Weebly Launches Blog Platform, Closes $650K Investment

650k Sounds like someone is finally just taking what they need, and not - the most they can get.

- Good job Weebly

I`ve experimented with Weebly lately and now hearing the news about upgrading are more than great.

YCombinator is on fire at the moment.

as a website-creator you should try out http://www.jimdo.com! they launched 8 weeks ago and are already way further developed.

Revenue model? Exit strategy? Wait, those are dirty words at Y-Combinator and more recently, here on TechCrunch too.

If Y-Combinator really wants to just develop cool web products, it should place it’s little geeks at big companies that need creativity. Start-ups need to have a business model. “Sell to Yahoo” is not a viable exit for them.

P.S. Weebly’s founders were on Justin.tv making outrageous claims about Y-Combinator companies being sold for over $100 MM already and said they can’t say which one because of confidentiality (or chicanery?).

Sounds like a handy tool. I will give is a test drive and see if it is any good to help with my blogs.

The idea about getting just enough money to launch a site seems very interesting here when many startups takes millions of dollars and in most cases waste it.

Where and how can I access the new feature? Just attempted to find it, to no avail.
Nonetheless, thumbs up, Weebly along with Jimdo are my favs and both beat Google Page Creator.

#5
Jay, you have to build something of use before dream of selling something. Most of the bubble dot coms that either made a dubious sale or crashed had wonderful hypothetical business models and slick excel graphs. But reality starts from building something of use. Most companies failed to do that effectively having great business models–and no product.

From that context YC’s idea of first building something that people would want to use makes sense.

–Zaid
[disclosure: we've recently accepted YC's funding]

“The upgrade also features some new widgets, like the Twitter badge”. Good to hear, Twitter is highly addictive.

YCombinator is realy hot at the moment

Ah! I got it. But can’t get it to behave the way I want really:
http://onreact.weebly.com/seo-blog.html

If that works fine I guess I’ll start using it.

Jay, you must be a millionaire, and serial entrepeneur the way you critisize most companies posted here at TC. You must have some serious experience under your belt.

Yet, you’re here. And you maintain that mediocre, rambling blog. Why?

This a very competitive space with wordpress, typepad, livejournal, movabletype, blogger (google) etc. So, just as important as revenue model at this stage, what’s the differentiator?
If someone says “AJAX editor”, I just want to know what they think the barrier to entry is, especially when these other platforms have many entrenched users. There are few ways to monetize a platform like this, and I suspect weebly’s business model will be the same as, or similiar to, other established platforms.

Is there a way to import content from other platforms?

6% for $20,000 is a great deal for Y Combinator, you have to be a desperate college student to take that kind of a deal.

Who wants to leave college and move into another flophouse and continue to be poor?

@ Zaid - I appreciate that you have a dream and are trying to build a product people will use. There is a chasm between a “product” and a “business”. I’m not saying that some of the things Y-Combinator churns out don’t have the potential to be useful, I’m just saying the hype is way overblown and there are very few real business models.

Web 1.0 - the retardation of the suits.
Web 2.0 - the retardation of the geeks.

Geeks and business-types need each other.

@ Paul - You don’t even have a blog and you can’t spell criticize? Clearly a well-educated, well-spoken person. You’re very indicative of the Y-Combinator crowd. Are you the “anon” on my blog? None of you guys have arguments that are even worthwhile. As an FYI, I am a serial entrepreneur but I hate that term as I haven’t been the founder of any of the 3 start-ups I’ve been involved in. I was an early team member on all three.

Why doesn’t anyone from Y-Combinator have the ability to actually argue and explain without saying “Oh some people just don’t get it” or “You’ll eat your words.” Paul Graham should give you guys some media training so you don’t all come off as arrogant and stupid like Justin Kan of Justin.tv.

@ Garth - exactly. Y-Combinator is screwing over youngsters and getting outrageous valuations. Even small angel rounds come in at a better rate.

If you tried Weebly you should try Sampa (www.sampa.com). Besides way more customization than existing solutions — allowing you to finally control how you express yourself — we also have great privacy controls and above all, Sampa is not a social network, but a place where you build your site for your friends and family.

650k for a Blogging platform: bubble 2.0? I hope no.

#15
Jay, why such hostility man? Take it easy.

If you care purely about business, when all is said and done you will see that Y-Combinator as a VC firm AT WORSE will be like your average venture capitalist: they’ll lose a bunch of money–and make some from few hits. Only thing is YC can invest in 50 companies for the amount traditional VCs invest in one company.

Let’s talk about the YC startups. There are numerous blogs from founders of YC-backed companies and they are all full of praise for the experience and the connections they make. On that end, YC is a winner. You can’t say YC is hurting our kids when the kids themselves are churning out new ideas or at worse returning back to college.

Which brings me back to the original argument: what’s wrong with YC? If it’s the media attention you dislike about it, that’s not YC’s fault.

@ 18 - Zaid

It’s “at worst” not “at worse”. I don’t know if the poor grammar and diction is indicative of the fact Paul Graham actively encourages young geeks to drop out of college or due to a general lack of non-geeky education. I think it’s dishonest of him to have multiple degrees and then claim that he thinks college is worthless. He has no statistical evidence nor does he (or TechCrunch) understand the meaning of stastical significance.

The blogs are full of praise and there’s not a single negative comment. That strikes me as really odd. Either the founders of these companies are so naive and so in love with Paul Graham that they can’t see anything. Even people who love their investors have some feedback and aren’t quite so ebullient. This is too false. Too fake. Too hyped up. I’m sorry if I’m the only one who isn’t blind here.

I don’t like the business model or lack thereof and I have already communicated with the TechCrunch folks about trying to feature more real start-ups that make money or at least have a plan to do so.

Don’t get me wrong - I think it’s great that these products are being launched, but the hype is just insane. If entrepreneurs starting valuable businesses look at the heavy focus on non-revenue-generating “products” then they’ll say “Oh maybe that’s what I should do too.” It’s sending the wrong message to young entrepreneurs.

Honestly, I’m not trying to be a naysayer, but the “Bubble 2.0″ feeling here is what drives me insane. At the end of the day, all it does is creates froth that does little to build value or improve the internet. I appreciate the debate we’re having though. Thanks for being wiling to discuss.

Just because no plan to profitability is evident from cursory inspection of Weebly’s website, does not mean that one does not exist.

Most of the time, with early stage businesses, the key is to throw everything up on the wall, see what sticks and then create a plan to profitability/revenue.

My team and I are working hard on http://www.Synthasite.com, a similar startup venture to Weebly, and we have great plans for revenues and profitability, none of which will be obvious when we release the open beta…

@19, Jay:

“At worse” is clearly the mistake of a non-native English speaker. The fact that he’s writing so well in his second language should ADD points, not subtract ‘em. Don’t be a jerk.

Jay, you say Paul Graham encourages students to drop out of college when in fact it’s the opposite. Being an undergrad applicant is one of the biggest negatives during the YC funding process.

To paraphrase Paul’s policy: “we try to talk undergrads out of doing a start-up; if we can’t we you’re probably should.” With that said, one of the most promising YC company, loopt, was started by a 19-year old founder.

About the hype, remember that YC is getting attention BECAUSE of certain YC startups–not the other way around. loopt, justin.tv, scribd, reddit each have done something right as an INDIVIDUAL entity. Naturally some of that attention will tickle down to their VC.

–Zaid

@ Jay: Wow it seems someone woke up on the wrong side of bed doesn’t it!

It really does seem you have a chip on your shoulder against the Y Combinator set-up and the companies coming out of it. Usually I’d attribute the immature nature/tone of your comments to someone who applied for YC and got reject (sorry I mean rejectED - wow being a part of YC really does seem to have affected my grammar, yet another reason to bash them into the ground!) but my gut tells me there were a myriad of reasons why you couldn’t pick up that application form and submit an idea.

Anyhow, I’m sure one day you’ll actually found your own company which I’m sure will make a lovely revenue stream from day one and show us amateurs how it’s really done. Perhaps then your opinion might actually carry some weight.

sorry Jay most of us aren’t gifted with perfect key punching abilities:) lucky you.

I was really interested until I saw that their base template designs are all or almost all coming from free css galleries like Open Web Design and a few others. I was hoping for something original. Why use these guys when I can get the designers original code from any of the free css sites? Disappointed.

@ Zaid - The point is that a lot of the start-ups you’ve mentioned are me-toos or even me-threes doing the same thing and have gotten attention precisely because they are Y-Combinator funded. Good for you.

@ Harj - I didn’t apply, nor did I consider it. I’m not naive enough to think that Y-Combinator is worth it. Great, you get mentioned on TechCrunch and GigaOm. It didn’t do anything for your revenue stream.

If you’d read my comments from other posts or even my blog, you’d realize I already work at a start-up. My opinions are independent of the start-up at which I work which is why I post without a link to the company itself. I don’t know if the rest of the team agrees or disagrees and what I am trying to have is an intellectual discussion which most of you Y-Combinators don’t try to have. All you say is “show us your site”.

I hope you are both successful, but please learn how to debate. Your sarcasm oozes of geeky arrogance and shows not the slightest regard for the fundamental business questions posed.

YC heads are becoming headless with couple of successes….just thank your luck for some big guys buying your companies…as jay said most of them do not make any sense in making revenues…

YC just happen to be at the right place at right time….squeezing young entrepreneurs when traditional VCs are scared to take risks, and selling college projects to no clue companies

jay, keep up your constructive feedback, do not count zaid or harj who has no experience running a startup than counting on YC justin.tv

Jay, being me-too and me-three is hardly a disqualifier. By that standard you would have dismissed google, buy.com, facebook, and YouTube.

About the media attention, YC might make the intro call to the VC, but after that each traditional VC judges the company on its own merit and does his own due-diligence before deciding to invest. If Khosla was to throw few mil to every YC startup and not just Xobni, each YC company would have plenty of cash to play with.

You’re suggesting the media for yc companies works like:
startup –> YC –> Media

In reality it’s more like:
startup –> big vc(scribd)/novelty(justin.tv) –> media coverage of startup –> media coverage of YC

This feels more like a fact checking round than a debate. I thought a good debater gets his basic facts correct and certainly not the opposite–such as your view of Paul Graham’s policy on college students.

welcome to first life:)

@ Zaid - I’m glad you’re feeling very clever. Kudos to you.

First, hindsight is 20/20. Of course you can point to Google, Facebook, and YouTube (not sure why you’ve used Buy.com as an example) as being late to the party. There is a tremendous amount of luck involved in start-up success. Neither you nor I can impact that. That’s why it’s worthless to debate it. My point is that the blogosphere is full of Y-Combinator fluffers (people like yourselves and other Y-Combinators who rush to the scene to pump up any of your fellow Y-Combinators and defend them at all costs). Read your own blog. Read Harj’s blog. It’s a big circle jerk my friend. You are all patting yourselves on the back before you’ve made anything valuable or gotten any real traction.

Of course Khosla did it’s own due diligence before investing in Xobni. That being said, we can’t debate Xobni except for the fact it seems to have wasted all of its buzz by not having much to show. The same goes for Justin.tv. They got a lot of press and failed to capitalize on it. Ask yourself this - would you rather get press after you have a product and are able to handle the demand or would you like to get it early on when you have a crappy product that will only appeal to early adopters and even those early adopters won’t stick around because like the rest of the TechCrunch crowd, we see 100 new Web 2.0 start-ups a day and begin to lose interest rapidly?

I am suggesting that the process is: IDEA -> Y-Combinator -> Press and that’s exactly how it is. Look at how many Y-Combinator companies are featured on TechCrunch and GigaOm. Paul Graham is great at shilling himself around and Reddit and Y-Combinator give him a great platform to do it. Kudos to you Paul. Truly a great self-promoter.

Zaid, you should check your facts. Scribd got media coverage before it got its VC round. Justin.tv has got coverage initially on TechCrunch because it was a Y-Combinator company and the guys had been at some other crappy Y-Combinator start-up before and claimed selling on eBay was a successful exit.

I think you’re probably a smart geek, but humility and articulation would do you lots of good.

I always love seeing how AJAX or ROR are used on sites like weebly, this site also reminds me of wetpaint, I think that the more websites go ajaxx/ror , the more the transition between 2.0 and web 3.0 becomes evident.

This is great! But I’m not getting anything done…

More Y-Combinator Stupidity (Talk about the hype over at Scribd)

http://valleywag.com/tech/scri.....259048.php

While constructive criticism is valuable, mounting the attack on YC, or even TC/GO, doesn’t seem to make sense. YC’s investment approach makes sense (if you don’t get it, we can take that offline), and the return on reddit is justification. The verdict is still out on some of the others, and who wouldn’t want to help promote their investment in any way possible?

As for media coverage, most of us probably find coverage of any web-based app or service interesting whether or not there is a unique business model or significant differentiator (for the me-2,3,4,n). Discussions of those topics within the coverage is desirable, but if you continually cover start-ups in a harsh manner, what do you think the likelihood of getting inside info would be?

Without getting involved with the drama here, I would note that Weebly does appear to more closely rememble functionality rather than a full-fledged product and as some posters have noted, there are a lot of other companies with similar offerings. Do you have to be first to market? No, and in fact there is evidence that first movers don’t enjoy any greater long-term survivability, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t look at whether or not a company in a competitive space has any significant differentiators. If you want to put $650,000 into a company whose “product” doesn’t have an obviously more compelling value proposition and is probably interchangeable with any of the other “products” in the space (to the average user), then this is a great investment. Personally, I hope that there are more compelling investment opportunities out there.

bdb: YC’s investment approach makes sense from an investor’s standpoint in theory, however I think the biggest problem is that more experienced and savvy entrepeneurs are not going to have any interest in giving up 2-10% of their company for a low five-figure amount. From what I’ve seen, most of YC’s portfolio companies are founded by college students or recent college graduates with little operating experience and little financial resources of their own. While there’s nothing inherently bad with that, we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that entrepreneurs in that demographic don’t come with significant risks related to their lack of experience, occassional naivety, etc. While none of this ever precludes success, experienced, savvy entrepreneurs almost always provide the best investment opportunities.

In a market like the current one where there is too much money chasing too few ideas, and institutional investors would rather invest in less-than-compelling companies rather than return money to their limited partners, it’s easy to get the impression that YC is having success creating a crop of viable businesses. YC had the Reddit sale and a number of its portfolio companies, like Weebly, have gone on to secure larger rounds of funding, but the true test of the YC model will come when we hit a down cycle in the market. When investors realize that the number of significant acquisitions is very small compared to the total number of funded startups, and the focus shifts again to companies that have clear revenue models and management teams capable of executing on them, we’ll see if something like YC will be able to lure entrepreneurs that aren’t just capable of building nifty Web 2.0 products (or functionality), but that are capable of building real businesses.

can somebody post the website for Baseline Ventures (Ron Conway)

I love this funding idea of Y Combinator’s and I think it really help perk up the enthusiasm and hopes of a lot of young entrepreneurs, but at the same time it means that young people are starting their own projects rather than aspiring to improve existing projects. It dilutes the talent pool and that is a shame, especially when we could probably do without another AJAX CMS…

I also have a pet theory that Y Combinator have stocks in power companies… my laptop is going into meltdown rendering all these excessive lines of JS code that YC seem to love so much! AARGH! Stop with the superfluous battery-eating effects please! Since when did crippling the user experience become a mark of a professional site?

@ bdb - as Drama 2.0 said, it makes sense for the investor, not the entrepreneur. What inside information am I looking for? It seems that Y-Combinator’s companies are far too eager to plaster themselves everywhere and reveal all through their blogs. I don’t need any inside information to keep myself entertained by this fiasco.

@ Drama - can you post on my blog so we can get in touch somehow? I’d love to have you be a contributor.

@Jay
Looks like you are at it again…

Saying you are sick of the hype some companies receive still does not explain your incredible concern.

Why do you care about Weebly and YC so much? Why do you insist that companies must have a readily apparent biz model? Did you ever think some companies don’t make their business models readily available on purpose!? ***gasp***. Im sure Weebly has great ideas for their future and the investors who funded them understand the risk. So, just let it go. Let other people make their own mistakes and take their own risks. Either way, they will be better entrepreneurs because of it.

@ Zaid, congrats on the funding, when did this happen?

I would have to be one of the stupidest people alive if I couldn’t figure out that the potential upside for YC is great. as I said, “YC’s investment approach makes sense” and perhaps I should have clarified that it makes sense form the investor’s point of view.

Further, as D2.0 said, “…we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that entrepreneurs in that demographic don’t come with significant risks related to their lack of experience, occasional naivety, etc.” [spelling error corrected]

So, considering the risk they’re taking it makes sense. It is not for everyone, and I’ve never considered it (angel money comes best from friends/ family).

Thanks for the condescension though.

@josh….I think it’s important for companies must have viable business models, in order to be sustainable businesses for the long term. Just like luck is not a strategy, acquisition by (insert you favorite company here) is not a strategy for success to you or your investors. Further more, if you have to think very hard on what a viable business model could be, I’m not sure it will work but that my opinion.

My critique of YC is that most (not all) of their companies are features and not stand alone viable businesses….and a majority of them seem to be advertising supported. Jeremery Liew of LightSpeed Venture Partners have a great blog on how many page views a ad supported company needs to generate in order to be succesful…the numbers are huge…will any of the YC companies generate those types of number? I think not…but I would like to be proved wrong!

#19

Jay, it’s probably best to spell “statistical” correctly when you make fun of someone for saying “at worse”.

Weebly reminds me of the free hosting companies of yesterday, but with a 2.0 twist.

@ Josh - Maybe they are foolish and don’t have a business model. Perhaps I just don’t like giving people the benefit of the doubt when Y-Combinator has time and again proven that it’s a headless beast with no real direction.

ChandraB was referring to this post - http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2007.....n-revenue/

No Y-Combinator business has anywhere close to that number of Page Views.

Why does it matter? Because a bubble is building and at the end of the day, that’s bad for most of us in the internet industry. The arrogance of so many Y-Combinator founders is quite disgusting.

Maybe I care because I see young entrepreneurs falling for the chicanery over at Y-Combinator. Paul Graham is a wannabe-Karl Marx with his latest essay on unions. He needs to stick to things he knows and not pontificate on everything. His ego is larger than Mr. Broadcast.com’s.

@ bdb - angel money from friends and family is far cheaper. Furthermore, the free press on TechCrunch and GigaOm probably still don’t justify the insane valuation Y-Combinator gets.

@ Robby - Agreed.

@Jay: I’m not Anon, and I’m not from YC. I’m just some guy. But what thing is clear to me: you’re just a wannabe. You’re not a success, and no one has ever heard of you.

Come back to reality. You’re embarrassing. Your opinion is worth nothing, as you’ve nothing to show for it. Pathetic, dude.

@ Paul. You’re just some guy. You claim that my opinion is worthless as I have nothing to show for it? What do you have to show for it? Isn’t by your very definition your own opinion worthless?

You and your fellow Y-Combinator sycophants may want to learn some logic in addition to learning grammar, diction, and eloquence. Most of you never present a single example or contradiction to my arguments. You just resort to ad hominem attacks. Your maturity shines through above your great debating abilities.

Jay, you’re paranoid. I don’t know anything about your Y-C obsession, I don’t even know much about Y-C, so stop bringing them up, cos I don’t know what you’re talking about.

You’re nothing but a critic. You haven’t made anything. You’re a nobody. I am just some guy, yes, as I said myself. Whereas you, well, you think you’re some kind of a business genius the way you’re dishing out insults to companies that are getting somewhere.

You’re a loser, dude. You’re no “serial entrepreneur”, you’re just a faceless critic. The only reason I’m responding to you is because you’re amusingly pathetic. It’s funny, it really is. You sit behind your keyboard insulting and criticizing other companies, as if you’re even in authority to do so!

You’re a complete wannabe.

@ Paul - we’ll ignore your poor grammar but let’s look at how you debate. I’m not saying “I am passing judgement because I’m an expert.” People can have opinions without having been in that position themselves.

How would you respond if everytime someone criticized President Bush he said “You’re a nobody. You’ve never been President so shut up.” That’s a pathetic debating strategy that you yourself are employing.

I’m providing a viewpoint. You can disagree with it. I provide facts and logic. You provide nothing. I’m happy to debate, but debate requires two intelligent parties - not me vs. a block of wood.

@Jay: I’m happy to have a debate, but all you’re doing is throwing insults at me. Are you trying to get a rise out of me?

And you sure think a lot of yourself!

I wonder if you can see just how cliche you are. A self-absorbed internet critic. Look how hard you try in your replies. I bet you go over your words at least a few times, to make sure you’re sounding as intelligent as you possibly can.

You’re a very sad man. I’m not sure if that’s an insult in itself, it’s just what I believe, and have gathered. You’ve not a single project you can mention, I bet, that has earned you the title of “serial entrepreneur”.

And your blog — geez. It’s rambling repetitive garbage. New company? No exit strategy. How are they going to monetize? They suck.

How would you know? Name me just one, just one, of your successes.

Guys like you go nowhere, because you create nothing. And all the while you’re trying to put me down! Incredible. Good luck in all your…

Whatever it is you think you do.

Good luck with your little blog. People really care what you have to say.

@ Paul - I believe you started the insults. I don’t read these posts over again. Perhaps some of us are a bit more eloquent than others.

I am not truly an entrepreneur - I’ve worked at a number of start-ups and most of them did poorly because they followed the typical “get eyeballs” model. The only reason I rail against other start-ups doing the same is that I see how destructive and counter-productive it can be.

You learn as much from failure as you do from success. As for my “little blog”, I only launched it because people on GigaOm asked me to start one to collect my thoughts. You may not appreciate my viewpoint and that’s your choice. I still don’t see an argument using logic from you though. You continue to harp on “what have you done?” If you want to continue this discussion, please move over to my blog.

Greetings all,

I have been reading the discussion here and at GigaOM, and its been fun for the second straight day. As much as it is fun, most parties have a point. I do have to side with Jay on few points:

1. Most companies in the web 2.0 scene do NOT have a viable business model that is supposed to take them to long-term profitability. What they DO have however, are pretty web sites and narrow functionalities. They also have 10s of competitors with same pretty web sites and exactly the same functionalities. During the past year I have personally screened over a 1000 Web 2.0 companies (at least those that call themselves 2.0), and out of all I noticed just probably below 10 that really stunned me with interesting technology and unique offer proposition. You can even see how they intend to make money off their technology. In other words, not all Web 2.0 companies are losers. Those that stand out have well thought through applications that are innovative and useful. In fact, most of the companies that really impressed me did not receive multi-million dollar funding rounds. You do not need a million dollars to build an Ajax-based blog application. You need $10-15k at most. Throw it on the market, see what happens. If people don’t like it, they won’t tell their friends about it - millions of dollars are not going to save you there.

2. Entrepreneurs that go through hell to receive $5k in funding sounds like a rip-off. Go to friends, family, get a part time job to finance your new site - but why give away equity for this much is beyond me.

3. When building a company, unless the technology doesn’t exist, first do your research to see if there is a need/demand for the functionality you are going for. Do not build a site (Gaga, Hlickr or Stratnewy) and then try to convince us there is a need for it. Press headlines are not going to help the case either.

4. Please, don’t stay in “Beta” for years. That only shows that you are not making it on user subscription rates or have no idea how to “sell/develop” your company further.

Best of luck, everyone.

@Jay: I cannot have a discussion with someone who thinks they’re better than me. You’re not being eloquent, you’re being a condescending ass. Surely you see that? It must be intentional.

It’s not just with me, either. It’s just in general. In general, you’re an ass. I do not mean that as an insult, I mean it as a genuine statement.

I’m going to stop talking to you now. The reason why I’ve posted this, is because I knew that if I didn’t respond, you’d smugly go off thinking you’d beaten me or something! In fact, you probably think that now — just because you think you’re above me. (Evidently, you have social issues.)

You answered my question. You’re not an entrepreneur, and certainly not a serial entrepreneur. Your criticism is simply a viewpoint, and is not based on any real experience as an entrepreneur. In response to what I’ve been “harping”, what have you done? - nothing. You’re an internet critic. Good luck with that.

@ Paul - Are you going to cry now? Grow up buddy. I don’t think I’m better than anyone. I’m open to debate but you only focus on me as a person rather than any argument I present. All I’ve said about you is that you’re a weak debater.

My criticism is based on being at start-ups that failed. That’s quite valid according to most people. I’m a critic of poor business models. I love the internet and think it’s a great thing.

You’re leaving the discussion because you have no logical arguments to present. I’m busy too so I don’t have all day to argue back and forth, but at least have an argument.

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