Friday, 23 February 2024, Bengaluru, India
The productivity of generative AI has improved significantly across several domains, including website development. Several tools available today let users create web designs by just answering questions, such as well-known platforms like Wix and firms that were funded with only their own money, like Relume. Armenian startup 10web is joining the competition and thinks it has an advantage.
(Image Source: https://tech.news.am/)
Using text prompts, 10web enables users to quickly create websites created with WordPress, the popular content management system that is infamously difficult for novices. Since WordPress is open source, unlike Wix and Squarespace, it requires extensive web design knowledge to use many of its features. Since hosting is not included, users must also handle additional back-end responsibilities.
According to estimates by w3techs, WordPress still runs about 40% of all websites on the internet because of its customization features. Amid a surge in direct-to-consumer e-commerce, Shopify came in second as sellers sought to develop their online businesses with the Canadian company’s assistance instead of depending solely on Amazon.
The Yerevan-based engineering team at 10web has included generative AI models, such as Llama 2, GPT-4, and Stable Diffusion, into its site-building platform, WordPress, to make it easier to use. Because “architecturally, building a platform for WordPress is not easy,” said Arto Minasyan, co-founder of 10web and the man behind Krisp, a business that uses machine learning to eliminate background noise from audio, creating such a tool would take a significant amount of development work.
A robust hosting infrastructure is required. To support WordPress security, backups, and uptime, you must have a managed service. He continued that each website is essentially an instance, so all those things are quite difficult.
Minasyan is optimistic that improving WordPress’s usability will eventually pay dividends due to the platform’s enormous two-million developer open-source community. 10web, established in 2017, has a positive cash flow. Approximately 20,000 of its users are paying users (Minasyan pointed out that some SMB clients may have hundreds of websites). With 10web, 1.5 million websites have been created in total.
10web offers two revenue streams: fees for each website or traffic. It intends to include a payment mechanism that will let users bill their clients, with 10web deducting commission fees from the amount.
By the end of the following year, the company hopes to have grown its annual recurring revenue (ARR) from $5 million to $25 million, according to Minasyan. According to the founder, the company’s rise was partially due to Armenia’s advantageous position. Armenia, like other former Soviet states, has a wealth of reasonably priced engineering skills.
Our AI talent is likely four times more affordable in Armenia than in the United States. The creator proposed, “And here, we can access the best AI talent possible.” However, getting the top people is difficult for site builders in California since they must compete with companies like Google, Amazon, and OpenAI.
Armenia’s first unicorn, Picsart, was born out of the country’s emerging tech industry in the capital, Yerevan, and is a model for other entrepreneurs to imitate. Due to Armenia’s tiny economy, its businesspeople have always gone abroad, mainly aiming for the United States. They hire developers in Armenia to capitalize on the country’s tech prowess while adding headcounts for marketing and business development in the United States—a tactic also employed by 10web, which employs 70 people. Of course, having a presence in the United States can help with fundraising.
According to the founder, “ninety-nine percent of Armenian startups target the U.S. market.” “You need to go to the U.S. to raise tens of millions for Series A or a couple million for seed funding, but if you want to raise less than $1 million, you can raise from Armenian VCs.”
(Information Source: Techcrunch.com)
