You know all those great business ideas you have in the shower. What do you do with them? Tell your friends and family? Dream about quitting that 9-5 job? Go back to brushing your teeth?
Designer, developer, and entrepreneur Andreu Pifarre has those ideas all the time. But unlike many of us, Andreu grabs hold of that mental ether and shapes it into products and businesses.
The idea that really hooked us? An instant website builder that creates a site just by filling in a form.
It’s but one of Andreu’s many inventions in his quest to do whatever he wants, when he wants, with no boss breathing down his neck.
Here’s how he does it.
A reason to skip the beach
“Since I was a kid, I’ve had this need to create stuff. When business crossed my path, these drives naturally merged, and I became a creative serving capitalism.”
Andreu remembers when it all started. His dad was running a small business and bought two computers—an Amstrad CPC and a Spectrum ZX—to track inventory. He was the only kid he knew in Barcelona with a computer in the house.
And when his 10-year-old mind found out that you could program computers to do what you wanted, he was hooked.
By 16, he was programming and building websites. The next summer he got an offer to intern at a software company just outside of Barcelona. But it came with a catch: Andreu had to commit to the entire summer.
This meant that when his friends went to Mallorca to soak up the sun, Andreu had to pass. Not an easy decision for a teenage kid. This was, after all, pre-Facebook—when you actually had to hang out with people to call them your friends.
On the plus side, that summer experience helped create software that’s now used by major soccer clubs in Spain, including his dream team: Futbol Club Barcelona.
Fast forward a few years, and Andreu’s drive to learn English landed him in the UK. After six years honing his web development and design skills at digital agencies, Andreu was ready to tackle his next challenge—a problem that you, like his mother, likely have.
Why is it so f— hard to build a website?
“I created Webinstant to make websites accessible to everyone. Now even my mom can create a website.”
If you have a business, you need a website. If you want to build your personal brand, you need a website. If you run a town, a city, an organization, an event, a meetup group… you got it. Everyone needs a website.
But Andreu knew that for the novice, this was much easier dreamed than done: “Why is it so f— complicated to build a website?”
That question sparked his next mission: help people create their own websites. With no coding, no investment, and in virtually no time—he calls it Webinstant.
How does it work? Just go to the Webinstant site, choose your website template, fill out the typeform and—in the time it takes to finish this sentence, you’ve got an email with a link to your new website. Webinstantly.
It runs on its own Public API, which allows for smooth integrations with services like Typeform. It also means you can do some really cool things, like instantly changing the name or design of your website simply by sending an email with a special subject line.
What’s Andreu see for the future? Cloudy skies, to take one example.
On a cloudy day, APIs from the weather service could automatically change the background of your website to reflect the day’s weather. You’ll also be able to instantly change your site design based on the time of day, the latest news, or whatever else you can dream up.
The missing ingredient
“If you have a strong desire to change something in the world, you need an audience to listen to you.”
Since the tech-startup boom, Andreu’s become more entrepreneurial, involved in several ideas and projects requiring Web apps with API integrations.
He also creates WordPress plugins and themes, something that brings in passive income while we works on his bigger projects.
And he’s the owner of Funky, a Barcelona-based digital creative studio working with tech startups in London, Silicon Valley and Barcelona.
Oh, and he produces music too, over at Chillstep tunes.
How does he have time to do it all? Andreu lets us in on his secret: “I spend all my time creating, and leave little time to promote.”
This is Andreu’s big challenge: getting exposure. He says marketing is his weak link, something he knows he needs to do more of. But his creator soul just can’t tear itself away from building out those big ideas.
So he keeps going, always trying to improve, always searching for that next thing. What keeps him moving? Andreu shares his deep motivator:
“Human interaction is the main thing. I’m not writing code to help machines. I do it to solve real human problems.”
Sounds like a great reason to start a business.