- Webflow — a no-code website builder — announced it closed a $72 million round of Series A funding led by Accel
Webflow — a no-code website builder founded by brothers Vlad Magdalin (CEO) and Sergie Magdalin (CPO) along with Bryant Chou (CTO and Head of Growth & Marketing) — closed a $72 million round of Series A funding led by Accel. And Silversmith Capital, Rainfall Capital, Draper Associates, and FundersClub also participated.
The founders of the company started Webflow after Vlad Magdalin’s three failed attempts at building a startup. On this fourth attempt, Magdalin was able to build up a profitable business as investors kept turning the company down. That explains how the company was able to set up such as massive Series A round. Previously, Webflow raised $2.9 million and now the company has 47,000 customers.
According to Forbes’ sources, Webflow’s annualized revenue is more than $20 million. And Webflow is valued between $350 million and $400 million after the investment, according to that source.
Magdalin is a religious refugee from Russia who had moved with his family to Sacramento at age 9 and he learned graphic design while in high school in order help his father’s import-export business advertise in Russian-language classifieds prior to studying computer science at California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo and a year of studying 3D animation at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
While at the Academy, he started learning how to program and built a chat app called Chatterfox. Then he joined Intuit as a software engineer after graduation. After leaving Intuit in 2012, Magdalin had already tried to get Webflow going three times. The idea was based on research he conducted for a college senior partner as he studied how tools be used for translating drag-and-drop design into clean back-end code in order to drive innovative products.
On the fourth attempt, the three Webflow founders tried to raise funds through Kickstarter, but that did not work out. And then Magdalin’s credit card debt was rapidly building up. After posting the idea on Hacker News, the team received a lot of positive feedback so they spent six months building a simple first version of the platform.
After gaining traction with freelance web designers, Y Combinator admitted Webflow into its startup accelerator program in 2013. And then Webflow raised $2.9 million in seed funding from a number of the same Series A investors and Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator. And Eric Bahn of Hustle Fund had worked with Vlad at Intuit and was one of Webflow’s first angel investors.
Since Webflow has been self-sufficient for years, Magdalin pointed out that Webflow would have been fine without a large capital infusion. However, this funding round will enable Webflow to invest more in marketing, community events, and to hire talent for building non-website builder products.
Kirkland & Ellis had represented Silversmith in its investments in Webflow. And in addition to the recently closed $72 million round of financing, Kirkland also represented Silversmith in connection with an earlier investment in Webflow. Kirkland’s team was led by transactional partners Christian Atwood, Adam Phillips and Jonathan Manor, tax partner Devin Heckman, and transactional associates Payson Lyman and William Phalen.
