gORGEOUS MOBILE-oPTIMIZED SITES IN MINUTES
I first learned about Strikingly after reading a feature on Y Combinator by Nathaniel Rich in the May 2nd edition of the New York Times Magazine. In order to add a personal feel to the article, Rich picked a few startups and founders to detail, one of them being Strikingly and its three determined founders: David Chen, Daefeng Guo, and Teng Bao. The article is worth a read, and made it easy to root for these founders who turned down lucrative job offers and went through several series of pivots to come up with their final product. Brief insights into stressful moments, like the drama behind determining which founder would make the pitch on demo day, paint a picture of founders who clearly the realize how the success of their idea often weighs in the hands of VCs with short attention spans and deep pockets.
By choosing to go down a different path and focus on mobile first and desktop second, Strikingly has garnered the attention of those wanting to create beautiful sites for tablets and smartphones. Strikingly provides it users with dozens of crisp and professional looking pre-designed templates and layouts to choose from. The site is a fantastic tool for an artist or photographer looking to publish their portfolio on their web quickly and cheaply, but the site also supports events, professional, and personal webpages as well. Positive reviews for the simplicity and versatility of Strikingly’s platforms has come from other sites like Forbes, TechCrunch, and LifeHacker.
Strikingly sites come with standard issue website features such as SEO optimization, page analytics, and social media connections. Additionally, like other startups in this space, Strikingly operates on a freemium model, where users can upgrade to paid accounts and receive benefits such as custom domains, reduced ads and branding, greater bandwidth, etc. In late April, the company raised $1.5 m in seed funding from big name startup backers such as Innovation Works, Y Combinator, and Index Ventures. A successful round of funding combined with driven founders could make for a successful startup story in a competitive yet lucrative industry.
Suggest other startups you want to see profiles of in the comments section below
Suggest other startups you want to see profiles of in the comments section below
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