Dean McPherson

Dean McPherson built the first version of Paperform early in the morning, before going to his day job as a programmer. He is co-founder and CTO of Paperform, according to the Product Journey podcast. He co-founded the online form builder with his wife, Diony, in 2016, when the couple was living in Sydney, Australia, and wanted something they could control, he told SaaS Club.

Teaching Himself to Code After a Music and Philosophy Degree

McPherson holds a BA majoring in music and philosophy. After graduating he taught himself to code and found an entry-level programming job at a company that built forms for the enterprise, he told Made in Shoreditch. He then worked for a startup and kept building his own projects outside work.

Building Event Forms Friends Kept Asking For

The idea came from friends who regularly asked him to build forms for event registrations, Diony McPherson wrote in Starter Story. Existing tools could not handle complex logic and payment rules, and they did not match the friends' brands. She watched him build the MVP in mid-2016, and when he asked her to join, she said yes.

The pair started Paperform as a lifestyle business, something they could run from home with just the two of them. At the end of 2018 they decided to grow the company actively instead.

Adding Payments and Workflows to Paperform

On Paperform's site, the product now covers forms that take payments, generate leads, trigger workflows and send documents for signing. Users can add logic, calculations and workflows, then connect tools such as CRMs and email.