Wilian Iralzabal didn’t leave Google to “be a Webflow guy.” He left because he wanted to design a business he could live with and then built one that ships at enterprise scale.

Cuban immigrant at 8. Door-to-door sales at 14. Two startups acquired by Google. In 2019 he walked away, started small, and grew Zabal Media into a 33-person, 7-country no-code design & development agency serving Slack, Discord, Webflow, Burger King without raising a dollar. He still prototypes at night (“If you unplug completely, you get desensitized”), and he’ll tell you the months that nearly finished him… and the systems that kept his team from paying the same price.

What we cover (and how you’ll use it):

• Start small → publish → compound
• The One Minute Designer micro-brand that created escape velocity (and how to build your own surface area).
• No-Code at enterprise scale (without the QA nightmares)
• Where Webflow wins for speed and governance, where DIY/AI projects quietly explode (PM debt, QA), and how to avoid the “built it in a week” trap.
• The Problem Adoption method
• Recognize the daily problems behind an outcome, borrow them in a 2-week sprint, adopt only if you can live with them at scale.
• The identity rip: from maker to CEO
• “Fire yourself from every job” - a quarterly cadence to replace yourself role by role without losing the scent of success.
• Practitioner > pretender
• Why he spends 30–60% of his week researching, prototyping, and building tiny tools (including prompting on a Vision Pro at 11 PM) to empathize better, sell better, and unblock teams faster.
• Mental health and the breakthrough
• The months of 7 AM–4 AM days, panic-like episodes, and the one belief that pulled him through (“one more day”)
• Systems over heroics
• Global payroll, compliance, and contracts streamlined, freeing 30–40 hours/month (~$100k/year of founder time) and removing the “death by a thousand admin cuts.”
• Feed your competitors. Win long-term.
• Why he refers misfit deals to agencies he respects, and how that compounding reputation sends the next Fortune-level lead back.

Who this is for: founders, operators, designers, and anyone building with no-code who wants frameworks—not vibes—for speed, scale, and sanity.

Listen to Founders & Empanadas with Wilian Iralzabal on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

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