Note: This AMA is closed for new questions, but you can check out the existing conversations below.
This February 4th, we had the pleasure of hosting Typeform and VideoAsk co-founder, David Okuniev. With peerless intuition for transformative interfaces and a dogged dedication to translate customer feedback into amazing product value, David and team helped realise the fledgling aims of the product-led shift. And, along the way, figured out the tenets of: freemium growth, thriving in a crammed category, building ‘heart and brain’ teams and a most resonant brand!
AMA Index (David’s brain pickings) 
— Revisiting Typeform’s people-first culture; “I believe what people really want (and ultimately need) are ambitious goals and achievements (making an impact). If you are not winning, no amount of creativity, friendly people-first culture etc… will make up for that void.”
— The characteristics of the team that kicked off Typeform’s 2nd product, VideoAsk
— Why it’s hard to protect IP with SaaS products and what helps
— On stepping down as Typeform’s co-CEO to become a creator again
— “Companies are like organisms, they evolve as they grow,” and super fast customer delivery
— VideoAsks post-PMF transition and sustaining Typeform’s lauded design aesthetic at scale
— The make-up of the Design team and hiring great designers
— The other side of incredibly viral, horizontal SaaS products; “we have a harder time convincing people to activate down verticals”
— How Typeform is adopting remote work
— What makes VideoAsk a high-performing team?
— Things to consider before pursuing a pivot
Further reading/listening/pondering from the interwebz 
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(Other insightful excerpts drawn from blog posts, interviews, and conversations)
On a necessary cultural shift Typeform had to make:
“It was very smooth sailing. It was just all growth, growth, growth. And I don’t think it happens to that many startups, we were just on a tear, basically. I mean, we’ve created a really great atmosphere in the office, it was a very open culture, a lot of freedom, just a lot of motivations, it’s the early days, you know, just a small group of people like really killing it. So yeah, the first three years was just yeah, were very, very smooth sailing. But, you know, like for all things to reach new plateaus of growth, you have to get a bit more serious with the business.
And I think this especially kind of like, hit home in the last year and a half or two, where, you know, we built, like I mentioned, built a very kind of, let’s say, people-first culture, which meant that, you know, we didn’t put a lot of boundaries around around people. So there was a lot of freedom, a lot of goodwill, but, you know, you can do that when you’re 30 or so people in the company. When you start crossing 150 people it becomes a bit more complex. And actually, I think we reached a point in the company’s size where there was a serious, you know, a significant lack of accountability.
And we were seeing like, issues with, you know, speed of execution, so forth. And I think that was because we didn’t operationalize things well enough. Because we, you know, everything was fine, we were just growing, growing, growing. And you know, we didn’t need to worry about those things enough. But obviously, like I say, when you start getting further down the line, you have to start really, let’s say, maturing a little bit as a company and putting some processes in putting some structure and a bit of hierarchy. Otherwise, what you have is just many people looking in different directions. And you know, it’s a hard journey. It’s a lot of ups and downs.”
Source: Typeform: A Case Study in Product-Led SaaS Growth – with David Okuniev
On the importance of combining customer feedback and vision
At the time [Typeform’s early days], we were just less customer-centric, we were kind of working in a vacuum, developing the product. And to be fair that may have made Typeform what it is. I do believe that if we were getting a lot of feedback on how we should build a form, we might have gone in a different direction. We didn’t take any feedback before launching the beta.
I think you need to combine both. You need to have a strong sense of what you want to achieve and have a strong vision. Then getting feedback from your team and from the community* allows you to make micro-adjustments on the way.
Getting other people involved helps shape your ideas. But you can spend a lot of time going to customer interviews, digesting all that and trying to crunch data. It can be valuable, but I personally just use it as input into my thought process to make the right decisions.
Source: Building a face-to-face relationship with users at VideoAsk (by Typeform)
On the interplay between data and intuition:
Shed everything that gets in the way, because otherwise, you forget that you’re just trying to ship value. That’s all, the customer doesn’t see all your process behind.
Create a process that works for you so that you can ship the most amount of value to the customer. The more value you ship, the more you’re going to be rewarded. That creates a virtuous circle and in my opinion, creates really good products.
If you get stuck trying to be completely data-centric, as opposed to data-informed, then you gotta ask yourself: “have you got enough intuition about what you are doing?” It’s a different school of thought, and it’s just my personal personality as well. I’m a designer, I want to design things and ship them out so that people can try them.
Be a creator, acquire the skills that you need to be a creator. Understand engineering, try coding things, try designing things, you don’t have to be the designer or the coder but understand those things.
When you start something up, you can be super scrappy and you can afford to take big risks. It’s fine because you’re just at the start of the curve. The more mature, the more data-centric you should become.
Source: Building a face-to-face relationship with users at VideoAsk (by Typeform)
On what makes great products great:
“What makes a good product is that it helps people make progress. I think that’s a fundamental thing that a product is for. And a good product solves a problem in your life in an easy way, that you can understand and doesn’t fail on you. Great products, however, have a difference. They go beyond utility and they create an emotional relationship with the user so they can’t live without them. I think great products do this through a combination of innovating branding, but as well, they deliberately put emotional markers all over the product to create that strong connection."
Source: David Okuniev (Typeform) teaches how to build a product that users love
Ship, 
Hi David, I am a huge Typeform fan. I’ve been particularly enamored with your product design and aesthetic which are so refreshingly unique in a world where software looks increasingly the same.
