Today I did my first interview for TechLeash with Chris Campbell, who co-founded Wufoo with, Kevin Hale and Ryan Campbell. The full interview is below. Feel free to ask any further questions in the comments.
Cameron: Could you start by explaining what Wufoo is for our readers?
Chris: Wufoo is an online service that helps you build really amazing online forms. You can use it to design contact forms and online surveys, power event registrations and even process online orders with PayPal, Authorize.net and Google Checkoout.
It’s like a web based version of Microsoft Access, so it helps you create fairly powerful database applications, but it looks like it’s designed by Fisher Price, so it’s very easy to use and actually a lot of fun.
Cameron: How did Infinity Box the your primary company behind Wufoo first come about?
Chris: We had actually planned on starting a web application before YCombinator came into the picture, and we were going to fund it from our pdf magazine, Treehouse. Treehouse was under a different company, Particletree Inc., which was also behind Particletree.com.
For a few legal reasons associated with taking seed funding from YCombinator, we couldn’t use Particletree Inc. as our business entity and Infinity Box Inc. was created to house Wufoo.
Cameron: How did Wufoo first come about, whose idea was it originally, or was it a collective idea?
Chris: Ryan, Kevin, and I used to constantly talk about how frustrating it was to build these really boring forms and databases for our employers, who failed to appreciate how much tedious work was involved just to create something simple as a contact form or an online survey. Out of that frustration grew our initial idea for Wufoo, which was as an ASP content manager with the ability to allow for unlimited inputs and reversible forms, which means they could be used for both backend management and public submission. As we wised up, ASP turned into PHP and we tried to narrow our focus to form building.
Cameron: When you first applied for YCombinator were you confident that you’d be accepted or did you have doubts?
Chris: We were still unsure of our idea and a little bit nervous during our interview, so we definitely had our doubts after pitching the original idea for Wufoo. Paul, Jessica, Trevor, and Robert are all super nice people, but it’s a little intimidating to pitch an idea to such an accomplished and high profile group of entrepreneurs.
Cameron: What was the YCombinator experience like and was it worth all of the time you had committed towards the programme?
Chris: Ycombinator was an awesome experience that transformed the lives of the founders pretty completely. They gave us introductions and opportunities that we would have been hard pressed to recreate solely on our own and it’s also been a gift that just keeps on giving. The growing network of knowledge from the founders we interact with and have access to just by association is staggeringly resourceful and amazing. I actually try to do whatever I can to help give back to the program including giving free workshops or providing design reviews whenever we go out there and visit the newly funded batch of YCombinator startups.
The blessing of that program was that we were able to hole up in an apartment together and do nothing but craft Wufoo into existence. I think a lot of people forget the importance of just getting a chance at getting away from distractions. No girlfriends, no regular friends, no anything else. Because it’s Y Combinator and because it’s Silicon Valley, we met some pretty amazing people out there (CEOs, Investment Bankers, other entrepreneurs, Google/Yahoo employees, other young founders, plenty of reporters, etc.) and it lead to a round of Angel Investment in the end, which is what got us to launch and eventually profitability.
Cameron: How well is Wufoo growing, is it now a profitable company? If so for how long?
Chris: Wufoo has about 350,000 total users now and continues to grow quickly. We’ll be doing a bit of hiring this summer, so Infinity Box is going to grow from 7 to either 9 or 10 employees. Wufoo was profitable 9 months after launching, so that’s just over 3 years of profitability now.
Cameron: Finally can we expect anything new from Wufoo anytime soon?
Chris: We’re constantly improving Wufoo, as you can tell from our blog (wufoo.com/blog/), and in the short term you can expect to see improved logic and branching, a new API, new integration partners, payment integration improvements, and a good number of minor features.
