Entrepreneur's Page-builder Tools Bring Out Equity, 100 Workers
Finbarr Taylor moved into the U.S. nine years ago with a target. He'd just graduated from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, with a Master of Engineering degree in Computer Science.
"I moved from Scotland to Silicon Valley with the express intent of starting a technology company," he informed me. "I'm doing it, and I am having the time of my life. I am in no hurry to stop."
Let’s see our product:
Taylor's tech firm is Shogun, which offers innovative page-builder tools that improve ecommerce websites. He's co-founder and CEO. The business has nearly 100 employees. It recently completed a $35 million Series B capital injection.
I talked with Taylor earlier this month about Shogun, its goods, innovative web apps, and the long-term outlook for the enterprise. Our audio dialog is embedded below, followed by the transcript, which can be edited for clarity and length.
Eric Bandholz: Tell us about yourself.
Finbarr Taylor: I am CEO and co-founder of Shogun. We create tools that assist ecommerce merchants. We now have two products. Page Builder is a drag-and-drop tool that's incorporated into Shopify, BigCommerce, and other platforms. It augments your current ecommerce setup. Our second item, Shogun Frontend, transforms a storefront into a innovative web app with content management tools.
Bandholz: Beardbrand is a Shogun client, in full disclosure to our listeners. Our ecommerce platform is Shopify. Tell our listeners why a merchant would use Shogun versus the native Shopify dashboard.
Taylor: Shopify has tools for constructing great-looking storefronts. Shogun takes a number of those tools to the next level. Examples include customizing topics, landing pages, blog pages, product pages, and collection pages.
For topics, we utilize Shopify's APIs around the four content types: webpages, blogs, product pages, and collection pages. We push content via the APIs to the body fields of all these.
And then, for collections and products, we use metafields to push the material. It is not JavaScript or sterile. It is pure HTML, which means the code is clean, and Shogun isn't in the traffic load route. If we have an outage, which is infrequent, your pages remain up.
Bandholz: Can Shogun compress photos?
Taylor: Yes. When you use the picture element from the Page Builder, we are converting the picture to WebP when possible, to optimize. We also automatically lazy load pictures. We're paying close attention to page speed. Images and scripts are the 2 things to watch. We minimize both.
Bandholz: Speaking of webpage speed, could you describe progressive web apps?
Taylor: Google has championed progressive web app technology as a means to boost page speed. It's somewhat like a native mobile app, but it is running inside the browser.
Six unique parts of technology make a progressive web app storefront. There are two JavaScript frameworks, like React.js or Vue.js. The backend demands server-side rendering like a Gatsby or a Next.js. You require a content delivery system that could handle builds, such as Netlify or a Vercel or a custom-built pipeline to CloudFront.
You need middleware to pool the content out of your ecommerce platform to the build process. You want a content management system, which is normally abbreviated, such as Content Flow or Prismic. Then you need integrations for those applications.
That's a good deal of stuff. It's typically costly and hard to implement. However, the result is a much quicker and scalable site.
Our innovative web app replaces the storefront. We take over everything to the point of checkout. We do not touch the checkout. It stays native into the ecommerce platform. When a customer checks out, the order is put in the merchant's shop -- Shopify, BigCommerce, or comparable.
Bandholz: Can Shogun ease A/B testing?
Taylor: Yes. You can build and publish unique pages in Shogun and drive traffic to every one of them. You could split an advertisement test on Facebook, as an instance, and drive traffic from the advertisement to multiple pages. In Page Builder, you can create a webpage and click on a button to begin an A/B test. It divides the page into two variations. You can change anything you need to check each one. We monitor and report the important metrics.
Bandholz: Shogun just finished an investment around.
Taylor: Yes. We raised a $35 million Series B investment led by Accel, a venture capital firm. We are using the money to double back on our research and development.
We are also doing more marketing. Page Builder has acquired customers nearly entirely self-serve and inbound. We have not actively gone out and tried to market it. It's a very simple and affordable item, and it is kind of marketed itself, which has been awesome. However, Shogun Frontend is a newer concept. It requires a little bit of explanation and instruction around the advantages of innovative web apps and how they work. It is a sales process.
So we are building our marketing and sales staff.
In general, we are up to about 85 people. Soon we will cross 100. We are hiring for technology, design, product management, and operations and sales. We'll likely double in the next 12 months.
Bandholz: Are you looking to sell the business?
Taylor: I get asked this question frequently. I have two parts to the response. The first part is my co-founder and I'm in no hurry to sell the company. I moved from Scotland to Silicon Valley nine years ago with the express intent of starting a tech company. I'm doing it, and I am having the time of my life. I am in no hurry to stop.
However, when you raise money, the investors will want a return. And the more money you raise, the fewer choices you have with your organization. We are to the point where we can not stay private forever.
I see four options for what may happen with Shogun. To begin with, we can IPO the enterprise. Secondly, we can get acquired by a bigger company. Third, a private equity company could have a large stake in the business, possibly a majority stake. The fourth result is that the reality of startup companies: we may neglect. We've got a ton of great clients and a great deal of fantastic traction. But a startup entrepreneur must admit the possibility.
Bandholz: Before we wrap up, I need to share how Beardbrand utilizes Shogun. We have single products like beard oil, which has six variations or scents. Our challenge was we couldn't control which version appeared on catalogue pages. Those pages would default to the first version. We use Page Builder to make fragrance pages which all link to the exact same product but pull in the variant vision. The end result is that we have new landing pages which assist people shop the scents.
Shogun also helps us package our products. Buy three, and the fourth one is on us. Or purchase seven, and two are on us. That type of logic was not possible in Shopify without Shogun. It has helped us develop our company this year.
Where can listeners know more about you and Shogun?
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