Episode 020 - 10Web; Tigran Nazaryan, CEO

Introduction

Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger

Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.  My mission is to cut through and go beyond the hype that tends to dominate the tech landscape.  And provide you with information you can use.  

Episode Introduction:

• Welcome back everyone.  Today, we have a really interesting program for you b/c I have the pleasure of welcoming to the show Tigran Nazaryan, who is the CEO of 10Web, a  
• Tigran, thank you for making the time to be with me today on the podcast.
• I am super excited about today’s conversation after learning about the company b/c 10Web has created a really interesting business model and is changing the game around the area of Web design and hosting, and is doing that through automation of an old but very reliable tool and ecosystem many of us are familiar with have used, WordPress.  
• 10Web has a very interesting history and story and what I believe is a huge addressable market.  Tigran, I thought it would be useful for you to provide us first, with some of your background, and then we can get into the interesting story around the origins of 10Web as a company
• Five years before founding the company in 2017, a small team of engineers were building WordPress plugins.  This helped you identify the biggest problems in web development, leading to the formation of 10Web.  With vision to create a platform for hosting for professionals and agencies.  
• We built an advanced, modern type of hosting technology.   Allows automatic creation of WordPress websites and powered by AI algorithms and neural networks.   We also created our own tools for optimizing websites
• We are getting a lot of momentum, growing really fast…
• Hear is a quote from a press release after your raised your Seed round last month where you stated, "Tens of millions of WordPress websites are built every year, and an average website launch takes 5 weeks!  We wanted to bring automation to WordPress development to facilitate and speed up this process," can you expand on this?
• Why did you choose WordPress automation as opposed to, say, building your own website builder tools?
• Tigran:  Old school platform, but WordPress powers 45% of all websites built.  It is really flexible and workable.  Yet, we found the experience of creating WP websites was really painful.  Flow is time-consuming and requires some deep knowledge where many web developers don’t go that deep.
• Our vision was to solve these problems for web developers.  Huge potential for automation because WordPress 
• Here is a quote from your investor at AI Fund;  “10Web has built an innovative, no-code solution utilizing artificial intelligence to automate website porting and creation.” (Perry Wu, General Partner, AI Fund)
• We spend greater than 2 years with a team of machine learning engineers to create the solution.  Not a simple undertaking.
• You use Google Cloud as infrastructure, why?  
• Tigran:  We use Google Cloud for hosting.  Clients’ websites are stored.  We also use AWS, MS Azure.   There is no fundamental difference between these 3 solutions, only difference is in details.
• Talk about achieving 90+ Google Page speed score.
• Tigran:  Page Speed score is a metric defined by Google.  Important metric.   Affects conversion, effectiveness of ads, for all web pages of the site.  Technically very challenging.  Not a single plug-in or solution.  Also, WP websites are not all the same.  Helps professionals streamline website development.
• We offer a full, complete, turn-key solution for agencies
• Discuss target market and go-to-market strategy. 
• Tigran:   Our current focus is on develpers, agencies and free-lancers
• You recently closed a $2MM Seed Round.  Where are you in terms of traction in the marketplace?
• Tigran:  Priority is to grow.  We have thousands of customers today.
• How are you rolling out in terms of launch strategy for customer acquisition?
• Tigran:  We don’t have any specific geographical limitations.  It’s popular with web builders globally and WP is translated into hundreds of languages.  We focus on US and western Europe right now.
• Can you discuss the subscription-based revenue model?
• How do you view the competitive landscape given your value proposition of top class hosting and automation of WordPress?
• Tigran:  Many provide hosting and site building tools.  Competition not only within WP community but also between WP and other platforms
• Your competitive advantage is in the pricing and the automation, right?
• Tigran:   Yes, and none of the others provide a specific, customized solution to cover agency site development needs with simplicity through automation.
• Want to shift back to the technology.  We hear a lot about artificial intelligence (AI)…    Do you think AI will replace traditional web development or is it supplemental technology?
• Discuss additional capital needs and process…
• Capital efficient business model;  recurring revenue, high gross margins with major expenses being development and people…
• Tigran:  AI Fund and Sierra are Seed investors so we will consider other investors, as well

Closing Remarks

• Tigran, what is a good way for those seeking additional information about 10Web and its products to get in touch? 
• • Obviously, there is the 10Web website:  www.10web.io
  • Invite agencies to sign-up 10Web, we will invite you to our Slack platform for more detailed, closer conversations.
  • Linkedin

Thank you for joining me for this edition of DVC.  I hope you found our discussion today with Tigran Nazaryan and 10Web interesting and it gave you things to think about regarding how you go about building and creating high-quality websites in the future.  I look forward to joining you on my next edition of DVC,  Thank You…