For Subscribers

How This Company Creates Instant Websites Now, websites are as easy as drag-and-drop.

By Michael Frank

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Startup Stock Photos

When photographer Benjamin Edwards wants to update his website, all he has to do is load a new picture onto his phone; drag it into his web host, The Grid; and voilà, the program loads it onto his home-page and rearranges and recolors the entire site to work with the new image. For his work on behalf of charities such as World Relief that takes him around the globe, the technology is a godsend.

"Since I'm out in the field so often, I don't have a ton of time to work on my website," says Edwards, who is based in Bend, Ore. "I can be in Bolivia, shoot a photo and, if I have cell service, it can be on my website right now."

While building and maintaining a web presence has become easier than ever, it can be a laborious and expensive process. That's where The Grid comes in. The San Francisco startup, currently in beta, provides a URL, hosting services and a dead-simple app -- not a complicated content management system -- on which to build a website. All users do is move text, video and photos into The Grid's program. Once the content is loaded, The Grid's artificial intelligence arranges it into a sleek layout based on best practices for user-interface architecture and SEO. It knows, for instance, if it's building an e-commerce page and will create boxes beneath the images for descriptive copy. Prices are automatically turned into click-through buttons that lead to the checkout page. More impressive, The Grid's AI makes thematic suggestions to improve the overall vibe of the site and its effectiveness, analyzing colors, photographs and text so it understands the subject matter.

Founder and CEO Dan Tocchini IV says his goal is to enable business owners to wrest control from web designers and template-driven website services. "You're not sending ideas back and forth with a designer, waiting weeks to approve the latest backend," Tocchini says. "All that latency is gone."

More than 60,000 "founding members" paid $96 over the summer to beta-test The Grid and help its AI to grow smarter. At press time, the company was aiming for a year-end launch. New users, who will pay $300 per year for the service, will reap the benefits learned in beta. Today, for example, the software knows that when an image is dominated by blue sky, text can go into that negative space; meanwhile, if it detects a face, copy cannot run over it.

Andy Chou, who last year sold his software quality and security analysis firm, Coverity, for $375 million, says he turned to The Grid "because I wanted to create a website for myself, and I have no interest in being a web designer." The more Chou investigated The Grid, the more he wanted to invest, eventually taking a stake in the company's Series B round for an undisclosed amount. The $3.1 million Series A round, which closed in November 2014, included Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang; Greg Badros, former vice president of engineering and products at Facebook; and John Pleasants, former president of Disney Interactive. Tocchini says he has since declined an offer from Facebook to buy The Grid for an unspecified amount.

Chou was attracted to the simplicity of the business model. "There are so many web startups that are trying to figure out how to monetize after the fact," he says. "The Grid is monetized at the start. You use the product, you pay for it."

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Business News

UnitedHealth Group's Former CEO Is Returning to the Role — and Receiving a $60 Million Award

Stephen Hemsley is back in charge after leading UnitedHealth Group from 2006 to 2017.

Business Ideas

70 Small Business Ideas to Start in 2025

We put together a list of the best, most profitable small business ideas for entrepreneurs to pursue in 2025.

Business News

Some Starbucks Employees Aren't Happy With the New Dress Code

Some Starbucks employees are walking out over the changes.

Buying / Investing in Business

Former Zillow Execs Target $1.3T Market

Co-ownership is creating big opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Money & Finance

The Recession Mistake That Cost My Business $1.5 Million — and the Decision That Put Us Back on Top

Two recessions, two very different responses: One cost me millions, and the other grew my business 10% that same year.

Side Hustle

She Quit Her Job at Trader Joe's After Starting a Side Hustle With $800 — Then She and Her Brother Grew the Business to $20 Million

Jaime Holm and Matt Hannula teamed up to build a business in an industry that "didn't exist" yet.