Clay Center resident, Clay Griffiths, has turned his self-taught software skills into a career. Today he co-owns Gravity Wiz, a software company that creates website features and online support. 

It all began when Griffiths was in fourth grade, he said. After seeing a cousin build websites, he became determined to learn more. 

“I was just fascinated,” he said. “He showed me how to type basic HTML and my mind was blown, I was hooked.” 

From there, Griffiths said he fueled his software interest by reading books, often at Barnes and Noble during family trips. 

“I just sat there looking at the books, and I wondered how to make websites that weren’t static.” 

He asked his parents for books and began teaching himself the basics of PHP, among other programming languages, by example. 

“That’s kind of how I learned from the beginning,” he said. Adding that often books came with CDs that could be loaded into the family’s computer.

“My parents were super supportive of that, which was awesome.”

By middle school, Griffiths was tinkering online and found a website that offered free hosting with cPanel, and most importantly, the ability to run dynamic languages and databases. Credits were earned by being active in an online forum, so he began posting over and over again to build up credits and earn free hosting. Within cPanels, he would dive through the app store and check out each web tool, which led him to WordPress. Today, it’s one of the top web content management systems, hosting 40% of all websites, and the main frame for his future career.

Fast forward to high school and Griffiths’ father, Grant, was building websites himself. Wanting in on the action, he asked his Dad if he could help. 

“I said ‘Hey just let me try building a couple sites,’ and he let me,” he said. From there, Griffiths made a few websites and found a formula that worked. That led him to the idea of creating a website builder, based on said formula. At the time, there were no drag-and-drop features, and interfaces were anything but user-friendly. 

“That was something I kind of dreamed up mid-sophomore year,” he said. The product, Headway Themes, released the summer before his junior year and became a hit.

Adding that he often did much of his work at school or late at night.

“Back then I brought my personal laptop to school and I was the only kid with a computer,” he said, pointing out that he got approval from teachers. “I would work until 2 or 3 am on school nights then fall asleep in class over and over again. I took as many independent studies as I could so I could work on the stuff I wanted to work on.” 

After months of this grueling schedule, Headway Themes was ready to launch. 

“It was kind of an overnight success, that was really neat. It was pretty influential in the WordPress community.” He added that it received about 50,000 customers, accounting for hundreds of thousands of websites. 

“Even to this day it has a lasting impact on WordPress,” he said.

But soon after, the website builder market became saturated. And Griffiths was onto the next idea. By now he had graduated and was working full time on his software when he was inspired to create a way for WordPress to be run locally, on one’s own computer. 

“You had to find a web host and it was pretty cost-prohibitive if you just want to play around,” he said. He began building by example and “dove into the deep end.” Griffiths said he had an idea of how the product would work, and set out to make it happen. 

The result was named Pressmatic, which launched July of 2016. 

“That was a pretty good success out of the gates as well,” he said. And within a month, he was approached by a company out of Omaha to purchase the software.

After multiple calls and meeting up in person, he signed on with Flywheel, allowing them to purchase the product, which came with a job for Griffiths. 

“That was my first-ever salaried position,” he said. The product also changed names when it became Local by Flywheel. 

In addition to changes in his professional life, Griffiths was soon to be married, with a wedding November of that year. After the nuptials, and skipping the honeymoon, Griffiths traveled to Omaha to start the selling process, while his new wife, Abby Sprague, went back to Kansas to finish her K-State degree in-person. 

They made up for it with a honeymoon in Italy a year later.

“It was remote work before remote work was a thing,” he said. “It’s always been that way for software.”

By 2019, Flywheel as a whole was acquired by a larger company, WP Engine. Griffiths continued to work from them remotely, as he and Sprague lived in Colorado, then Manhattan from 2018 to 2021.

In a parallel track, Griffiths said part of his job was going to events, meeting with people, and networking in the WordPress space.

“During this time I was pitching the idea of Pressmatic and ultimately everybody said no, which is pretty funny,” he said. “I said ‘OK fine I’ll just do it on my own’ and that worked out.”

In his networking, he met his now-business partner, David Smith, who resides in Virginia Beach. The pair met when Griffiths was 16 and had kept in touch. Always planning to work on a project together, they dreamt up a new product idea. Ultimately, Smith was too busy with Gravity Wiz, so in 2017, Griffiths pitched the idea of joining as a partner to help scale the company.

“There was so much that Gravity Forms customers wanted, solutions specific use-cases that the brand wasn’t interested in exploring in a core capacity. Tips, blogs, and free snippets,” he said. Adding that the move morphed into making a paid bundle called Gravity Perks. 

Smith originally launched with seven perks, which has since grown to more than 45.

After years of moonlighting, the pair moved to Gravity Wiz full-time, and now host 15 employees total with more than 130,000 website using their products. 

In short, he describes it as “Building software for people who build websites.” He also compared it to purchasing an app for one’s website. 

He said the brand finds its bread and butter in offering support and working to find solutions, his approach to software since day one. 

“We’ve tried to hire to get ourselves out of there but ultimately we come back to the fact that it’s critical for us to be there and have our ears to the ground,” he said. “We just enjoy being in support and have always been a very product-minded as software engineers.” 

In addition to Chief Technology Officer, Griffiths said he’s also the de-facto COO, working on financials, taxes, HR, and often spends days hammering out financial reports.

Another solution the brand has found is hiring employees across time zones to minimize hours that the business is closed. They have two employees many different states and countries, including Florida, North Carolina, Oregon, Canada, United Kingdom, Ghana, South Africa, and India.

“We have one rigid team meeting a week for 30 minutes, but we’re very strategic about time zone selections so we can meet that coverage,” he said. “We get coverage into the weekend without the team actually working on the weekends.” 

As technology has continued to change, Griffiths said he’s once again adapted to the times. This time, with artificial intelligence, or AI. 

“Ultimately it’s going to cause a shift. I lost a lot of sleep but I just said I’m going to have to use it, Google has been my friend and now AI has been my friend.” 

He’s used the tool to write software, often making adjustments as needed. However, he said it’s still experience that allows him to use AI and make it effective. 

“I love building software and solving problems, I always stay up way too late even when I say I’m going to stop,” he said. “It’s a challenge for me when it’s a new product and I love seeing it come to life. You can click around and show it off and have the team hyped up about what you’re doing.”