What's up everyone?

This is Cortland Allen from NDHackers.com, and you're listening to the NDHackers podcast.

On this show, I talked to the founders of profitable internet businesses, and I try to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes.

How do they get to where they are today?

How do they make decisions, both at their companies and in life in general? And what makes their businesses tick? The goal here is so that the rest of us can learn from their experiences and go on to build our own successful companies. By the way, if you haven't yet, you should open up your browser and go to NDhackers.com slash podcast. You'll find full transcripts of every episode I've recorded, including this one. While you're on the website, feel free to browse around and interact with the community. We've got thousands of founders who are bouncing ideas off of each other, giving each other feedback and practical advice and swapping tips. So it's a great way to avoid the trap of trying to build a business completely on your own. Check it out at NDHackers.com. Today I'm talking to Max Litvin. He's a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder

of a company called Grammarly. I'm guessing that many of you have heard of Grammarly and might

even be Grammarly users because they have over 7 million active users every day. I found Max

to be an extremely rigorous thinker. He's not somebody who enjoys leaving things to chance. Instead, he's always forecasting, planning ahead, trying to figure out what pitfalls await him in the future and how he can best avoid them in the present. He's got a lot to say on those subjects that we can all learn from, but I also thought it would be fun to talk to him about something less tangible. So we spent a good deal at the beginning of this conversation talking about what it means to have a vision for your company. How do you come up with one and whether or not it's something that actually helps you grow your business or if it's just some sort of fluff that you tell the press so you look good. Anyway, it was fun talking to Max and hearing what he had to say. So without further ado, let's jump into it. Max, thanks for joining. Thanks, Gordon. It's a pleasure to be on this podcast. Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you. I'm excited to talk. So you are the co-founder of Grammarly, which is a set of products that help people communicate better. Maybe that's a little bit vague. so why don't you tell us what grammar really is and

why so many people are using it?

I think your description is pretty good one.

It is a set of products that help people communicate in a way that's clear, effective,

and error-free.

So kind of focusing on three pillars of communication, clarity, making yourself understood,

effectiveness, achieving the goals of your communication, essentially making it error-free

because if it contains errors or if it is not a quality writing or not quality communication,

it can cast a shadow on the credibility of what you're trying to say.

So essentially having all these three things in check and having them to be as good as possible is a goal of gravelly.

And as you said, it's a set of products.

So we started out as a standalone web editor app where basically you could write your text, a document

mostly, and then have suggestions for it.

And then we built a Chrome extension, now mobile keyboards, Microsoft Office, add-in, and

so on.

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