Matías Pitters

Introduction

Matthew Munger: Hey Matías, thank you for joining me today.

Matías Pitters: Hey Matt. Thank you very much for this opportunity, really happy to be here.

Matthew Munger: So why don't you quickly just tell everyone a little bit about yourself.

Matías Pitters: My name is Matías. I am a Webflow lead. I’ve been in the Webflow space for quite a few years, and right now really enjoying sharing my knowledge on Webflow so others can get value from it and understand the little things that you don't get at first sight when you come into Webflow.

I’m a graphic designer by training. I went to University for it, and then at some point during my professional career I stumbled upon Webflow and I made the switch to a more Dev role and live behind the design part of me. But I really enjoy working with really high quality designs.

Matthew Munger: Were you a freelance graphic designer or were you working for an agency?

Matías Pitters: I've been the whole spectrum. I've been working in-house in the final client, I’ve been working in-house as part of an agency, then moved into the freelance world, and also running a team right now.

Matthew Munger: How large is your team? Three?

Matías Pitters: Well it's not it's not three, it's this kind of dynamic team where I call people. 

Matthew Munger: Mm.

Matías Pitters: I say three because there's always a project manager, a Webflow developer, and myself for each at least. But yeah, depending on the workload and the project needs, there could be more people.

Barcelona, Spain

Matthew Munger: And where are you located? Where do you live?

Matías Pitters: I'm located in Spain. I'm close to Barcelona. I live in a small town by the Mediterranean Sea. Yep, that's my spot.

Matthew Munger: What's it like living there?

Matías Pitters: It's really chill out. It's like a touristy place, local tourism, so it's pretty quiet throughout the year.

Matthew Munger: Hmm.

Matías Pitters: And then July, August, that's kind of the summer season. There's some tourism coming in but it's local, it’s not that like these heavy party places, nothing like that. It's more family-friendly tourism.

Matthew Munger: Just relaxing by the beach.

Matías Pitters: Yeah, and we've been here just for– in May it's gonna be one year. Before that we were living in Majorca. It's the really touristy place here in Europe, where a lot of English people, German people, and people from Northern Europe come for the holidays.

Matthew Munger: Yeah.

Matías Pitters: Sometimes it can get a little bit um crowded, the island, and that's why I'm saying that right now where we live it's touristy, but much more chilled out.

Matthew Munger: Yeah. It's more calm than what you had before. What do you really like about living there?

Matías Pitters: So we came here because we were looking for a nice school for our kids. So my oldest started school last year. We were looking for two things: One thing is that the school needed to be public. Public education here in Spain is almost free. And it needed to have, I don't know how to call it in English, but an alternative approach, educational ways that are not like the traditional way. Not too much sitting in tables, not too much opening books, and more like experiencing things.

Matthew Munger: I think we'd say more hands-on and less lecture.

Matías Pitters: And that's not really easy to find here in Spain, those two things that I mentioned. We found that here nearby where we live right now, and that mainly was what made us move to this place.

Matthew Munger: What do you enjoy going out and doing when you leave the house?

Matías Pitters: So we live by the sea–

Matthew Munger: Mm-hmm.

Matías Pitters: And here is a really special nature environment. Because here's where a really big river that crosses Spain ends, and there's a really special thing called Delta. It's kind of the point of an arrow shape, the land goes into the sea. You see a lot of birds around like different types of birds. The sea is really different spots with really nice places to go swim. You have really calm water. You have a little bit more waves. I think that that's the part I really enjoy, like going to these places during the weekends and the free time.

Matthew Munger: If somebody was to come visit, what would you recommend to them? It's like, “Oh, you really need to do this, or see this.”

Matías Pitters: They need to try rice here. Not just rice, like paella.

Matthew Munger: Yeah.

Matías Pitters: Paella is a really specific way of cooking it. Then you have a lot of different variants from there. And you can have black rice, you can have different types of rice, always with maybe some sort of seafood.

And because the whole delta, this place where I'm mentioning, they grow rice here in this place. And you can also see how do planting of the rice, how they do harvesting. So everything goes around the rice. The whole delta is a really nice place to just maybe get a bike and get a ride around, or with a car. It’s a really special spot from a nature point of view.

Workspace

Matthew Munger: Where do you normally do your day-to-day work? What does your workspace look like?

Matías Pitters: I'm at my workspace right now. That's home. We have a room here, we have my table with my computer, my mic, my everything here. I also used to go to a co-working space but I prefer to be at home to be honest, it’s easy. Of course some days I go to the coworking space just to change the space, and also to go out from this room and see people and that stuff. But yeah, this is my workspace. I have a MacBook as my main screen, I have an iPad as my secondary screen, my mic, my mouse, and keyboard. There's not anything fancy about that.

Matthew Munger: Do you have any hobbies or interest outside of building cool things in Webflow?

Matías Pitters: Okay, right now my life is mainly work and family, because I have small kids that require attention. But whenever I can– I'm a salsa dancer, Cuban salsa dancer.

Matthew Munger: Mm-hmm.

Matías Pitters: If I knew about my abilities with dancing earlier in my life I would be doing that professionally. But it came late in my life, so right now it's just a hobby. Yeah, what I do is there's these social events normally during the night. So you go to a club, they're putting on music, and you go there and just dance with people. It's a really fun and healthy environment. There's not much alcohol involved, and I really enjoy those vibes.

Matthew Munger: Yeah, it's just a good time and you get a little exercise out of it too, huh?

Matías Pitters: Yeah. Flamenco is the traditional dance, like the most known one. Because Flamenco is more tied to the south of Spain, Andalusia, that's a region south in Spain. And then it's really different from maybe regions in the north where they have their own culture or their own way of manifesting that.

Matthew Munger: Yeah.

Matías Pitters: And different languages as well, different dance, different art. It's specifically from the south of Spain. But I think from a marketing point of view it's really spread out internationally.

Matthew Munger: Mm-hmm.

Matías Pitters: Like the dance from Spain, as like, you know, like bull fights and all that stuff.

Interesting

Matthew Munger: What is something that would surprise people to learn about you?

Matías Pitters: Well I said I'm based in Spain, and if you were speaking with me in Spanish, you would say you're from Spain. But actually I'm from Chile in South America. I was born in Chile and at nine years old I came to Spain. And there's an interesting story behind that. The reason why I came to Spain was because my dad was about to go to jail. And he was hidden in the mountains, I don't know where, in Chile. And he paid the policeman at the border, I dunno, a lot of money to let him out.

Matthew Munger: Mm-hmm.

Matías Pitters: And he came to Spain. There's another story over there but that's the main reason why I'm in Spain right now.

Matthew Munger: Well that, yeah, it does sound like an interesting story for sure.

Matías Pitters: Yeah I think that would surprise people.

Role

Matthew Munger: What is your role day-to-day? And you described yourself as a Webflow lead, I think is what you said, right? So how would you describe what you do day to day in that role?

Matías Pitters: Yeah. So one side would be to get clients. The other thing is to, once I land a client, to understand what is the need. And instead of just going into Webflow directly with their designs, to understand the reasoning behind that from a build perspective, in terms of how we can do this in a way that we can give you as much ownership as you can, so then you can go by yourself. 

So define those things, and then when the person who's gonna lead the build has a really good understanding of what she or he's gonna be doing while building– because sometimes you jump into the build and then you realize midway that you need to find out some things about the project itself, or how it's gonna integrate with this with that. I try to get all those answers beforehand before we jump into the project. 

And then to stick around to make sure everything is going well. If there's anything, any help that's needed from me in terms of some complexity during the project. And also once we get to the end of a project, to train the client on how to use their Webflow site, how they're gonna be able to keep growing it and any specifics to that build. Because in the end every project has its own particularities.

Matthew Munger: Yeah, each project is unique. Peculiar, as you said. Building websites for clients, was this something that you set out to do? Because you said before you were in graphic design. 

Matías Pitters: The word that comes to my mind is “freedom.” I think the main thing that connects everything is freedom. I've been moving with that concept in mind, trying to be free as much as possible. And when I say “free,” I mean to live by my own rules, be able to control my own time, be able to control my own things, you know?

Matthew Munger: Mm-hmm.

Matías Pitters: First I thought, “Okay I'm gonna move into freelancing,” then “Okay, I want to run my own team.” Then you realize you never get that, I don't know, that idea of freedom, that one that I have on my mind. I think that's the main reason, looking for freedom. Maybe that's a little bit spiritual, maybe a little bit abstract. But if we go to a more practical way, I would say I really enjoy the systematizing things: like building systems, creating logic, going a little bit deeper in a build. Going one level deeper to create an underlying foundation that everything makes sense for the client or for a new developer that's gonna come in here. 

So I didn't know I was going to do that. I was more, when I started graphic design, more like individual parts like doing brands, doing nice identities. I guess with the power of Webflow I turned into development. So I really enjoy that part of systematizing and creating logic. It’s tedious, sometimes it's kind of hard to think that way. But yeah, I enjoy that part.

The System

Matthew Munger: And it's interesting because you even created something called The System, right, which is your own kind of design development framework in Webflow?

Matías Pitters: Yeah. The reason why I did that first was a personal thing. Because I had all these ideas in mind, but every time I started a new project, I’d revisit them constantly.

Matthew Munger: Mm-hmm.

Matías Pitters: I needed a way to document those ideas so I can have a starting point and not reinvent the wheel every time. I did it first for internal purposes, but as I was doing it, I thought “Hey, there are some concepts here and ways of understanding Webflow– and from the development work that could be beneficial for others.” And it was an exercise to make the documentation with that in mind.

Matthew Munger: Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing it with the community.

Motivation

Matthew Munger: All right Matías, what excites or motivates you about what you're doing?

Matías Pitters: It is exciting that I can choose what to do. Now, running my team is both difficult but also exciting. I have the power to decide where to put my effort.

Matthew Munger: Mm-hmm.

Matías Pitters: And what I want to lean on. And yet here's where also my recent initiative comes to mind.

Matthew Munger: Yeah.

Matías Pitters: One hundred days of Webflow interactions that I just finished.

Matthew Munger: Yeah. Congratulations. It's been amazing following that work.

Matías Pitters: Thank you. And the reason this came to be was because I wanted to start creating this team called the Bookmark Agency, and wanted to attract clients in the brand agency space. I thought, “Okay, I'm gonna do this challenge and this will definitely at some point get some clients. So what I'm gonna do is 100 interactions and these interactions are gonna be based on the work from these brand agencies. I'm gonna just grab a small visual that I like, see how it can be animated, tag them on social media, and get their attention, and they will end up working with me.”

This hasn't been the case because in the end what I was doing wasn't for these brand agencies. It was for the other Webflow developers, that they can nurture themselves from seeing specific animations and interactions work in Webflow. One thing that has been in my Webflow journey since the beginning is that I've tried to keep everything as Webflow native as possible, so I really enjoy pushing the limits of Webflow.

Matthew Munger: Mm-hmm. 

Matías Pitters: And I know this can be done only with Webflow. Of course there have been a few of these pieces that I've used custom code, but maybe 90% of them are purely built on Webflow. It’s pretty crazy what you can do just with Webflow.

I always knew that I wanted to teach Webflow or to teach what I know.

Matthew Munger: Mm-hmm.

Matías Pitters: My understanding of the tool is pretty deep because of the years I've been involved with it. But I've always tried to find this balance of, “Okay, I need to get paid, I need money to leave from client work.” Also, on the other side I want to teach people, and I know that it takes a while before you can monetize that somehow or you can make a living from teaching others. I think I enjoy more the teaching part. But I need to be profitable in some manner so I can keep myself alive and maintain the family.

Matthew Munger: Yeah. What is a resource that you think more people should know about in the Webflow community?

Matías Pitters: Twitter, like a starting point. You can see other people there. There's where the Webflow community broadly lives.

Matthew Munger: Mm-hmm. How would you recommend somebody get involved in the Webflow Twitter space?

Matías Pitters: Following people who are sharing stuff. I would say Vincent, he shares his own perspective, as well as Timothy Ricks also shares really valuable stuff. The top names there creating content, just follow them and see how people interact with those, and then you can grow your network from there. Also I'm thinking, for very specific things, I have the privilege to be part of the experts program. And that gives me also access to the Slack workspace where also people, if you have more complex things maybe–

Matthew Munger: Yeah, so the Webflow partner program. One of the benefits is not just getting client leads and stuff, it's also you’re in this sub-community of experts that you can actually ask questions and get help from.

Matías Pitters: If I have something that I know someone I could ask, I just go and ask that person directly.

Matthew Munger: Yeah, that's a great thing about the community. Most people are open and approachable. And so if you have a question, don't be afraid to reach out. More often than not, you will find that people are generous with their time and their knowledge.

Inspiration

Matthew Munger: Who is someone in the Webflow community that inspires you?

Matías Pitters: Vincent. The reason is because I've known him since the early days that I joined Webflow. And since the early days he's always been sharing publicly and freely of the things he knows, he discovers. He's really humble as well, I don't know, he enjoys doing it. And I think that’s the key to what he shares. He goes so deep, like suddenly he’ll share something and you say, “Wow, I don't know how he knew about that.” That would be one. 

I'm thinking also Jon Morin. And the reason I say he inspires me is because I had the chance to meet him at the first Webflow conference in 2019. His energy, the way he speaks, it was really fun to spend time with him. Also he's a really great designer. I love his vibes as well, you can see him on the videos he creates for his courses. He has a really funny approach.

Matthew Munger: He's definitely got his own brand of humor. It's good.

Advice

Matthew Munger: What is some advice that you would like to share?

Matías Pitters: You know, what comes to my mind: instead of celebrating others, getting jealous from the achievements from others– and I'm changing that already– but the sooner you can get happy for others, not just in the Webflow community, but in your life, the better. So my advice will be if you see someone who is doing great, or who you would like to be like in the future because they released a template or because they got a new $10K client or whatever– Instead getting mad at him or yourself because you're not there, just celebrate it and ask this person, “Hey how are you doing? How did you make that?” Just get curious and close to those persons, because the closer you get to those persons, you're gonna be like them, because that's your ultimate goal.

Matthew Munger: Yeah. So instead of getting jealous of other people's achievements, celebrate them and then be curious, learn from them. Get closer to them so you can actually learn from them.

Connect

Matthew Munger: How can others reach out and connect with you?

Matías Pitters: The best way is on Twitter. My handle is masterflowmaker and yeah, I'm pretty active there.