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Best of Adobe MAX and What's New with Silicon Designer Webinar

Max Dunn · 21 November 2019

Entrepreneurin
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Key topicsIn Good Hands — Why the Engineers Who Built InDesign Still Do the Work ThemselvesMax Dunn has automated Adobe publishing technology since the mid-1990s and grew Silicon Publishing from two people to over twenty. Some of those twenty are the original engineers who created InDesign, which is why a shop that size takes on cloud automation work usually handed to far larger vendors. He argues that bench depth beats headcount, because the people who wrote the software know what it will and will not do before anyone writes a line of code. Listeners leave knowing how to judge a small vendor's bench, and what to ask a big one to find out whether it has anyone like that at all.Hairline Crack — What Online Editing Shows About a Brand Before It BreaksMax Dunn has built browser-based editing systems for Adobe customers since founding Silicon Publishing in 2000, growing from two people to over 20, including original InDesign engineers. The moment a brand opens its templates to non-designers, control of the output moves from one design team to hundreds of people who mean well and edit anyway. Max watches for the early signals: the field someone unlocked, the logo swapped at the last minute, the local version that quietly becomes the master. He explains which parts of a template have to stay locked, which can be handed over safely, and who owns the rules once editing is self-service. Leaders leave with a test for whether their own online editing setup is protecting the brand or slowly rewriting it.The Lifetime Partner — Why a Twenty-Five-Year Bet on One Platform Still PaysMax Dunn started Silicon Publishing in August 2000 with one other person and has spent all twenty-five years of it automating Adobe technology, growing the firm past twenty people without ever moving to a second platform. Most founders are warned never to depend on another company's software, since the vendor can change its pricing, its direction, or its whole product line without asking. He argues the opposite worked: going deeper into one stack is what kept the business valuable, and the team now automates Firefly Services, InDesign, Photoshop, Frame.io and After Effects in the cloud. He explains what a quarter century on someone else's platform actually demands, from reading where the vendor is heading before it announces it, to earning the access that turns a supplier into a collaborator. Listeners leave with a clearer test for when tying their company to a big platform is the smart bet, and when it is a trap.View all topics →

About Max Dunn

Max Dunn, podcast guest

Entrepreneur, Technologist & 26-Year Veteran of the Creative Technology Revolution

Since 2000 Co-founded and leads Silicon PublishingBertelsmann Former Director of Software DevelopmentAdobe First client on day one, in 2000InDesign User Group speaker on automation and AI

Max Dunn is the founder and CEO of Silicon Publishing, a technology company that has spent 26 years transforming the way businesses create, automate and deliver millions of personalized documents and graphics at scale.

A lifelong technologist and entirely self-taught entrepreneur, Max has built his career at the intersection of business, technology, creativity and constant reinvention. He has lived through some of the biggest technological shifts of the past four decades, from database publishing and the early web to desktop publishing, web-to-print, cloud technologies and today’s AI revolution.

Max’s story began inside a small database-publishing division of the Bertelsmann empire, where he worked on some of the world’s largest data-driven publishing operations. As the World Wide Web emerged, he recognized its potential early and helped create some of the earliest large-scale dynamic web publishing applications.

In 2000, Max and his co-founder left that world behind and built Silicon Publishing from scratch-with no funding, no marketing department and, as Max puts it, very little traditional business experience. Their first day brought both a $15,000 project and a relationship with Adobe that would ultimately span more than two decades.

That relationship became pivotal.

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