[HN Gopher] No-code platform Webflow (YC) raises $140M at a $2.1...
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No-code platform Webflow (YC) raises $140M at a $2.1B valuation
Author : brryant
Score : 75 points
Date : 2021-01-13 17:15 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (venturebeat.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (venturebeat.com)
| zed88 wrote:
| After watching Vlad's interview on this week in startup, I think
| the product deserves more success.His story is inspiring.
|
| https://youtu.be/pkJPxDgUGMA
| chafik-bel wrote:
| I believe that no-code is the right solution in some areas like
| building quickly a website for those who don't want to hire a
| developer. I have another use-case in the cloud management which
| is a product I developed https://www.brainboard.co that generates
| Terraform code from a drawing and I think no-code will be present
| in more and more domains.
| CedarMills wrote:
| I really like Webflow. It felt what Squarespace should have
| always been.
| mchusma wrote:
| We have been assessing migrating from our own Hugo based site to
| webflow, so that our designers and business folks can more easily
| make edits and spin up landing pages, etc.
|
| The main hangups right now are lack of transparent pricing around
| overages (it's "call for pricing") and we currently use AVIF and
| AV1 and those do not appear to be supported by webflow. I also
| think paid support tiers would be extremely helpful, like AWS.
| I'm actually happy to pay for good support straight from the
| company.
|
| If anyone from webflow is listening, these are my main current
| requests.
| verdverm wrote:
| Have you looked into hugo CMS providers? There are some out
| their with these features, though I can't find the link right
| now...
|
| Webflow support is ok, feature addition seems to be abysmal.
| Haven't seen anything significant since the last raise
| sgt wrote:
| How do they compare with e.g JourneyApps?
| aparsons wrote:
| If I had a dollar for every WYSIWYG web dev tool that bit the
| dust, I'd be able to single-handedly finance this round. Before
| the downvotes: I get it. Webflow is a nice tool. So was
| Dreamweaver when it appeared. And everything in between. This is
| an iterative process, with once tool better than the previous.
| Maybe Webflow will be the one to make non-trivial WYSIWYG work -
| but after having used it, I'm not betting on it. Their price
| point is also a little high for small teams, but that is less
| relevant to my main gripe here.
| ChefboyOG wrote:
| To be clear, non-trivial WYSIWYG already works.
|
| Wix and Shopify are both publicly traded companies, while
| Automattic and Squarespace are both planning 2021 IPOs. Wix
| shares have gone from roughly ~$17 in 2013 to ~$257 today,
| while Shopify has gone from ~$20 a share in 2016 to ~$1,184
| today. Automattic's flagship platform--Wordpress--is
| responsible for over a third of all sites on the web, and
| Squarespace was generating over $300 million in revenue back in
| 2017.
|
| Webflow has roughly zero chance of replacing frontend
| developers, but the "everyone who needs a website and doesn't
| want to hire a frontend team" market is pretty large and has
| been for a longtime.
|
| What makes Webflow interesting to me, and where it is a gamble,
| is where it stands on the spectrum of developer-friendliness to
| "can kind of use a computer"-friendliness. They seem to be
| betting on a change in the market, particularly around the
| emergence (or rapid growth) of a certain demographic: people
| who are familiar with web technologies (HTML/CSS/JS etc.) but
| who don't want to muck around in them directly to build a site
| --the "know enough to be dangerous" crowd, if I had to give it
| a name.
|
| I don't know if that will work out exactly, and I personally
| don't really find it helpful, but it's interesting. At the very
| least, I personally know a lot of teams building non-SaaS
| products (infra tools etc.) that use Webflow for their
| frontend.
| [deleted]
| vegannet wrote:
| I've used Webflow directly and seen it used within companies:
| although not perfect, my assessment is that they've bridged the
| gap between WYSIWYG and website builder. They've got room for
| improvement but they're definitely on the right path, I'd bet
| on Webflow -- if you look to how Wordpress is used in most
| companies, Webflow is all the good parts.
| verdverm wrote:
| Having used it and subscribed, after their last round. I will
| not be renewing. Cost is too high for a such a buggy product
| that continues to not implement features. So little as
| improved or changed. The most frustrating thing for me is how
| they deal with different screen sizes and overrides. They
| made CSS worse, it is beyond frustrating.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I think they could be fine if companies were flexible. Too
| often a tool with finite options is chosen and then the people
| who selected the tool want all sorts of things it was not
| designed to do.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Webflow has been around for a long time though. They're doing
| something right.
|
| There was an explosion of these tools back in 2012. Products
| like Easel[0] and Macaw[1] came and went. Webflow is still
| here.
|
| 0 - http://easel.io (link is dead, I know)
|
| 1 - http://macaw.co
| cmenge wrote:
| I haven't used it, but I do share your skepticism. I ended up
| rebuilding the last website that was exported from it because
| it was horribly slow on mobile, despite it being an extremely
| simple site.
| sebg wrote:
| The story of how they got into YC is an interesting one =>
| https://webflow.com/blog/the-story-of-how-webflow-and-y-comb...
| mguerville wrote:
| I am happyu to see this crowd calling webflow for what it is, a
| WYSIWYG editor, I'm a non technical but tech savvy person and
| I've built simple sites (some with basic "app" like
| functionalities) in the past using Squarespace, Wix, Wordpress,
| and my current favorite: Tilda. Only in the past 18 months has
| everyone starting to call Webflow "no-code" and I felt like I
| must have been missing something.
|
| Thunkable, Adalo, Bubble, those are no-code tools Webflow, Carrd
| (which I like but is also touted as no-code platform when it's
| basically a landing page builder) and in different categories
| Notion or Airtable... they're great tools but it feels misleading
| to call these "no code platforms"
| verdverm wrote:
| Agree, no-code is a hot marketing term right now.
|
| The only legit no-code project I know of is
| https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode
| mguerville wrote:
| Thanks for the link, I was able to deploy my first full
| fledged nocode app at last!
| verdverm wrote:
| That's awesome, you are now ready for "high code"
|
| https://github.com/hofstadter-io/hof
|
| * am the author of this one
| singhrac wrote:
| I used Webflow extensively for a startup a few years ago where I
| did front-end development and a few non-technical people were
| trying to write out content pages (e.g. FAQ, features, etc.).
|
| Honestly the whole experience was very underwhelming, but it
| might have been the team, not the product. Because there weren't
| components, it was hard to keep a consistent styling. And because
| the non-technical people didn't have a design sense, I ended up
| having to "clean" their work, then translate to CSS manually. I
| guess it was neat to try to explore example ideas, but a lot of
| those weren't translatable into "responsive" web pages (do people
| still do that anymore?).
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