By Laela Sturdy, general partner at CapitalG

Covid-19 has demonstrated that seamless, expeditious, and highly personalized digital experiences are a necessity, not a nice to have. Businesses everywhere have been forced into rapid digital transformation to meet customers when and where they are — in many cases, condensing development timelines from years to mere months.

A survey published by McKinsey in October found that the global share of digital interactions has increased by more than 60% over the past year.

Digitization is helping to bolster our Covid-stricken economy and will continue to help drive economic recovery — including new job growth — going forward.

Websites are central to delivering delightful customer experiences — yet despite being widespread, they’re still expensive and challenging to do well.

Websites often form the centerpiece of companies’ digital transformation strategies. While a well-functioning and well-designed website may seem like a simple concept, it can actually be extraordinarily hard to attain. Most websites today are still built the old way — using a lot of code. It is expensive, time-consuming and hard to find technical resources sufficiently fluent in HTML, CSS and Javascript who can turn designs into live websites. There are some old legacy tools like Wordpress, Wix and Squarespace that were built nearly two decades ago to facilitate website building, but these old tools fail to balance technical capabilities with visual design quality. That’s why businesses are now spending $40 billion on web design services every single year, according to IBISworld Research.

Enter Webflow.

Webflow’s ‘No Code’ platform has fundamentally democratized access to web development.

Webflow’s unique visual no-code development platform provides the building blocks for everything from functionality-rich marketing websites to e-commerce storefronts. Soon it’ll even include end-to-end web applications.

At CapitalG, we have long been big believers in no-code development and have talked to many Webflow users over the course of our research the last few years. In these conversations, we’ve been struck by the tremendous outpouring of loyalty and appreciation expressed by the company’s 100,000 paying users, many of whom describe the Webflow experience as nothing short of magical. It wasn’t just one type of user who sang their praises — we heard the same glowing feedback from freelance designers, professional web design agencies and large enterprises alike.

At the heart of this incredible customer enthusiasm is Webflow’s powerful value proposition. Webflow enables users to build enterprise-grade sites quickly and easily. Not only that, but the websites they build with Webflow are better — more customizable and easier to maintain — than the more expensive, more time-consuming sites they were building with manually written code. In addition, Webflow has created a whole new community of web developers. Using Webflow, visual designers who would not have been able to build professional websites in the past are now building their entire businesses on the platform. Numerous designers told us that Webflow is both the catalyst and the lifeblood of their businesses.

CapitalG’s Investment in Webflow

We are honored and excited to join the Webflow team in their journey to democratize access to web development. Every conversation we have had with the talented co-founding trio of Vlad Magdalin, Sergei Magdalin, Bryant Chou has given us even more conviction that this is not only a rare and magical market opportunity, but also a rare and magical team. We are inspired by the team’s extraordinary vision and execution, and we are equally inspired by the remarkable culture they have built at Webflow. Webflow’s mission, values and culture strongly align with ours at CapitalG. We are thrilled to be investing in and partnering with Webflow on their journey to empower everyone to create for the web.