Brandcast, a SasS platform for building mobile-friendly websites without coding, announced this week that it has raised $13.9 million in Series A financing. The funding round was led by Shasta Ventures, with participation from Correlation Ventures and Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, who was the company’s first investor and has been its lead supporter to date.
Founded in 2012, Brandcast aims to give creative freedom back to marketers and designers, who can easily bring their ideas to life without depending on developers. Brandcast’s website builder allows users to drag and drop design elements to existing layout templates, which are also fully customizable. Websites designed on Brandcast are also automatically configured to be responsive across mobile devices. The company believes that this simplified process can help brands and companies significantly improve the scale and efficiency of web development.
Brandcast Logo | Credit: brandcast.com
Brandcast’s customers seem to appreciate the fact that marketers can be put back in charge of creating websites. As Molly Stauning, Brand Manager at Lowe’s, said in the press release announcing the investment, “We were delighted to discover Brandcast’s easy-to-use design platform… [which is] a complete solution that our marketing team can use to create and manage microsites. Brandcast truly has a differentiated offering, and our beautiful, style-forward site on Brandcast has been the envy of many other groups here at Lowe’s.”
The company sees itself as a facilitator for marketers, empowering them to create better and faster content. Brandcast is “as much of a design company as it is a technology company,” said Dan Lynch, Brandcast co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. It has principles and elements of design “baked right into the technology.”