Builder.io: No-Code Digital Storefronts for Developers

The Challenge of E-commerce Flexibility

For any online retail business, maintaining an up-to-date digital presence that accurately reflects current inventory is a continuous necessity. However, introducing a new product or simply testing a different layout on the homepage frequently necessitates assistance from developers, which can significantly delay implementation.

Builder.io proposes a solution: empowering businesses to design the commerce experiences they envision, utilizing a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, without relying on constant developer intervention.

Recent Funding and Investors

The company recently announced a new funding round of $14 million, led by Greylock, with additional participation from Imaginary Ventures and a collective of angel investors. These investors include Michael Preysman, founder and CEO of Everlane, Anthony Kennada, CTO of Hopin, and Adam Blitzer, COO of Datadog.

Origins at ShopStyle

The founders of Builder.io, Steve Sewell and Brent Locks, initially identified this challenge while collaborating on web application development at ShopStyle, a fashion e-commerce platform. Sewell, the CEO, explained that ShopStyle was an early adopter of a “headless” architecture, separating the front-end presentation from the back-end functionality for independent updates.

Despite the benefits of this approach, they encountered a substantial volume of requests from non-technical staff for assistance with page updates and testing, creating a significant workload.

“We hadn’t adequately considered content management,” Sewell stated in an interview. “Our API infrastructure was robust, but we lacked the tools to effectively manage content changes.”

The Bottleneck of Code

Obtaining a simple modification, such as adding a new button to a webpage, could take a month or longer, and might not even be prioritized by engineering teams.

To circumvent these delays, the marketing team often resorted to creating separate pages using alternative software, subsequently integrating them into the main website, which negatively impacted site performance.

“Code represents a significant obstacle for merchants, often preventing them from launching new initiatives or conducting A/B tests due to the time and expense involved,” Sewell elaborated.

Builder.io’s Solution: Visual Editing and Headless CMS

Builder.io offers a streamlined workflow through a drag-and-drop visual editor and a headless content management system (CMS). This allows marketers, product managers, and designers to leverage existing components or create new ones, facilitating content creation, A/B testing, and conversion tracking.

Growth and Expansion

Since the launch of its commerce tool in 2019, the company has experienced a six-fold increase in year-over-year customer growth. Currently, Builder.io serves over 400 clients, including prominent brands like Everlane, Alo Yoga, Afterpay, and Vistaprint.

The company also welcomed Misko Hevery, the founder of Angular, as its Chief Technology Officer.

This growth prompted the company to seek additional funding to expand its support and sales teams. In 2020, Builder.io launched a native integration with Shopify, and alongside this funding announcement, is introducing universal connectors.

These connectors enable commerce businesses to integrate with any headless commerce platform or API without requiring code modifications, and also allow developers to create custom connectors to various data sources.

“Our goal is to empower anyone to easily create and realize their vision, enabling them to build anything they can imagine,” Sewell stated.

Industry Validation

Mike Duboe, a partner at Greylock and a member of the Builder.io board, encountered similar challenges while working at Stitch Fix as their first in-house growth hire.

He focused on minimizing reliance on developers and promoting headless operations. Each new page request would be added to a queue, and with limited engineering resources, site speed suffered.

“Steve and Brent were addressing these issues before they became widely recognized,” Duboe commented. “They possess complementary skills: Steve is a strong technical leader, and the recruitment of the Angular founder as CTO has attracted top talent. We invested prior to that appointment, but his dedication to performance is evident. Brent excels in product and business leadership, and both demonstrate a deep understanding of user needs.”