Interview with TemplateMonster’s CEO – David Braun

Inspiration may come from the most unexpected sources. It often hides in the simplest words that push you to aim higher and wish for more. An interview with a person who managed to create one of the most successful businesses in their niche can also become such source.

Meet David Braun, CEO and founder one of the largest website template providers one the web. His company, TemplateMonster.com, has reached Top-3 on TrustPilot in the Web Design category. It has a huge collection of over 26,000 templates for the most popular platforms. We asked David to share his experience in running a web design and development company with our readers.

Hi, David! So glad you’re here for the interview. Please, tell our readers about your first steps in a web design world. What inspired you to create TemplateMonster.com?

Hi guys! Pleased to be here, too. It were my friends who inspired me to create a company. I was fond of web development since high school. Me and my friends created a small web studio where we developed websites for our first clients. One day I noticed that our designer creates websites with the use of the elements library that he made for himself. That library allowed him building websites faster with less efforts. Thus, we’ve come up with the idea of creating templates for various platforms. And that’s how a TemplateMonster.com project was born.

And how did it happen that such a small local studio have turned into a huge marketplace with a collection of cool designs and multiple side projects?

We tried to create friendly environment for every new employee that came to us. It wasn’t just a place where you work. We aimed to gather a team of like-minded people who focus on development, growth and creativity. Throughout these years we’ve built our corporate style and ethics that allow everyone to call TemplateMonster their family. We inspire our team members to be active, to dream big and aim higher. We support each other and always ready to help. And our customers are welcomed in our family and can find support whenever they need it.

Let’s talk about your project more. What are those breakthroughs that have made out of TemplateMonster the project we see today?

Oh, we have provided many changes to the concept of the website, our template store and other things.

First, we’ve turned our store into a large marketplace where various web designers and developers can present their own creations. Since today we offer templates for pretty every platform that exists on the Web – WordPress, Magento, PrestaShop, Shopify etc. – there’s a great variety of templates for every taste in our marketplace.

We focused some efforts on creation of flagship templates for the most popular platforms. These flagship templates are aimed at providing customers with an all-in-one solution. We’ve already created such products for WordPress, Magento, MotoCMS, OpenCart and a few more.

Thus, we are about to launch Monstroid 2 the nearest time. It is a multipurpose theme for WordPress that includes everything a person can expect from a template. You can find there a cool admin panel that allows managing the layout the content with ease – just dragging and dropping elements into selected blocks. It has a number of pre-made websites inside that allow creating a website for different business niches such as restaurant, hotel, consulting, ecommerce etc. It’s a perfect chance of purchasing one template with all plugins, options and functionality you can find in other niche themes.

We also launched many side projects that help our customers in website building, business elaboration. We have an affiliate program and launched a Social Stock competition that invites people to become brand ambassadors and win various prizes.

Tell us a bit more about your side projects. What are their benefits for others?

Our projects are aimed at helping our customers and every person who would like to learn something to find the information they need. Thus, we have created a Startup Hub that helps small business owners, bloggers, startups and other professionals to establish their online presence, get more traffic, engage more customers and so forth.

Another educational project is called TemplateMonster Certification Center. This project allows literally everyone to complete a course of website building and get a certificate that may let people open their own web studio.

Beside those projects we have a Youtube channel with educational videos on the most popular platforms, blog with cool articles etc.

It’s great that you help people to get more information. It’s really important nowadays.

Agree. Information is one of the most powerful resources today. We are ready to share it with our friends and customers. And we are always there to help. We offer one of the coolest support services on the market. With a purchase of a template you get a free tech support available 24/7. This is a lifetime offer. No other template provider can boast such a great offer.

And for those who have no time to tweak the template we opened a Service Center. It provides to our customers services for installation and customisation of a template. It’s a really time-saving offer.

What did you learn from your customers through these years?

We learn to listen to every person and take into account every claim. It’s great to get positive reviews and parise. But we always pay attention to complaints and eager to correct every tiny mistake that can be found. We also listen to our customers wishes and try to include into new templates functions they need the most.

How will the company evolve?

At the moment TemplateMonster company is on the edge of great changes. Due to the modern tendencies in web-design industry we have decided to move to a marketplace and thus give a stunning opportunity to all talented web designers and developers and let them contribute. We are opening a marketplace and from now on, web studios can submit their products to be sold on TemplateMonster.

All they need to start is to send us the description of the products (with all technical details), mention the price, share the portfolio (where we can look through their works) and link to other products they are offering. Moreover, we have successfully launched a certification center where the web studios and freelancers can confirm and check their skills.

Since we’ve talked about learning – what are those lessons that you’ve learned recently?

Never give up! Even when something bad happens – there’s always a way out. There’s always a solution to every issue. You just have to keep on trying.

And passion. You have to love what you do, otherwise you will have no interest in life and work. You have to treat people with respect and care. It’s even more important than your profit. People are the most valuable resource in life.

Great words! Thank you, David, for the interview. Good luck to you with your projects. Hope to hear from you soon.