Building a website may be easy for those well-versed in code, but for folks who aren't as tech-savvy, creating a website from the ground up is no simple task. That's why three brothers and graduates of the University of Maryland – Haroon, Idris and Zeki Mokhtarzada – launched Webs, a startup bent on making small business marketing simple by offering professional online services that are not only straightforward to use, but also affordable.
The genesis of Webs is like most other startups these days – the idea for the company came as a result of a side business two of the Mokhtarzada brothers had while in their last years at UMD in 2001. Haroon, CEO and co-founder of Webs, and Zeki, CTO and co-founder of the company, were designing websites in their spare time. They realized that there was no practical, basic way for the average person to develop a high-quality website on their own and saw an opportunity. That's when the lightbulb went off: it was time to build a solution that would open up new doors for small business owners who would now be able to succeed in the digital world.
"We decided to start building tools for ourselves to make it easy for us to make websites for people really quickly and in a scalable way," Zeki explained over the phone. "As we got into it, we realized we didn't want to make websites anymore, we wanted to make tools for others to use instead."
Webs continued to experience great growth not only as a website builder (which offers a whole slew of templates, domain, password protecting, search engine optimization, and the like), but as a platform for all online digital needs. The brothers catered specifically to businesses manned by inexperienced programmers who wanted to sell some products online or effortlessly build their brand on the Internet.
Now, Webs offers a whole suite of online marketing features. Pagemodo, their newest addition, helps companies customize and manage a powerful social media presence for free, and ContactMe is advertised as an organization tool that helps businesses capture more leads, keep track of their tasks and easily consolidate all contact information.
When asked what their competition is like, Haroon said there isn't much. "Our closest competitors are Wix, Weebly and others like GoDaddy, but they don't offer a free solution like Webs does," he said. "Neither does Squarespace, which is more higher end anyways."
According to Haroon, Webs' prices are on point. His company's services cost anywhere from $0 to $24 per month, depending on what features a user wants to be able to access.
It appears as if others believe in Webs' promising future besides the co-founders, as the startup raised $12 million in a Series A round on February 9, 1998. Then, in 2011, all the stars aligned and Webs was acquired by leading online provider of marketing products, Vistaprint. The two recognized the potential for great synergy and took the leap together, combining their expertise and innovations in digital services to make one unique, successful partnership. Webs now has more than 50 million sign-ups to date.
As the digital division of Vistaprint, Haroon says Webs is responsible for all digital products. "If you go to Vistaprint and sign-up for social tools, those are our social tools," he said. "We've grown the team 50 percent since the acquisition. It's been a really successful partnership, I think."
Haroon and Zeki both thank their alma mater for their humble beginnings, noting what an impact UMD has had on their startup.
"Maryland was one of the first campuses to get high speed broadband in all of the dorm rooms. We had an insanely fast Internet connection that opened up that whole world to us," Haroon explained. "If Maryland hadn't been ahead on the Internet front, we could have been in a very different place. We were living on the Internet at that point because of the access we had while in the dorms."
It wasn't just the broadband that was beneficial to Webs. "We had our own IP address too," Zeki said. "I could access my computer at Maryland from anywhere else around the world. We started working on firewalls and dabbling in accessing music from home, etc. It was the beginnings of hosting even if it was just personal use and small scale. We wouldn't have been exposed to that anywhere else."
