.

So, we build out an e-commerce system, we build out the search, we build out an image service, we build out tons of different apps, search blocks, store block, you know, like different products under the same name.

And we were then sitting in this, like, kitchen with a coffee and Peter Lasinger from 3BC came by and he was working in the same open office space that I was in.

And he just came by and looked at our screen and looked at us, like, guys, what are you doing?

Like, solve one thing, the one thing that annoys you the most, and just solve this one thing. Focus on it.

And then later on, in 20 years, you can still do that because it will not be solved.

So just focus on one thing first, get this right, and then see what you can do. And just this amazing facial expression of Peter where he told us, hey, just focus, what the hell are you doing?

It's such a powerful thing, right? Because of course we trusted him. And at that moment for us, like we looked, Alex and I, we looked at each other and we were like, the CMS, right? Yeah, the CMS, it's what we need to build.

So, we just hooked on the CMS. We have not looked left and right to build anything of that caliber or another product.

We just went into this one. It doesn't mean that you should not switch if something is not working and just stick with it. That's not the case. The case is focused.

So, if you want to build something, if you want to do something, give it your focus. If somebody wants to distract you, don't let it be. Really focus. That's the nugget I would give.

There's so many distractions out there. Keep it simple. Do what you actually want to do. you are about to solve that actually solves a problem.

And the best thing is if it's your own problem, solve that first, and you can do the rest at a later point. It's fine.

Gresham Harkless 13:15

Yeah, that's such a huge thing. And so now I wanted to ask you one of my absolute favorite questions, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

And our goal is to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Dominik, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Dominik Angerer 13:27

The really, really interesting thing is that in my last eight years, and I've been doing that now for eight years, I literally had to fire myself like four or five times.

So, we had the time where it was just the two of us, just Alex and myself super easy to be a CEO of a two-people company. It's like really, really chill.

Then we started getting a lot of ERR, so I needed to check into treasury. I needed to understand how I should operate with money so it doesn't get less value over time.

And then we started to raise our first round, so we had suddenly two and a half million in the bank.

So, I need to understand things around security and bank security by itself. Then I needed to find people, so I needed to understand hiring.

And there were so many things that started building up. So, at that moment, basically whatever I've done, like six months before that, completely ignored, a completely different role.

So, that was the early days. Then we raised another eight and a half million, just nine months later, recruited 20 people.

I suddenly had people that were doing all the things that I've been doing beforehand, or many of the things, not all of them, many of the things.

And now in the current phase where we are 270 people, we are growing really nicely.

We are looking into profitability in like two years from now and really like still growing, like as we should, as we the business company, right?

Software as a service is quite nice with current revenue. My job now is to hold our people accountable and make sure everybody knows how they're contributing to our goals.

My definition is that the CEO by itself has no job description because the moment you write it, it's already old. And it's a really nice thing because you never know what happens tomorrow.

But at the same time, you're surrounded yourself with so many amazing people that will help you solve everything that you can.

Gresham Harkless 15:14

Dominik, truly appreciate that definition. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So, what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.

And of course, how best people can get all of you, your team, to find out about all the awesome things that you all are building.

Dominik Angerer 15:30

Obviously, Storyblok, CMS, software as a service, free to use. Definitely check it out. As mentioned, block without a C.

But more importantly, if you have any questions, if you're interested in anything that I've just talked to, or if you just are at a point where you need some advice or any help, just ping me on LinkedIn.

It's totally fine. You can find me really easy if you can try to spell my name. It's quite an unusual one for the English-speaking market, but if you find me there and believe somewhere, it's definitely linked.

You can just ping me. My DM should be open. So just shoot at me and I'm trying my best.

So, every time I'm doing any kind of podcast, it usually takes me a while, but please, please just send it to me. I'm happy to help.

Gresham Harkless 16:11

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I truly appreciate you, Dominik. And as you said, definitely, we'll have the link and information in the show notes as well, too, so that everybody can follow up with you. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Dominik Angerer 16:20

Thank you, Gresh. You too.

Outro 16:22

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase; it's a community.

Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at CBNation.co. Also, check out our I AM CEO Facebook group. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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