Back in 2008, we started a new company and called it PressPlane Inc.  We knew that wasn’t the name we’d launch with but we wanted to get started so we just incorporated under the first thing that came to mind.  Eventually, we launched our new creation and we called it Inkd.com.  It was the first marketplace for buying and selling graphic design.  We were proud of it.  It seemed like a sensible offering and a pretty decent business idea.  We thought the idea was neat enough that we decided to raise a little money from some pretty smart investors.  Like most start-ups, we learned a few things along the way.  Buying and selling graphic design files was a reasonable concept but our customers kept asking us if we did websites.  People liked our site, they loved our curated designs and they appreciated that we had an eye for presentation.  After being asked this question about a thousand times we finally decided to make this the primary topic of discussion over a working lunch.  For the most part, all we came away with was a lot more questions.

Questions like these:

“If we added website templates to our existing template offering how could we really be unique?”
“There are so many ways to create websites these days.  Why do people ask us about this all the time?”
“What do all these people think is so hard about making websites?”

And so on.

All we really determined from that working session was that we didn’t want to get into the website template business.   But, I continued to be fascinated by our customer’s plight.  Websites are still the best way to share most kinds of information but apparently posting content online and doing so in a manner that looks reasonably decent is still something of a mystery for a good many people.  Even so, it was a crowded space.  There are lots of ways to make websites.   But therein was the conflict.  We still sensed an opportunity in the midst of all the noise.   Something, but we couldn’t put our finger on it.  So, we decided to sleep on it.  For several weeks.  And then it hit us.

Mobile.

Worldwide smartphone sales will reach 468 million units in 2011, a 57.7 percent increase from 2010, according to Gartner Inc.  Each of those shipping with cameras. Video support.  Connected to reasonably fast networks.   For the first time in human history, a good percentage of the population is carrying around a little content generation machine in their back pocket.  What’s more, some report that iPads could even outsell Apple’s PC business.   And of course tablets are shipping with cameras and all that content wants a place to go.

I’m fortunate to have some pretty smart, successful board members to bounce ideas off of.  One day I came to Mike Slade at Second Avenue and mentioned a rough idea.  What if we could trivialize what it meant to make a website?  What if you never had to connect to your computer at all?  What if you could share text, links and pictures from wherever you are and tell a complete story and control how you shared it?  What if you could actually throw design into the mix?  Make something that actually looked good.   These questions started a virtual brushfire of additional questions.  And more ideas.  Mike coined the term “A Website in 60 Seconds” and that phrase became our goal.  Our mantra. Launch an app that would literally let you publish a beautiful site in less than a minute.   And so we went to work.   A couple of months later we launched Zapd.  People liked it.  In fact, it was one of the most popular new apps submitted in the month of April.  Over 300,000 people downloaded it in the subsequent weeks since we’ve launched.  Apple even made Zapd the App of the Week!

We knew we were on to something.  This felt like a fork in the road.  A big one.  Over those last several months I had focused the majority of my time on Zapd and during this time the Inkd team began to operate more autonomously.  We decided the opportunity before us was so significant that it was time to throw some fuel on the fire.  We were proud of the first release of Zapd because it did exactly what we said it would do.  That is to say, it let you build instant websites right from your phone which are optimized for the PC, the tablet and the iPhone.  But the more we worked on it the longer the list of “future features” would become.  To execute our vision we needed to do more faster and that meant hire more technical talent and we needed to do all of this fast.  From this point it became pretty obvious that we wanted to raise some additional capital and so we set out to do exactly that about a month ago.

That’s what today’s announcement is all about.  We’re very excited to share that we’ve raised close to $3.5 million in this PressPlane Series B.   Our mission is lofty.  We’re out to help reshape how people think about websites.  We’re passionate about how we all create and consume digital content on the go.   When we set out to raise money for this project, we met with a long list of esteemed names in the investment community but in then end we decided to stay close to home.  We’re proud to say that one of Seattle’s leading investment firms, Madrona Venture Group, has led this investment round and we’re further supported by a legion of some of the best and brightest angel investors in the Pacific Northwest.  AtomFilms founder and former President Digital Media for MTV Networks/Viacom, Mika Salmi will continue on as our very active Chairman and we also welcome RealNetworks Founder, Rob Glaser as our newest investor and board member.   Prior to founding RealNetworks, he worked for Microsoft for ten years in a number of executive positions and since May 2010, Rob has been a Venture Development Partner at Accel Management – one of the leading venture firms in the world.

Over the last several years we’ve watched Facebook continue on its explosive trajectory.  We’ve watched apps increasingly become an important part of our digital world.  We’ve watched tablets finally break into the mainstream.  In Tumblr, we’re reminded that “ease of use” and “social” wins over complicated and non-social.  All of these things suggest an important transformation that is underway which we believe represents a fundamental shift in terms of how people create and consume “websites”.  In reality, websites were never really all that social.  They certainly weren’t really easy to make. WordPress?  Great for savvy bloggers and webmasters but for the average person?  Just too complicated.  Or, as our board member Mike Slade sometimes likes to say, “it’s like the cockpit of a 747″.  In fact, most websites aren’t really even easily consumed on tablets or mobile phones.  Remember.  We’re living in an era when iPads are “new school” and computers are “old shool”.  Times, they are a changing!

And so it is for websites themselves.  Expect them to be more impulsive in the future.  Think, less coding and more tapping.  Interactivity that just happens.  You’ll come to realize that websites are best when you can make them quickly, easily and on the fly from wherever you are.  No ethernet cords.  No computers.  Just your ideas and your content.  Right now.  And, of course, websites aren’t really websites unless they are “alive” and wired into the social graphs that matter most to you.  Connected to your Twitter account.  Facebook.  Foursquare.   Even your friends and family (on Facebook or not) should be able to contribute because you invited them and because its fun and easy.  No HTML.  No CSS.  No silly wizards.   Just your content, your interest and the friends you want to share it all with.

Yes.  The face of the web is changing.  But the web page isn’t dead.  It’s just going to change too.  And, we think it can be for the better.   How?  Why?  Perhaps the pioneer of the web himself, Tim Berners-Lee, says it best.  ” ..the Web is yours. It is a public resource on which you, your business, your community and your government depend. The Web is also vital to democracy, a communications channel that makes possible a continuous worldwide conversation. The Web is now more critical to free speech than any other medium.”    We think that’s quite true but we believe that the web has to be easier and we believe that it has to consider the social graphs that are important to people.  Why make something if all your friends won’t notice what you have to share?  Why share something if all your friends can’t easily add to the conversation.  Not just comments but all manner of content, be it pictures, text, links video, locations and more?

Websites that are impulsive, alive, social and easy.  That’s the change that we’re forecasting.   That’s where we’d like Zapd to contribute.

Kelly Smith
Founder & CEO
Zapd