Strikingly is a Chinese, "mobile-first"

website builder Website builders are tools that typically allow the construction of websites without manual code editing. They fall into two categories: * Online proprietary tools provided by web hosting service companies. These are typically intended for serv ...

and blogging platform. Its aim is to allow a user with little or no development experience to create mobile optimized websites and blogs. In addition to

smartphones A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as mult ...

and tablets, websites created with Strikingly are "enhanced for viewing across all devices", including desktops. Strikingly is the first Chinese company to graduate from the

Y Combinator Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 5,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, Californi ...

seed accelerator Startup accelerators, also known as seed accelerators, are fixed-term, cohort-based programs, that include mentorship and educational components, and (sometimes) culminate in a public pitch event or demo day. While traditional business incubato ...

History

Chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

(CEO) David Haisha Chen, chief technology officer (CTO) Dafeng Guo, and chief design officer (CDO) Teng Bao founded the company in 2012. Strikingly released its

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...

platform in August 2012. In June 2013, Strikingly was selected for

’s winter startup program in Mountain View. In April 2013, Strikingly raised a total of $1.5M in seed round from 16 investors, including

Ron Conway Ronald Crawford Conway (born March 9, 1951) is an American venture capitalist and philanthropist. He has been described as one of Silicon Valley's " super angels". He is co-founder of SV Angel. Early career Conway graduated from San Jose State ...

, founder of

SV Angel SV Angel Management LLC (SVA) is an American venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California. The firm focuses on investments related to the AI, software and IT sectors. Background Until mid-2009, Ron Conway made most of his investme ...

, and other prominent

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firms including Y Combinator,

Index Ventures Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with headquarters in both San Francisco and London. It invests primarily in tech companies. History Index Ventures has its origins in a Switzerland, Swiss bond (finance), bond-trading firm cal ...

, Funders Club, Infinite Venture Partners, ZenShin Capital, and Innovations Works. In August 2017, the 5 year old startup announced it had raised $6M in a Series A round of investment from CAS Holding, Infinity Venture Partners, Innovation Works, Kevin Hale and TEEC.

Product

Strikingly is a free online

and blogging platform. The website builder and blogging platform also includes built-in

SEO Seo or SEO may refer to: * Search engine optimization, the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines Organisations * SEO Economic Research, a scientific institute * Spanish Ornithological Society (''Soci ...

features, social media plug-ins, page analytics, and form/email collecting functionalities. The product is aimed at both individuals and small businesses, and has mainly been used to showcase portfolios, digital resumes, events, startup projects, and to create personal branding websites. In early 2014, Strikingly also launched its one-click site builder with

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

and

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...

, allowing users to build mobile optimized web pages quickly. The builder pulls information like profile pictures, location, contact information, and work experience from the social media page to create a mobile optimized website. Other competitors in the website building industry include

Webflow Webflow, Inc. is an American company, based in San Francisco, that provides software as a service for website building and hosting. Their online visual editor platform allows users to design, build, and launch websites similar to Metaconex or Wix ...

Wix.com Wix.com Ltd. () or simply Wix is an Israeli software company, publicly listed in the US, that provides cloud computing, cloud-based web development services. It offers tools for creating HTML5 websites for desktop and mobile phone, mobile plat ...

Weebly Weebly, a subsidiary of Block, Inc., is an American web hosting and web development company based in San Francisco, California. Founded in 2006 by David Rusenko, Chris Fanini, and Dan Veltri, the company offers WYSIWYG website creation service ...

Squarespace Squarespace, Inc. is an American website building and hosting company based in New York City. It provides software as a service for website building and hosting, and allows users to use pre-built website templates and drag-and-drop elements t ...

, Metaconex, WordPress,

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://www.strikingly.com/ Cloud platforms Internet properties established in 2012 Blog hosting services Y Combinator companies