Third place at the Webflow Speed Build Challenge 2023

Website building turned e-sport

Is it possible to build a website in 15 minutes, while thousands of people watch from around the world? That was the challenge our Senior Digital Designer Riziki Nielsen faced on October 4, 2023, in the semifinal of Webflow’s annual Speed Build Challenge at Webflow Conf in San Francisco.

Every year, Webflow runs a global challenge to find the builders who combine creativity, speed, and skill. The format is simple and demanding: build the best possible website in 15 minutes from a prompt generated on the spot.

How Riziki got there

Riziki first qualified in 2022, as one of 16 builders chosen worldwide and the only one representing Denmark. The first two rounds that year were virtual and streamed on YouTube, with the finalists competing in person at Webflow’s headquarters. In 2023 he went one step further and reached the semifinal on stage.

Ready, set, build

The semifinal was a face-off between Riziki and Carlos Sepulveda from Colombia, on stage at the conference and broadcast live on YouTube. The prompt was:

A mobile app UI for a movie that has a fire theme that also has a continuous scrolling interaction.

The two competitors put on their headphones and started building. What happened on the screens looked like a screencast at 5x speed, but it was live, and three commentators covered every element and interaction as it appeared.

Hands off the keyboard

When the countdown hit 00:00 it was hands off the keyboard and time to demonstrate the builds. Riziki ran out of time to fix a z-index, so some elements on his site were not visible to the judges. Carlos won the round and went on to win the whole challenge.

Riziki finished third overall, ahead of the other semifinalist. His result makes us proud, and it shows how much you can build in Webflow in a very short time when the structure is right: consistent class naming, reusable components, and interactions set up without code. That is the same discipline we bring to client sites, just with more than 15 minutes.

Read more about the challenge on Webflow’s Speed Build Challenge page, or meet the rest of the team on our about page.