
Weebly Valued at $455M Amid Website-Building Boom - csmajorfive
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/04/22/weebly-valued-at-455-million-amid-website-building-boom/
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drusenko
hey everyone, happy to answer any questions you have! worth pointing out that
we've also launched a new home page (check out the video, pretty fun), we have
a pretty kick-ass new eCommerce platform we launched last Nov, and we're also
launching some pretty awesome new themes this week -- you can see two previews
here:

[http://purplehazetheme.weebly.com/](http://purplehazetheme.weebly.com/)
[http://collectiontheme.weebly.com/](http://collectiontheme.weebly.com/)

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scrumper
Hey, just a small point: the link to your "Plans & Pricing" page from Google
(search for Weebly) just goes to your homepage. I'm interested in that
information before I sign up.

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funkyy
In new theme pricing and options seems to be hidden for non-registered
users... To bad.

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drusenko
We're fixing that!

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malanj
It's interesting how some internet startup concepts seem to keep coming back.
Website building tools have gone through a number of generations, but are
still relevant now. Similarly Facebook was the second wave of social
networking sites. I recently saw a "pets.com" clone launching in South Africa
(they got funding from Google's local seed fund)!

Marc Andreessen's aggressive stance is that the dot.com bubble was basically a
"mistake". If that's correct, how would one decide that an "old" idea's time
has come?

[http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2012/11/01/marc-
andreess...](http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2012/11/01/marc-andreessen-
the-dot-com-bust-was-basically-a-mistake/)

~~~
jdcryans
From the same article:

“All the dot-com ideas were correct,” he said. “They were all too early. They
are happening now.”

The article's title is clickbait.

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cm2012
There were and are a lot of web building sites besides Weebly, but weebly is
the cleanest for its price by far. When I talk with small business owners I
always recommend Weebly (unless I think they can do a lot of e-Commerce, in
which case I recommend shopify). Weebly is the least frustrating and out of
the box prettiest of the free web options.

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ISL
I created a Weebly site for the first time this week. The website quality per
unit-time invested has trumped any other source I've used. After a couple of
hours of designing and tweaking, it's beyond minimum-viable status, and will
probably persist almost unchanged for months.

Thanks Weebly!

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themodelplumber
> will probably persist almost unchanged for months

The real test of the service will be sites that require constant changing (due
to SEO rewards for timely updates as much as upgrades or general content
management). When I hear "probably persist almost unchanged for months" I
assume you are not in a position to benefit from marketing communication.

~~~
crystalmace
I update mine on a weekly basis and it works pretty well for that.

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argumentum
drusenko was the first speaker during my YC batch. He had one of the more
profound startup slides I've seen: an exponential growth curve with minor
"blips" that correlated to tech crunch articles, but never affected Weebly's
trajectory.

I didn't necessarily "get it" at first, but after 2 years of watching startups
of my batch mates and friends succeed or fail, I see any _focus_ on press as a
negative signal.

A good team builds a good product. A good product begets success. Success
begets news coverage. These things don't work in reverse.

And Weebly is a _great_ product. A few years ago after coding a web app for a
non-profit, I considered building a service to do that for small orgs. But
then I chanced upon 1 year old weebly, and was like never mind.

Anyway, congrats, and hope to see even more!

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pshin45
It's refreshing to see a company like Weebly that is able to be successful and
profitable without having to go down the "MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR UNICORN OR
BUST" path that seems to be almost mandated by VCs nowadays.

It's something the guys at 37Signals preach as well - Better to be a
"lifestyle business" that's profitable, makes millions of dollars in profit
per year, and may take a decade or two to reach a $1 billion valuation, than
to have a multi-billion dollar valuation a few years in (via large growth
funding rounds) but not make a cent of profit for the first decade of your
existence, all the while having your ownership of the business reduced down to
5% or whatever.

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jonathanjaeger
I've never used a site like Weebly, Wix, or Shopify, though I have seen
Squarespace's interface when someone was building a site one time and my dad
used Weebly after I recommended it to him (seemed easy to use).

I'm curious their main sources of customer acquisition. I assume a lot of its
word-of-mouth and organic, but I'm curious how much marketing they do.
Squarespace has been huge in the podcast space doing advertising and did that
big Super Bowl ad splash. Wix seems to have been around for a while so I see
many of their out-dated designed sites.

Edit: I did just get retargeted via Facebook ads exchange after visiting
Weebly's site, so they are doing at least some advertising :)

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callmeed
I have a small, niche website business so I know a little about this (we
aren't on the scale of these guys but do low 7-figures).

Wix and Squarespace at least are spending a _ton_ on PPC customer acquisition.
One analysis we saw put their AdWords spend at $10-25K per day (though, I'm
not sure how accurate that is).

Also, both Wix and Squarespace advertise on terrestrial radio and television.
Squarespace had a Super Bowl ad and I regularly see their ads on Shark Tank
(ABC). I hear Wix ads quite often on AM radio.

Squarespace was on Inc's 5000 list in 2011 with 2010 revenues of 11.7M.

Wix went public recently. They had 2012 revenues of $43.68M with a loss of
$15M [1].

In the "general purpose business website" space, I think all 3 (Wix, SS,
Weebly) see it as a "winner take all / own the market" play (it probably is).
So, they are all spending as much as possible to acquire customers.

Wix clearly isn't profitable. I doubt SqaureSpace is. I think it's admirable
that Weebly is ... but I almost wonder if they need to spend more to compete.

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funkyy
afaik SS is claiming it is profitable and it was always breaking even. There
was an interview somewhere where the owner said until recent the only outside
money was $30K loan from his dad (I think it was one with Alexis Ohanian).

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zachb
Got a link? Wikipedia confirms the $30K loan from dad, but can't find the
interview on google.

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funkyy
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGPj5SOUrn8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGPj5SOUrn8)
I think thats the one. Anyways - imo its extremely interesting and worth
watching.

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kawera
_...now hosts more than 20 million sites that are seen by 175 million visitors
every month._

With all the caveats about average numbers, it seems that on average each site
is visited by only 8 visitors per month. Are those numbers correct?

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mendicantB
It's dangerous to assume an even spread. Numbers are reported like this
because the distribution of site visits is usually confidential information.
From experience, I'd guess it's something like 1 million sites holding ~70% of
the visitors, with the rest spread along the tail.

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kawera
Thanks. I didn't assume they were evenly spread but even if we make it 175M x
70% / 1M we still have only ~120 visitors per month.

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funkyy
Remember that probably majority of those sites are either dead, not public and
made when some people were learning how to make sites. You can put that number
probably down to 10% active/public sites. If visitor number is 175m this might
be unique visitors to the platform = one visitor might visit multiple sites.

~~~
kawera
Yes but in this case it would be much better to cite the number of "active
sites" and not an almost meaningless 20M figure. Still, it's hard to define
"active sites".

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funkyy
Then the number would be lower... Its all about marketing. "Unlimited",
"hundreds of millions", "probably most of" sounds better than "5% of
resources", "20 million active", "there is no data but we think a lot".

~~~
mendicantB
This

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asaddhamani
I built my first website with Weebly, way back in 2010. They are one of the
only ones doing it right. The clean templates, drag-and-drop features, and no-
nonsense hosting is amazing. When you don't want to code a website and want to
build it quick, Weebly is somewhat better than even WordPress, as long as you
don't need to use a lot of plugins.

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smokey_the_bear
We made a basic weebly site for our small home daycare provider. Then she took
it over, it was really easy for her and the site looks great. I'm very
impressed with weebly.

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steve_benjamins
What Weebly understands (that many website builders don't) is that a "blank
canvas" is not the correct metaphor for building a website.

Instead a website needs structured sections (such as navigation, logo, footer
etc.) as well as "blank canvas" areas (such as the body of the content).

They always seem to nail this tension.

Congratulations to David and Weebly- they consistently ship amazing features!

PS - My background: I've written in-depth reviews of 40+ website builders.

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andrewljohnson
Weebly is the best marketing website builder on the planet for non-technical
users, not surprised to see it's also growing quickly. I still use Wordpress
(WPEngine) for my company, but it's really overkill for your average small or
local business, unless the owner is into computers and the internet.

I sometimes do pro bono websites for local businesses I run into. I used to do
Google AppEngine sites, but then I switched to Weebly for the last one I did
(for my daycare lady). It was super-easy both for me to set up, and then when
I handed it off to her, she was able to edit it and make it really what she
wanted. Between a Weebly site, and getting the existing customers to leave
Yelp reviews, she ended up getting a lot of new kids from the online presence.

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primitivesuave
Awesome story. I did a similar pro-bono job for this sweet old couple that run
a music school together, even with their very limited understanding of
technology they were able to figure out weebly. If technologically-illiterate
people can figure out how to use their interface, there is really no limit to
the markets that they can target.

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architgupta
I really love using Weebly for helping friends and family who are non-
technical.

Getting a basic website up is simple. To contrast I tried other website
builders and weebly was the most functional and intuitive for me.

Great job David and team!

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mrfusion
Does anyone know if there's a way to hire a person or company to build a
custom weebly template?

I think weebly offered this service themselves a few years ago but now I can't
seem to find the option.

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memphisbelle
Kris from Red Door Designs does this.

[http://www.reddoordesigns.com/](http://www.reddoordesigns.com/)

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lexcorvus
It's amazing to realize that even a monster success like Weebly (which among
other things has made each of its founders vastly wealthy) is basically a
roundoff error on Dropbox + Airbnb ($455m/($10b + $10b) = 0.02275).

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argumentum
Some things grow (relatively) slow, some things grow faster. The important
thing is to _keep growing_ and _not die_.

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lexcorvus
> The important thing is to _keep growing_ and _not die_.

This statement only applies to the founders, employees, and customers of the
company. My point is that it _doesn 't_ apply to the investors: from an
investor perspective, it doesn't matter if almost every company dies as long
as the Droboxes and Airbnbs survive and grow. Almost all the returns come from
a tiny number of outrageous successes, to the point where even a big hit like
Weebly is a drop in the bucket.

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minhajuddin
I am trying to build a CMS which focuses on data architecture and powerful
page generation using javascript on the server
[http://getsimplesite.com/](http://getsimplesite.com/) . It's still in beta
though.

