Frontify’s CEO Roger Dudler on his mission to bring the craft back to the world of startups

Frontify’s CEO Roger Dudler on his mission to bring the craft back to the world of startupsA creator at heart, Frontify’s CEO Roger Dudler has a very clear view of how to lead his team. Now having been at the helm for 11 years, Roger has steered his company through many challenges, including the COVID lockdowns, and entering the US market, and today Frontify boasts global customers like Uber, Microsoft, Volkswagen Kühne und Nagel, Telefónica, and more. For him, it’s all about finding investors who resonate with your company’s values, keeping it a people business and actively listening to your customers. Join us today as we discover Roger’s journey as a founder, how he managed to navigate setbacks and challenges, and his secrets to thriving as a creative CEO.

From merging tech and creativity to leading a company that has hit $50m ARR, Roger credits it all to aligning values, vulnerability, and passion.

Robin: Could you just start by telling us a bit about your story? How did you get to where you are today?

Roger Dudler: I am a software engineer by heart and a bit of a designer, too. I struggled in my daily work at a web agency, especially with the interaction between the creatives and the tech people, and I always felt like they spoke a different language. And I felt like I was in a position to understand both of them, which was more unique then. With that awareness, I built a tool that helped me solve this issue. The word spread around the agency, and more people liked it, which eventually led to the company's being started in 2013. And now it’s been 11 years already!

How did you end up bringing the tech and the branding sides together?

I did an IT system engineering apprenticeship in Switzerland, where I learned how to work with computers. I enjoyed it, but then I wanted to go into coding, which I didn’t do during my apprenticeship, so I had to learn it myself. Next to this, I’ve always enjoyed making things beautiful. I feel like this makes more people want to use something more. And for me, I think deep in my heart, it's important to get resonance from people who are using the software that I have helped to build. I don't know why exactly, but it has always been key to what I'm doing, so I always saw things more holistically and not just from the technical side. I always ask myself where this comes from – my passion for beautiful aesthetics and creativity part and I think it goes back to my dad. He actually worked in a somewhat boring job for 40 years or so, but in the evening he always came home to his passion. He did woodworking, little miniatures, drawing, and painting. It's this combination that makes it special.

At Frontify, you help brands to manage their outward appearance in every possible way. What is it that you do that's different from other brand management services?

We help companies ensure that all of their people stay on brand, not only internally but also externally. We’ve also deliberately made the product very easy to use, to make sure staying on brand is not a chore, but something easy and enjoyable for everyone. We  do that through a wide range of products that allow you to store everything centrally, but then make sure people don't just get the assets or some single ingredients, but they also get the recipes and the guidelines Simply put, you give people context to the content they are using or creating and a description and a better understanding of the essence of the brand,. By providing this, we make it easier for most people to stay on brand.That's very different from what has been there before because people were solely focusing on individual ingredients like the different assets, maybe colors for example, but then they just throw these colors around and hope that people will use them correctly, and typically, all of these things will sit in different tools, folders, pdfs and email attachments And I think today, through Frontify, we offer a completely different way of doing things, and that's appreciated in the market.

You're working with a lot of global brands, this must facilitate remote work and help people who are now living and working in different countries. How did you land such massive and global clients?

Maybe it's because we started very early on with people in sales, even when we hadn't figured out our product-market-fit fully yet. But we understood relatively early on that the problem we were solving was significant within large companies that operate globally. And the more channels, the more problems, so naturally,  it gave us more opportunities with bigger customers. It's also due to the background of many people working at Frontify from the beginning. A lot of them used to work in agencies and are used to working with large customers, and I think that helped us understand those needs better from the beginning, whether it's customer service or security or scalability and all these things. So, it has been in our DNA from the beginning.  We’ve also been very lucky to build very close relationships with our customers, which has allowed us to get a lot of great insights into their daily lives and painpoints, as well as opening up for very valuable feedback and insights on how to develop our product. We went a bit faster into that space than many others, which gave us a bit of an advantage.

Frontify started in 201, so that's 11 years, did it take a while for you to get the funding to kind of really grow as big as you wanted to grow?

All of the rounds have been a bit different – the first check was, I think, easier than for most, but I was lucky, to be honest. I met the guy in the angel round in 2013 who, after a few conversations, gave me some money so I could get started. It was only 50k, which is not a lot, but I didn't have any money, so I needed something. And then we worked with this and a little more from angels for quite a long time. Then, Series A was relatively easy again because we had good numbers, and we got preempted. So we had a VC visit us, and we just went with them. In the Series B, we ran a random process. That was the hardest one, I think, because we ran a process and had 20 or so on the shortlist, and I was traveling around all the time for months, attending hundreds of meetings… You have this positivity in the beginning and then a lot of interest and then it kind of rings down to a few and then someone gets close to zero, and then you just hope that you can close, which then eventually happens. And it was in the last round where you, Robin, were a significant element. It was again a bit easier than in Series C because we were talking to Revaia and through an introduction that you did. And so this conversation started and bypassed a lot of other conversations and made it straightforward and relatively... not easy, but easier. It's always about having a combination of having the right numbers in place and doing your job, but I think it’s easier for some founders than others.

Why did you choose to take the investment from Revaia?

We had this strategy since Series A, where we chose Blossom Capital when it was the first time around. My thinking with this was that there needs to be a value fit, and you need to trust the people. But then also if you understand VC, people have to show that they're great in the first round so they can raise the second one, so you can be sure that they give the best they have for your company. Not that they wouldn't do that in the next round, but you get it from them in the first fund. So we had a good experience with that. We did the same thing again, and besides that, the people at Revaia were just incredibly smart and good people – which is quite rare. I mean, there are a lot of intelligent people, but, they aren't always the people you want to spend a lot of your time with, or they might be very good, but not that smart. But then this combination, I think, has been very unique from the beginning, fostering a very consistent and respectful way of communicating.

I remember you have the habit of roasting your VCs. I love the fact that you ask them the hard questions – how does the process work? What do you want to know right away?

The thing is, it's not even me. I also asked hard questions, but when we did that, our employees did it. We had a lot of VCs in front of the company, they just had to present themselves and tell us why they like us, what they believe, where they think our company going, what motivates them, and then the employees asked the tough questions, without any rules or script. We invited them to ask any question they wanted. You need to imagine, that our employees were somewhat educated about it all from what I shared with them about VC, the journey, and everything, but then they also didn’t know everything, so they just went ahead and asked tough questions. It was pretty cool because on the one hand, it showed that we were not hiding anything and on the other hand it's a people business. In the end, it's about the match between people. Employees can be pretty tough on feedback when they feel like someone's not aligned with the values of the company. We had that, too, and I think it’s a good test. You get the truth when people react to stuff that has not been prepared. Do they know what they're talking about? If it's not a playbook question, how do they react to it? Are they willing to be vulnerable? Are they willing to say “I don't know”?I think all of these things show personality. This approach would work for anything, but it's handy for VC.

How many employees do you now have at Frontify?

About 300. It’s been growing a lot since 2015. That was a pivotal moment in the company, and we grew to about 150 over a few years. And then, in 2021, we hired more people after the round, and we went to 300 within 18 months. Now, we just try to stay roughly at the same level, but we have seen revenue grow faster than ever. So, it's all going in the right direction. But, crucially, we didn't scale the employee base dramatically just to get more efficiency out of the business, which I think is a good thing.

How do you package and price your product?

I'm a big believer in having one product, and that's always a big discussion internally. But I feel like we have one product. It's a unique combination of things that all make sense for most customers with a value-based approach.  Frontify is a brand-building platfom where companies can manage portals, guidelines, assets, and templates in a way that makes it easy for everyone to live the brand fully. We’re combining this with our value-based pricing approach to ensure we indeed are the best and most flexible solution for brand-first companies.We conducted a survey few years ago to ask, what's the true value that we're delivering to our customers? Every customer came back saying their brand is now more consistent, and that people can easily find what they need without having to make the brand team a bottleneck.   They no longer go to Google to search for the logo, for example, So, we just need to show how many people are engaging with the platform, and that really visualizes the  value for them. Our customers have to choose at the beginning of their yearly contract, how much they think they can scale our product internally. It's not an easy task, but it's a good one to think about. Do I scale first to a team or one brand, or do I go by country, or do I go global already? And that's a good discussion that we have with customers. They choose a number for the first year, they look at where you land and then they go further. But we take them on a journey to say that one day, you want to have all of your employees on the platform, but you will not get there on day one. So you need to go step by step. Also, if you have a peak and it goes down again, you don't have to pay for it.

I’m interested in customer success and how you've kept up a very high level of customer satisfaction. How do you continue to grow as a company while keeping your product so consistent and satisfying your customers?

It's not always easy. I would say we struggle with this like everyone else. It's not easy if you grow fast and have so much demand. We get thousands of requests for the product per month, and we cannot fulfill all of them. So, I think for me it all goes down to incredible customer support, which leads to customer success. And to really lean in to the human-to-human interactions. We know our customers love that they know that if they reach out to us, they will get help from a human who is genuinely interested in helping them, and that is quite unique in the SaaS industry. And again, that is in our DNA. It's a people business, so it's about how you communicate with the customers. Because there will be situations where you cannot fulfill their needs. These are the important moments where you can shine and I think as long as we're solution-oriented and try to understand every customer’s situation empathetically, we can work together as partners, and I think we've done a very good job on the customer success side.If there's one thing the customers mention besides the product, it's always customer support. We're probably over-investing in it, we really care about every single customer. And while we know we can’t always fulfill their needs, we're transparent about that. I think the key here is that we have a lot of people in customer success that are coming from a consulting background, which helps with understanding the complexity. You can’t just do your job; you have to be flexible. You have to consult your customers, and they ask us a lot of things - how should I structure our guidelines, what's the navigation structure, how should I structure my brands, etc.. so it goes way further than just understanding how the product works. That has been a recipe for success, as is the fact that we're more solution-oriented and more holistic than maybe most customer success teams.

In 2021, you scored $50m in your Series C round from Revaia. But, how did you navigate the COVID times?

That was the moment when I learned the most as a leader. If things are just working, the economy is working, and everything's working, it is easier to lead a company. But when a crisis arises, you need to change your style because a company needs a lot of direction and fast decisions.We are a very democratic and consensus-driven company, but these were the moments when we switched to “now we do this”. And I think that helped us to be prepared. We were early in adapting our growth trajectory and hiring, so we never really ended up in a situation in which we were struggling. After COVID, obviously, we had more critical conditions, like the war and then the economic downturn, and other crisis moments. But it has always been the same pattern, and we were cautious. We had a very clear direction in those moments. Then we saw the demand rising, maybe because we've been lucky but also perhaps because we just were conscious about what was happening in the market. We said: “Hey, we have to do our job, and we have to do it better. It's not going to be easy.” We never had to lay off any employees or anything like that, so we still are in a position of not needing anything externally, we can get to profitability quickly thanks to the way we run the company.It's almost unheard of in 2024 to say that you've not had to lay people off as a startup…We also focus more on performance management – if you want to get more efficient, you don't hire that much. We never pushed the boundaries too much, we didn't get greedy and we didn't get over all the scaling modes back in the day. We did hire more but in a way that we planned for and not in a “gold rush” style, somewhat realistically and organically.

What does the future look like for Frontify?

I've never been good at projecting these things. I don't look forward that far too much. But if I needed to, I would say we're still early on the growth path, 25% of our revenue is coming from Switzerland, and a similar size is coming from the US. There is so much more we can do. Now is the phase for companies to learn how to be more craft-driven again. It’s something that I push very hard for. When you're in scaling mode, you're building specialties and teams and processes for everything. Sometimes, I feel that you lose that passion for the craft along the way – that's key to our success in the future. If we bring back that element,  we can just build a more unique company, and we just don't get into more of the same. That's why we have adapted our brand to be bolder and more distinctive. My focus is to be brave enough to change the structures internally and again to be a bit more craft-driven,  a bit more flexible, and agile.

When you say craft-oriented do you mean that then companies can be more creative with your product or do you mean that you as a team will think about your product more creatively?

Both. Then it's about bringing back that we all, within the company, are contriubtors to the success of this company. It’s about having a sense of ownership and motivation to improve and evolve and do better. We all are responsible for all areas. What happens traditionally is that, for example, you hire a social media person. And then, in the marketing team, they don’t care about social media anymore because we have this social media person, right? And that's precisely the problem that arises when you grow. We are all here to get better; it's not an excuse to say it’s someone else's responsibility. I want to bring this mindset back since I think many scale-ups and bigger companies are suffering from a lack of this. And it gets too little attention. That's the reason why products get stale at a certain point and they don't develop anymore or they are not as fun anymore. or you cannot get something done because it's like you're stuck in processes. Of course, we are no strangers to some of that, but I believe if you don't actively fight against it, it's going to inevitably happen.

Could you tell us a little bit about you and what you're hoping to do in the next couple of years, what you're running towards?

I don’t know. For example, in the first year, I told my brother that I would never have more than three employees… I have my rollercoaster like every other founder and CEO: I have moments where I think I should do something else, but then I have moments of “OK, now we need to grow this thing to the moon”; that's natural. First and foremost, I'm working on building an enjoyable place to work and be together, so that’s why I want to bring passion and craft back. I also think I’m not going to be around forever; at some point, I won’t be the right person to lead Frontify, but for now, it is still a great fit.  I’ve found my way of enjoying the role and getting a good balance.

And what kind of things give you balance?

I'm passionate about way too many things. I have a family, I spend a lot of time with my eight-year-old son – going to the football stadium or doing crafts, like clay work or something like that. I also make music, electronic music. I’m not amazing, but I think it's this idea of living in the moment and enjoying it, which is something I miss in my role. When you run a company, it's about everyone else, it’s the same when you have a family…  So you need to find these moments where you are entirely with yourself, doing music, running, or anything else, just for yourself. If you're a creative person like me, being a CEO is not very creative, to be honest. It’s about people's issues, numbers, structures, investor relations, and so on… which I enjoy too, but it's not the craft that I enjoyed back when I was coding. However, thanks to music, 3D modeling, visual arts, and coding here and there, I still get to create. If I didn't make up for that, I would go crazy! So yeah, if you're a creator like me and you have a leadership role or running your own company, it's crucial to find your moments and little things to stay happy.

That’s great advice for entrepreneurs trying to combine these two sides in their daily lives. Thank you very much Roger for sharing your journey so far with us.

Thank you!