Bret Victor

A Brett Victor talk made Vlad quit Intuit the next morning

In early 2012 Vlad watched Brett Victor's 'Inventing on Principle' talk about direct manipulation, then read Victor's 'Magic Ink' paper that same night. The next morning he put in his notice at Intuit — the video both gave him Webflow's core concept and forced him to ask why he did his work.

“And then I saw this video early-ish in 2012 called Inventing on Principle by this guy Brett Victor, and it was all about this concept of direct manipulation. But more broadly, it was like that he asked this question to all creators, like, why do you do the work that you do? And it made me question everything. Like, literally, that— I saw that video, I read one of his papers called Magic Ink that same night. It would like— took me like 2 hours. The next morning, I put in my notice at Intuit.”