One of Canada’s most successful startups, Shopify, recently threw around its weight; putting themselves in new startup Pagecloud’s corner.
Pagecloud is an Ottawa-based software firm that is barely a year old. It has been in beta testing with several small businesses leading up to its official product launch in a few months. The company has raised $6 million in seed financing from North American investors, including Shopify’s CEO, Tobias Lütke.
“Introducing the world’s most advanced editor.” Those are the ambitious words emblazoned on the front page of the company’s website.
With the help of Pagecloud, designing a website will be simplified, as it aims to reduce the process to three basic functions: drag, drop, and save.
Users will be able to manipulate elements on the page as well as copy elements from another website and paste them onto a web page created using Pagecloud. With these functions, the company was designed as a “clone of PowerPoint,” says Craig Fitzpatrick, Pagecloud’s CEO.
In the realm of Canadian startups, Lütke’s seal of approval seems to be reaffirming. As the CEO of a company that crossed the nine-figure valuation mark this year, Lütke’s investment does more than provide capital. In the long run, more importantly, it puts Pagecloud on the radar.
Before having released a single product, Fitzpatrick said that his company could be on “a Shopify trajectory” by the end of 2015, a statement made to the Ottawa Business Journal nine months ago.
With all of this advanced buzz, however, one has to wonder whether or not Pagecloud is up for the challenge.
“There’s a part of the internet that’s fundamentally broken. It’s the experience of creating something, putting it online, and sharing it with the world,” Fitzpatrick said while introducing his product at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt.
He claims that the programmers who can do a simple action, such as moving a photo on a website a few inches to the left, are less than one per cent of the population. The other 99 per cent are left scratching their heads and forking out a lot of money to get that one per cent to perfect their site.
The goal of Pagecloud is to remove the middleman. Now, anyone armed with mouse can join the ranks of a programmer by paying a monthly subscription, using the already laid-out templates provided, and customizing them.
This model, however, sounds familiar.
In 2006, Wix was founded with the same core principle – that you shouldn’t need to have a coding background to design a website. Wix offers ready-made templates to manipulate, however, the service is free.
Without a product publicly released from Pagecloud, it’s difficult to compare.
The main thrust of the buzz seems to support the adage, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” A good product can be made better with the right backing, both financial and ideological.
Much like in any industry, in a market that is overly saturated there are several factors that contribute to consumer decisions. Pagecloud’s product may not be leagues ahead of competitors such as Wix, even WordPress, but, even if it isn’t, it has done what is arguably the more important job – intrigued both potential buyers and investors.