The Rise of the Web Creator: Announcing Lightspeed’s Investment in Elementor
A new wave of design tools hit the market in recent years. Companies like Abstract*, Sketch or Figma are gunning for Adobe’s user base and if you’re a designer working in a tech or product-focused company with dedicated developer resources, chances are you’re already using some of these new-school tools.
Most of today’s design work however takes place outside of that high-end techno sphere. In 2020, virtually any business owner in any size, shape and form needs a website to make a living. The vast majority of these websites are built with WordPress, and more and more so, these websites are built using Elementor. In fact, a new website is built on Elementor every 10 seconds.
This $15m investment by Lightspeed marks a shift for the company which was largely self-funded to date and we’re excited to share more about the company and our thought process below.
Straight Outta Bnei-Brak
Elementor grew quickly and quietly without fancy offices or funding rounds. Yoni and Ariel started Elementor in a small apartment in Bnei-Brak, Israel, to solve their own problems as independent web professionals and soon realized there were lots of professionals just like them all around the world who were facing the same challenges. That initial group of hardcore users became the foundation for today’s community.
When we first met the team in 2019, the traction and velocity were already apparent but even more so were the founders’ authenticity in the domain and love for their growing community.
Community Powered Growth
A big part of Elementor’s success stems from the fact that it is first and foremost a community-led company. This manifests in all sorts of ways, from their relentless focus on customer support through YouTube polls of what features the next release should include, to key business decisions which prioritize users (even non-paying ones) over bottom line metrics.
Elementor communities started forming organically all around the world to collaborate and opine on product roadmap and when users feel the love, they love right back…
Recently, entrepreneurs and companies within the community started building and selling various add-ons for Elementor. With 700+ such add-ons and templates being sold, the community is now a mini-ecosystem in its own right.
The Rise of the Web Creator
Another tailwind for Elementor is the rise of what the team calls “web creator”. This persona is not a coder per-se or a marketer or a designer. She is a jack of all trades, and as such, needs a tool that can cover all bases.
From no-code generation of landing pages to the most advanced, pixel-perfect animated transitions and interactive elements. Elementor is designed to be simple enough out of the box yet deep enough for advanced users who need that level of sophistication and granular control.
Elementor is used by agencies who like to reduce their dependency on coders, by developers who need a way to build a beautiful website without a designer in the loop, and by marketing teams in companies such as Fiverr, Grubhub and TripAdvisor, who just need a quick, passable event or landing page right NOW.
Open is Beautiful
Importantly, Elementor is an open source software company.
At Lightspeed, we’ve been a long time believers and investors in open source driven software (most recently in Grafana Labs and previously MuleSoft, Heptio and Dremio among many others)- typically, these are enterprise software or developer focused companies. Elementor is not, but the patterns are very similar: Customers prefer open source because it is battle tested, because they can modify it and because they will not be locked in.
Of course, being open source also introduces various risks and challenges the company would have to navigate but so far, the combination of a vibrant community and an open source product proves to be a powerful one.
The Road Ahead
The team eventually decided to raise outside capital to support their very ambitious product initiatives (more on that very soon), launch additional communities around the world and accelerate hiring across all functions.
We feel very fortunate to partner with the Elementorists on their journey and are optimistic and excited for the road ahead!
