adlk.ioOne-liner
Stefan Malzner is a Vienna-based product leader and the founder of Franz (meetfranz.com).
I build products, not just screens.
I'm Stefan Malzner — a Vienna-based product person and founder of Franz. I work end to end on what it takes to ship: the concept, the audience, the flows, the customer conversations, and the planning that turns a rough idea into something people stay for.
Now
What I'm doing today
These days I work with founders and small teams as a product partner — the person who helps decide what to build and why, not just how it looks. I sit close to the work: framing the audience, mapping the flows, running the customer conversations, and shaping the roadmap with the people who own it.
The job is end-to-end product thinking — concept to shipped. I care about the decisions that compound: who this is for, what earns their trust, what to cut, and what to plan next. Design is part of how I get there; the outcome is a product people actually keep.
The Franz story
Building Franz from a side project to a flagship
★ Flagship · meetfranz.com
Franz started as a fix for my own problem: I was drowning in a dozen messaging apps and wanted one window for all of them. I shipped the first version myself and watched it find an audience far larger than I expected — it went on to pass a million downloads and win Product Hunt's Golden Kitty for Best Desktop App of 2016.
What followed was the real education — turning a popular download into a sustainable product. Pricing, onboarding, retention, support at scale, and the hard calls about what not to build. I learned the difference between something people try and something people pay for, and I made most of those decisions in public, on a live product with real users.
Franz is the spine of everything I know about product. It's why I can sit across from a founder and recognise the moment they're in — because I've stood in most of them myself, usually at 2am with a support inbox open.
Before
The path that led here
I've been shipping my own things for as long as I can remember — my first startup at fourteen, then a run of products I built or co-founded: Amore, Horst, Grete, a few games under Bloodirony. Before Franz I also spent a digital-design era working on brands like Barclays and Volkswagen. That stretch taught me range — how to drop into an unfamiliar domain, find the real problem under the brief, and ship something that survives contact with users.
The through-line has always been the same: I'm happiest where product, design, and code meet, close enough to the build that the decisions actually ship.
Beyond work
Off the screen
I'm based in Vienna, where most of this happens between good coffee and a notebook. I'm a
triathlete and an ultra cyclist in the making, so a fair amount of thinking gets done
on long rides. I work in German and English, and I write and speak about product and the
founder's craft when the room is right.
If any of this resonates — whether you're building something or programming a stage — I'd like to hear about it.
Speaking
Talks I give
Why product people make the best AI operators
When the cost of building drops to near zero, taste, judgment, and knowing what to build matter more than ever — exactly the product muscle.
From side project to flagship
The founder's journey — founding Franz, growing it past a million downloads, and the calls that made it last.
How to build a product people love
Audience, flows, and the trust decisions that turn first-time users into the people who stay.
The hard grind of building Electron apps
The unglamorous engineering reality behind shipping a cross-platform desktop app at real scale.
For press & organizers
Lift a bio
- Name
- Stefan Malzner
- Role
- Product Lead & Founder
- Based in
- Vienna, Austria
- Founder of
- meetfranz.com / Franz
- Recognition
- Product Hunt Golden Kitty Award — Best Desktop App of the Year, 2016 (Franz)
- Speaks on
- Product · the founder journey
- Languages
- German, English
- Links
- adlk.io
- Press contact
- stefan [at] adlk [dot] io
Short — ~50 words
Stefan Malzner is a Vienna-based product leader and founder. He created Franz (meetfranz.com), a messaging app he shipped and grew past a million downloads into a sustainable product. Today he partners with founders and teams on end-to-end product — from concept to shipped — and speaks on product and the founder journey.
Long — ~150 words
Stefan Malzner is a Vienna-based product leader and founder. He is best known for Franz (meetfranz.com), a one-window messaging app he shipped himself, then grew past a million downloads into a sustainable product — learning pricing, onboarding, retention, and support at scale on a live product with real users. Franz won Product Hunt’s Golden Kitty for Best Desktop App of 2016. That arc shapes how he works: end-to-end product thinking, from audience and flows to roadmap and the hard calls about what not to build. Today he partners with founders and teams who have momentum, helping them decide what to build and why and carry it from concept to shipped. He speaks on product and the founder journey, writes occasionally about both, and works in German and English.