21 Jul The Human Side of Building for the Web: A Conversation with DJ and Justin
The Human Side of Building for the Web: A Conversation with DJ and Justin
21st July, 2022
As a proud media partner of WordCamp Europe 2022, we had the chance to sit down with DJ (Daugirdas Jankus) and Justinas Rakašis for an insightful conversation about their journey, ideas, and the future of Hostinger. This episode captures the moments, thoughts, and stories that stood out. Here’s our full chat – enjoy reading!
This is your host Vineet Talwar back again from WordCamp Europe in Porto. For this episode, we have hostsinger’s team here, and these guys have really cool names, DJ and Justin. Hey guys, welcome to the show.
Hello, hello, thanks for having us.
Hello, it’s a real pleasure. So guys, we can go on and talk about you. We would like you to introduce yourself to our listeners.
Yeah, so everyone calls me DJ, but my real Lithuanian name is Daugirdas. And I’m the CMO here at Hostinger.
What else? What else? You’re doing.
Yeah, so I do marketing stuff and everything related to our growth and, you know, us gaining traction and popularity in the web hosting arena basically. Yeah, yeah, and I’m just into Lithuanian names, you still know, but they’re really quite hard to pronounce, like, do this, and yeah, I’m chief product officer at Hostinger. I joined in quite a recent limb, but overall, I’ve been in this industry for more than 15 years, so, yeah, and my job, you know, at Hostinger is mainly, you know, taking care of product strategy and vision. And mission, so there we want to be in the hosting industry, hosting as a product.
All right. So, when was it that you entered the world of WordPress, and what motivated you?
Oh my God, where to begin? I think of my first interaction with WordPress. Was, I don’t know. 15 years ago when I was still in school and, ah, the internet was booming, and I was interested in that, and I did a lot of, like. Projects, like low-scale projects, were just playing around with the technology, and it was always there for me. Like back in the day, you know, it was mobile internet, WAP, you know, stuff, and very basic, you know. Like, I myself was a user of 000 web host, one of 11 of all of the projects that we run on the free web hosting platform, and it was always there. And one thing led to another, and I joined Hostinger like 5 years ago, more than 5 years ago when we were still quite a small company, only 70 people. Now we have more than 1000 employees, and you know, so it was always there for me. Like, as far as I can remember, I was doing something with the internet and, and with WordPress.
Yeah, and, and for me, so, I started to write code when I was in 4th grade at school. So that’s, yeah, 4th grade, yeah, 4th grade. In 5th grade I started to do 12th-grade student tasks, you know, and when I was 14, I found a web because then I started to write code; it was Pascal, C++, etc. But then I found that when I was 14 years old, at that time, I think, two main CMSs were booming, BHP Fusion and the workers were starting to find their way. So yeah, I remember it started then, and when I was 18 years old, or 19 years old, I joined one web agency, and we were building mostly all the websites for the companies on Worbit. So I was; I was working with Vypr for a really long time, and then I moved to NordVPN. I was working as VP of engineering there, and, so to this day, Norwe, the Norwegian website, is built on WordPress. It’s a huge brand, you know, and no one uses that brand, NordVPN, you know, that product, and it’s using WordPress and trust, you know, VCMS, VCMS. So yeah, and now when I joined, you know, Hosinger, I found out again. How big Morphus grew, so I was like, “OK,” so I started, and it showed up, and this is where it is now, so yeah.
All right. So the next question is, could you please tell us a bit about your roles at Hostinger and what your day-to-day activities look like? Let’s start with you.
Yeah, so I’m chief marketing officer at Hostinger, and my main objective is growth and new user acquisition. So our marketing is mainly focused on acquiring new clients, exploring new verticals, new product lines, etc. In my day-to-day activities, I don’t have, like, a routine. It’s always a day one. For me and for us at Hostinger, it’s one of our values and principles. So, in very simple terms, I do whatever I can to help the company grow and acquire more new users. And back in the day when I just joined the company in 2017, I and my team did a lot of stuff, you know, ourselves. lots of, you know, hands-on experience, you know, setting up the channels, tracking, and, and, and, and etc. We did everything by ourselves. And now as the company grows, I’m, I’m, I’m less involved in that, sadly for me. So I have more like managerial work to do because we have more than 100 people in the marketing department. So, it’s, but I still like, I, I, I try to do stuff, you know, on my own, so I still, you know, spend some time, you know, exploring different channels, different kinds of setups, and doing stuff on my own, you know, and, and, and then scaling it.
Yeah, yeah, and, as a chief product officer, so my main task, you know, is, to understand where we should be as a product next, you know, for, for next year, for the next 5 years, for the next 10 years. So mainly I’m, I’m focusing, you know, on research and looking at what’s happening with web and coaching my team rather than, putting, you know, things on the table to do, you know, so, definitely making decisions on what we should do next and, if that aligns to our strategy as a company and, and as our broader strategy, but yeah, I’m looking to, you know, Hands on. So, even I sometimes, not sometimes, every week I spend, you know, time even talking with our clients. We have client interviews and, by doing so we’re trying to understand, you know, what’s really happening, who are our clients, you know, how we growing together with us, because, Just to understand, hostinger as a company grew together with clients, started with free web hosting, then moved, you know, to, accessible hosting, for a real good price, and then more plans were introduced, you know, and because our clients grew, you know, we had different, needs, and, yeah, so right now we’re still seeing that our client base. changing the going together with the web. So, yeah, by, by taking care of our customers, I like. Trying to put, you know, the mission and the strategy for a product team where we should move on and what we should do next, not by, setting the specific, you know, things, what we should do, but setting the specific goals where we should get, and, yeah.
Yeah, that’s a very interesting point that you mentioned and we have 10 company principles which we use to operate, which we use to hire people, which we use when collaborating with one another and the first main and the most important principle is customer obsession. So I think Only one thing, you know, that is like universal for everyone, for us within our company is, this aspect. we constantly and proactively work with our clients. we want to understand them, like we talk with them in person, you know, and, Justin is doing interviews, I’m doing interviews, our CEO is doing interviews like we, we, we talk a lot with them, you know, then we. kind of like, collect the feedback, group it into different categories, and we share it across the whole organization and we use this because we want to understand, you know, like how we can help them to succeed online and Everything that we do, you know, we want to, we want to, of course, like gain awareness in the, in the, in the niche and earn trust and for us, like earning trust, how we approach it is we just want to, you know, our work, our product and our service to speak for it, you know, and we like to build stuff, you know, and, and, and gain that trust from the clients through. our products and services,
Yeah, because, you know, for chief executives and middle management at Hostinger, talking with clients is mandatory. It’s not optional, and everyone has to understand our client, because otherwise, no, how are we going to make the right decisions about where we should move on as a company and what we should offer next as a product? So, yeah, it’s one of the key aspects of what we are doing at Hostinger: being customer obsessed, and another thing is having extreme ownership about what we are doing, you know. If you believe in something that you must do, then you do everything to achieve that. So there are two key principles that drive Hostinger and drive, you know, us as chief executives.
All right. All right, so you guys also sponsored this WordCamp Europe. So, could you please tell us a bit about how that has worked out till now?
yeah. So actually, it is our first event that we are sponsoring. And we started with super admin positions straight away because this is how we do stuff at Hostinger and it is We like to, to look at this as a statement internally because when you do your first World Camp sponsorship, and it’s like main, and you do it as a main, you know, sponsor, so all teams are kind of pushed to take this seriously. And this is how we do things at Hostinger and for we wanted to do this for a very long period of time. We see this event and we see our sponsorship as a Way to talk with the community, to understand the community better, collect feedback, indicate, you know, some, gaps that we could fill. And we approached this very, very open mindedly, and we wanted to do this for a very long period of time, but being a boot shop employee in a company, we need, we needed, I think, to, to grow to a certain size so that we could do this like for, for the long run because we do not want to do like 11 event, you know, or one sponsorship or just, you know, just appear for, for a while and then disappear. We, we take this very seriously and We want to do it for the long run. We, we see that things are just starting for us and, and, and, we want it like to be big enough to be able to sustain this for an extended period of time. This is how we see it.
Yeah, and another aspect is that we were always looking, you know, how we can give back to the community. So, but because just for you to understand, we took 30 people from Hostinger and brought it here for everyone to understand how we can contribute to WordPress, and a whole team went to contributors day. the contributing, you know, finding new ways, talking with the teams, and, it was, you know, one of the possible ways for us to do and to find out more what we can do in the future, to give, to give back to the community, you know, and it’s, it’s amazing. amazing thing that Everyone at the team right now, we were talking with everyone and everyone like, oh wow, now I can do that, now I can do that for the world. Everyone’s like really exciting, you know, and it’s it’s for us, it’s the most important part, you know, not only to be visible, but for everyone and especially for ourselves, to say that, OK, now we are serious about it. And we will focus on this and we’ll do our best, you know, to give back to the community, to focus on WordPress,
plus, WordPress is a big part of our business, so we run more than 2 million WordPress websites and it’s increasing, you know, like we have a screen in our, in our booth and the numbers are going up, you know, constantly. So we are like, we need to represent those clients and those WordPress users from our user base. And, you know, we mentioned how, how we try to focus on the clients and we collect a lot of feedback. So, So we can represent that as well and and and and and help help to shape, you know, WordPress as a community and as a as a platform as well on behalf of our clients and that’s very important and we want to do it, you know, and and we’re just, you know, starting now and kind of like figuring out, you know, how we should do it in the in the best in the best possible way.
All right. And what is the one thing that you love about WordPress?
For me, that’s not the community. I, I saw how everyone is like coming over and like talking, you know, sharing and sitting next to, you know, and sitting in with the contributors day and next to the table, seeing, you know, how everyone is like passionate. It’s, I feel you know that community part is the maybe that’s something that driven WordPress where it is right now, you know, because there was always other, you know, CMSs. like, like I mentioned, BHP Fusion, back in the day when I was a kid, it was huge, you know, it was a huge part of the internet, and, but never had, you know, such community like workers there. So I think it’s, that’s something that amazes me, you know, every time when I think about it and especially when I’m able, you know, to, to get and to be part of a community. So it’s sort of crazy and I’m really happy about it. Yeah, we saw also in the contributor today, there are like 800 contributors contributed to the future of WordPress. Nobody’s paid to do that and they just want to do it to support and I think it was a record breaking contributor.
Exactly, yeah.
yeah, that’s crazy and, and, and we, and I myself got my poor bust approved, you know, so it’s, it’s a great feeling, you know. And and for me, like, it’s a very difficult question, by the way, what, you know, what we like about the WordPress the most, but. I, I kind of thought about the mission as well. So we at Hostinger truly believe that the internet should be free to access for everyone, you know, and, and it should be like a democratic, you know, so, and it’s, it’s, it’s sometimes it’s complicated, you know, to do that, but we really believe in that and everyone should get an access to the internet because as The time goes by and as we progress, you know, as a, as a, as a society, you know, the access to the internet is crucial, you know. So if like if you cannot get the access to the internet, I think very soon you will be like non-existent, you know, and it’s applicable for businesses and for individuals, for everyone.
Yeah. And you know, for me personally, I was working at Nor VPN. We were working to make internet accessible for everyone, to, to bring to the days, you know, where it was. And then I decided to join Hostinger. It was the same, you know, we were talking with the CEO of Hostinger, and he said like, Hey, Justin, let’s make the internet better. You know, and I’m like, I was working for this, you know, my work career, you know, of making better internet, and I believe, you know, that worker is doing that, making it more accessible, you know, for everyone to have their online presence, everyone who wants, you know, to be inside of the internet, so. I’m, I’m really proud that, 4 of us and, especially for hosting to be able to achieve that together for our customers.
All right. So, let’s move on to our last segment of this interview, which is life outside WordPress. So what do you guys like to do, things that are not WordPress or outside WordPress.
It’s Like many aspects of my life, you know, is revolving around web hosting, internet, and, you know, WordPress, naturally, you know, it’s one of the biggest parts of the Internet, I would say, but ah, I like to travel, I like to spend time in nature. Ah, it is very difficult, but I try to disconnect as much as I can when I do stuff outside, for example, and one of my biggest passions is music. I have a small garage band and we play rock and roll and, you know, it’s like, I don’t spend much time on that, but, when I can, I try to, yeah, we even have, you know, goals and keep your eyes, then you’re going to achieve something that DJ going to sing, you know, and we’ll bring his grass band, so this is something that yeah, it’s a huge thing for him. Additional motivation, additional motivation, yeah, and for me, it’s quite easy to answer, you know, it’s I’m a huge casual head. I have a drift car. I’m racing. I have a motorbike, you know, I’m going outside, you know, taking a motorbike, you know, I’m going around the town, you know, and yeah, and I have even my own workshop, so I’m getting there. I’m disconnecting, you know. working on board schools and etc. you don’t have time, you know, to think about the job, and you can think about the, about the things that matters, you know, the most people, and, yeah, and it’s like no. Work is always like a huge part of our lives, you know, and it’s really important for everyone to find that, that sweet spot where you can disconnect. Otherwise, you, you, you’re getting stuck sometimes, you know, inside your own minds. Imagine you’re thinking for the last two months about the strategy, and it, it’s just starting to repeat again and again and again in the same topics, and you just get, you know, for. one day, into your workshop, working on your car, you know, getting happy, sitting on a motorcycle, getting around the town, and you’re like getting banging, oh wow, I never thought about this. Maybe we should do that. And yeah, so. and that’s same, for, for all executives of the hosting right now. I want to have some kind of passion, so we can disconnect, and we’re, we’re encouraging that a lot, as common culture.
All right. So, last question of about this interview is an Easter egg, as I said earlier. So, what is your favorite song?
Where to begin with? My name is DJ I’m expecting I know I know I know his song. I know his song, but I’m interested like o many songs are running through my, but I know the specific one that we sang together. 2 weeks ago, Yeah, OK, let’s go with that one. I’m a big Queen fan and let’s go with Bohemian Rhapsody this time, but if you ask me like in a month or a couple of months, it might be a different kind of song. Yeah, but I think this one is you’re most passionate about.
Oh, it’s a good song.
Yeah, it’s classics. Yeah, I know, and for me I’m a huge metalhead, and with that I’m a huge metal head, so. I grew up when I was working on websites and they said nirvana, and so it’s still, you know, many times, you know, I’m listening to that, and I know, I have one son that reminds me a lot, you know, because I don’t know, it was my first flight, and then I was landing in Singapore. from suddenly from nowhere, it was in plain. playlist, Nirvana Drain you started to play, you know, and every time when I hear first chords, you know, it just flashbacks, you know, my, my, my first trip, you know, my, my first flight. my first trip to Bali Island and my fiance, so yes, that’s my favorite favorable and, you know, most iconic song that it’s in my head, you know.
I’ll try to post a link in the description so our listeners can listen to that. Thank you so much for being part of this podcast. It was lovely hosting you.
Thank you so much. Thanks for having us. Thank you.
Thank you
It was, it was really nice experience, so. Yeah.
All right, guys, till next time. Bye-bye.
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Meet the Host
Vineet Talwar is the founder of Some Tech Work, a Germany-based digital consulting studio, and the creator of Jump.ac, an AI-powered EV fleet charging platform built through the Carbon13 accelerator. When he’s not building products or fixing websites at scale, he’s usually experimenting with new tech ideas or polishing his next WordPress talk.
Meet the Guest
Justinas Rakašis is the Head of Product at Hostinger, overseeing product strategy, user experience, and the development of tools used by millions of website owners. With a strong focus on UX, performance, and simplifying hosting for everyday users, he has helped define Hostinger’s modern product direction. Known for his systematic thinking and product-driven mindset, Justinas is committed to making the web more accessible through intuitive, reliable hosting solutions.
Meet the Guest
Daugirdas Jankus is the Chief Marketing Officer at Hostinger, where he leads global marketing, brand strategy, and growth for one of the world’s fastest-growing hosting companies. With a background in digital marketing and data-driven experimentation, he has played a key role in scaling Hostinger’s global presence and shaping its bold, customer-centric brand. Outside of work, he’s known for his passion for tech, analytics, and building products that empower creators worldwide.
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