Asking The Founder Of Grammarly How He Built A $13 Billion Company

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
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So basically, we're Facebook friends now, so we talk a little bit there. But I first met you at HustleCon, I think, this event that I hosted in 2019
And you're one of the best people we've ever had. We've had hundreds of people. And I'll tell you why, two things.
The first, I think you spoke right when, so this is Max, he started Grammarly. We'll do an intro in a second. But I think you spoke when you guys had just raised maybe a hundred million dollars at a billion dollar valuation or something like that. Is that right?

**Max Lytvyn** (1:43)
Yeah, that was, yeah, that was 120 And we didn't disclose valuation at the time.

**Sam Parr** (1:51)
But if I had to get, yeah, you didn't. But I think I heard rumors and like, I just am guessing it was like in that range and it doesn't matter. But basically, I made a comment to you. I'm like, that's pretty cool, right? And you kind of replied back, you weren't cocky, but you were very confident and still humble, but you kind of had a grin. And I forget exactly what you said, but it was something like, yeah, it's gonna get much bigger too.
And I loved that like subtle confidence. And then at the event, what you talked about, I don't even remember the title, but the idea was basically like, you're an engineer, but you've done a really good job of like evolving past just engineering.
And you like said, this is how like I engineer like good products. And this is like everything you looked at was from an engineer, like about reverse engineering, different stuff. And I thought that was incredibly fascinating. Do you remember what I'm talking about?

**Max Lytvyn** (2:47)
I remember that. I actually use it mantra a lot inside the company as well. When we look at the different markets and where to go next. And it's just a universally good framework that works for many things.
Yeah. Just kind of looking at things narrowly, identifying the sweet spot and then just going broader from there.

**Sam Parr** (3:07)
This is Max Lytvyn.
Lytvyn, he started this company called Grammarly. Before Grammarly, you had another company called like Blackboard, I think, right?

**Max Lytvyn** (3:15)
That was not my company. That was a company that bought my company. So my company was My Dropbox, not to be confused with Dropbox. It was a plagiarism detection company and it was bought by Blackboard in 2007
And then they spent two years with Blackboard, it was Blackboard kind of a part earn out part just being there.

**Sam Parr** (3:37)
And that was like, compared to Grammarly, a mild success, right? Like it was financially good, but it wasn't like this huge, huge, multi-billion dollar company.

**Max Lytvyn** (3:48)
Oh yeah, that was just a start. It could have grown big, but education was at that point, relatively difficult market to be in and wasn't as big of a market.
Plus our product was fairly narrow. It was just doing one thing for one group of people. So we kind of saw that it can grow to this point, but further it's going to be very slow and very difficult. So that's why we decided to sell. Plus we had bigger ideas.