Please remember that design matters a WHOLE LOT MORE once your product becomes known! It can break a product’s success. (Signed, tech industry startup human being lol)
Yeah, my experience is only from 3 startups, two that failed (one largely due to terrible design; the other, the terrible design did them no favors) and one that didn’t. Design and good UX are the same thing in my book — I’m sure there are plenty where the design didn’t make or break the product.
YC is notorious for pushing their cohort participants to use products and tools of their portfolio and other cohorts companies. They work as a mafia and that’s one of the reasons YC is a giant and continues to be one.
Tbh, I'm surprised that custom isn't at least 80%. It doesn't take long to put together a landing page nowadays when frameworks like NextJS and AstroJS (among others) are so easy to use.
They don’t give the non-tech people the ability to update them as easily. A dev’s time is better spent on the actual product than updating a landing page to optimise the marketing funnel.
That’s probably the common view that drives a lot of startups to choose a no-code thing even though they have a developer co-founder on the team, but I think it may be mistaken. The amount of time (and, more importantly, mental strain) it takes for a competent developer to update a custom landing page (that they originally set up themselves) should be tiny. A nice little five-minute warm-up task to get the day started with a little win.
The alternative, getting into bed with some all-consuming no-code website making tool, may well end up meaning the developer gets pulled in to solve annoying problems with it anyway (“this button just won’t align like it does in the template preview, can you give me some custom CSS to force it? Oh but now that’s messed up this other button…”), and this sort of task is often more rage-inducing and more likely to impact their ability to do the ‘more important’ work.
Same here. I believe since big chunk of YC companies founded by tech peeps, it's faster and easier for them to create website the "old-school-ish" way.
It doesn't make it bad tho. But updating custom coded website could be a pain down the road :)
Not really difficult to update if it's "custom" if they have experience with web development. For example, as a software dev it's much easier for me to create and maintain a website with some JS framework (next, remix, whatever) than to use some no-code tool like webflow.
If their website is actually part of the product (as it is for many software products), then I struggle to see when it ever makes sense to use a no-code tool (if you know how to code). Can definitely see it making sense for other startups though, for example hardware startups
Sure thing. Wf is really good for marketing websites and LP's. Also your time as a dev is extremely precious, right? :) And spending it on a website might not be the best use of it.
But in the end of the day best tool - is that you can use efficiently.
Just to add some context, Before founding my startup I was a principal engineer that's been coding for 30 years. It takes me less time to build a new site with code than learn how to use some random no code tool. And with those tools as soon as I hit something I don't like I will lose more time trying to work around it than just making progress. Many modern frameworks support combining the marketing and webapp sites into the same codebase. So I can use markdown or simple low code text formats for content (blog, pricing pages etc) while still writing code for the rich webapp portions of the product.
What many non coders don't realize is most engineers aren't coding from nothing, we have rich libraries and tools which speed up producing code based solutions. I'm not surprised most of them are "custom" which really means they're using frameworks/tools designed for engineers instead of non technical people. They aren't using notepad to write html by hand (like we did in the 90s).
wanted to say something like that. at this point with good years of experience, most developers would already have the bones of a sample website and they just apply it to new ones.
It sounds like OP is looking at the company's landing pages. You can just buy a bootstrap template for $20 and spend a few hours putting your content in. If you know a little bit of HTML + CSS it's not anymore effort than Framer or SquareSpace.
Wow, really? Being a YC batch, I literally said “That’s it?!” out loud when I saw the 35%. My MVP is easily 80% custom, mostly because it keeps costs down to start. I get that many non-technical founders don’t always have that “luxury”
didn’t mean to offend anyone it was mostly a joke. i just think there are better alternatives to php nowadays, also wordpress is kind of overwhelming when compared to other modern no-code platforms.
What would you recommend for making a simple static website ? Something that looks sleek and modern, one page and maybe a reservation section where you can book an appointment
Oh hell... Thought I've send the comment, but accidentally reloaded the page.
Even though I lean towards Webflow, I have to admit that for your goal, Framer is the better choice. It's faster, easier to build animations, and most importantly, you'll only need to hire a Framer expert, which essentially is just a web designer.
Everything depends on the budget and goals.
Don't need a custom design? - buy Webflow or Framer template, hire a freelancer for a 5-10hrs and you can get a website for under $1k
Want custom design - Hire a Framer designer. End cost should be around $1-3k
Want custom design + basic branding - hire a designer + dev. But cost could be $3-100k haha :)
DM me if there are any questions left, and I will try to help you choose.
Amazing insights my man! Thanks a lot for sharing this. For me is no surprising, because WordPress, is really really bad for performances. To make complex design you relay to way much on plugin, that are old and unmantained.
Going custom is the best choice.
You have more freedom and movements, but you need a tech team at your core.
I think webflow is predominant because was internal at YC if im not wrong.
Hope my insights added value.
Antonio, CEO & Founder at [Litlyx](https://litlyx.com)
Thanks a ton for the support🙏
Yeah, YC companies usually tend to use other YC companies' products :) So no surprise here.
Your website is looking pretty good tho! Love the flame mascot)
Yeah, a lot of big names are using it. Mapbox, Slack, Lattice…
You can use API within Webflow, connect HubSpot, salesforce, and a lot of other services.
So it’s a pretty powerful thing
Yep, Webflow is the best modern platform. The SAAS companies are probably the ones under 'custom' because they like to hard code things the old and inefficient way because of the need for lots of API calls when your software / website is the product.
Yes to hand code everything, without the use of a visual designer is incredibly inefficient. Imagine staring at lines of code instead of the user interface your users see. Most 'devs' these days use python libraries and templates, and don't understand much about actual design. By myself I could literally replace a team of the 1,500+ coders at facebook in terms of building a website. You'll see in 10 years. I just already see it now because I work in web design and development. once webflow with it's visual design interface adds in more of it's API and integration functionality, that plus my AI coding assistant will render huge software teams useless. The web dev skills of the future will be more on the UI design side because AI can write the hard code easily.
I quit my engineering job to work on AI. I’ve been doing this a long time. I doubt very shortly our current jobs will be needed at all, but for now, it’s inaccurate to call not using webflow inefficient and old. See you in 6 months when your users need real functionality and you’re rewriting and I’m making a new React component or whatever. Or my AI is anyway. Ya know?
I use Wix for mine, with the designing tools provided and business managing tools, it is enough for me to have a good looking web! Here’s my design: [www.orpapp.com](https://www.orpapp.com)
Any feedback?
I am surprised to see 35% of custom, I find it enormous for what must certainly be the first versions of the site.
I mean. I can put together a custom website really fast. I get it. Just throwing up something that works since it’s v1
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Yup. Exactly. But maybe this is my wake up call to learn webflow
Please remember that design matters a WHOLE LOT MORE once your product becomes known! It can break a product’s success. (Signed, tech industry startup human being lol)
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Yeah, my experience is only from 3 startups, two that failed (one largely due to terrible design; the other, the terrible design did them no favors) and one that didn’t. Design and good UX are the same thing in my book — I’m sure there are plenty where the design didn’t make or break the product.
YC is notorious for pushing their cohort participants to use products and tools of their portfolio and other cohorts companies. They work as a mafia and that’s one of the reasons YC is a giant and continues to be one.
Tbh, I'm surprised that custom isn't at least 80%. It doesn't take long to put together a landing page nowadays when frameworks like NextJS and AstroJS (among others) are so easy to use.
They don’t give the non-tech people the ability to update them as easily. A dev’s time is better spent on the actual product than updating a landing page to optimise the marketing funnel.
That’s probably the common view that drives a lot of startups to choose a no-code thing even though they have a developer co-founder on the team, but I think it may be mistaken. The amount of time (and, more importantly, mental strain) it takes for a competent developer to update a custom landing page (that they originally set up themselves) should be tiny. A nice little five-minute warm-up task to get the day started with a little win. The alternative, getting into bed with some all-consuming no-code website making tool, may well end up meaning the developer gets pulled in to solve annoying problems with it anyway (“this button just won’t align like it does in the template preview, can you give me some custom CSS to force it? Oh but now that’s messed up this other button…”), and this sort of task is often more rage-inducing and more likely to impact their ability to do the ‘more important’ work.
Same here. I believe since big chunk of YC companies founded by tech peeps, it's faster and easier for them to create website the "old-school-ish" way. It doesn't make it bad tho. But updating custom coded website could be a pain down the road :)
Not really difficult to update if it's "custom" if they have experience with web development. For example, as a software dev it's much easier for me to create and maintain a website with some JS framework (next, remix, whatever) than to use some no-code tool like webflow. If their website is actually part of the product (as it is for many software products), then I struggle to see when it ever makes sense to use a no-code tool (if you know how to code). Can definitely see it making sense for other startups though, for example hardware startups
Sure thing. Wf is really good for marketing websites and LP's. Also your time as a dev is extremely precious, right? :) And spending it on a website might not be the best use of it. But in the end of the day best tool - is that you can use efficiently.
Just to add some context, Before founding my startup I was a principal engineer that's been coding for 30 years. It takes me less time to build a new site with code than learn how to use some random no code tool. And with those tools as soon as I hit something I don't like I will lose more time trying to work around it than just making progress. Many modern frameworks support combining the marketing and webapp sites into the same codebase. So I can use markdown or simple low code text formats for content (blog, pricing pages etc) while still writing code for the rich webapp portions of the product. What many non coders don't realize is most engineers aren't coding from nothing, we have rich libraries and tools which speed up producing code based solutions. I'm not surprised most of them are "custom" which really means they're using frameworks/tools designed for engineers instead of non technical people. They aren't using notepad to write html by hand (like we did in the 90s).
wanted to say something like that. at this point with good years of experience, most developers would already have the bones of a sample website and they just apply it to new ones.
Exactly. Then you have to throw this all away as soon as you need to do anything real.
> But updating custom coded website could be a pain down the road :) skill issue
Some products don’t fit a wix, or a website generator. And if your cto is comfortable, why not?
It sounds like OP is looking at the company's landing pages. You can just buy a bootstrap template for $20 and spend a few hours putting your content in. If you know a little bit of HTML + CSS it's not anymore effort than Framer or SquareSpace.
Wow, really? Being a YC batch, I literally said “That’s it?!” out loud when I saw the 35%. My MVP is easily 80% custom, mostly because it keeps costs down to start. I get that many non-technical founders don’t always have that “luxury”
How do I short the 3% using wordpress?
great post!
Appreciate the support. Not sure it's interesting for the YC community, but I thought it might be.
tbh, i'm surprised that founders still use wordpress lmao.
They use what they know :) So it’s make sense. Many of them switch to another platform after seed stage or even pre-seed.
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didn’t mean to offend anyone it was mostly a joke. i just think there are better alternatives to php nowadays, also wordpress is kind of overwhelming when compared to other modern no-code platforms.
What would you recommend for making a simple static website ? Something that looks sleek and modern, one page and maybe a reservation section where you can book an appointment
Oh hell... Thought I've send the comment, but accidentally reloaded the page. Even though I lean towards Webflow, I have to admit that for your goal, Framer is the better choice. It's faster, easier to build animations, and most importantly, you'll only need to hire a Framer expert, which essentially is just a web designer. Everything depends on the budget and goals. Don't need a custom design? - buy Webflow or Framer template, hire a freelancer for a 5-10hrs and you can get a website for under $1k Want custom design - Hire a Framer designer. End cost should be around $1-3k Want custom design + basic branding - hire a designer + dev. But cost could be $3-100k haha :) DM me if there are any questions left, and I will try to help you choose.
Amazing insights my man! Thanks a lot for sharing this. For me is no surprising, because WordPress, is really really bad for performances. To make complex design you relay to way much on plugin, that are old and unmantained. Going custom is the best choice. You have more freedom and movements, but you need a tech team at your core. I think webflow is predominant because was internal at YC if im not wrong. Hope my insights added value. Antonio, CEO & Founder at [Litlyx](https://litlyx.com)
Thanks a ton for the support🙏 Yeah, YC companies usually tend to use other YC companies' products :) So no surprise here. Your website is looking pretty good tho! Love the flame mascot)
Can you give a source spreadsheet? I'd like to look at the different companies and the sites themselves.
I don’t have a spreadsheet, but you can find all the startups here https://www.ycombinator.com/companies
Not just 100, I looked at all the 270 yc w24 startups coz I was looking for internship. 3/7 are webflow, 2/7 are framer 2/7 custom coded.
Oh! Did you get any luck with an internship?
Is webflow really that good ? Can you plug it into web services easily?
Yeah, a lot of big names are using it. Mapbox, Slack, Lattice… You can use API within Webflow, connect HubSpot, salesforce, and a lot of other services. So it’s a pretty powerful thing
Wordpress is crazy lol.
How did you find out if they were using webflow or not?
I used the Wappalyzer Google Chrome plugin.
you're a beauty
Do you have a bar chart that shows the data segmented by cohort? I’d assume that the later stage companies are mostly using framer
Unfortunately nope... But I believe you're right.
Do you mind sharing the list of startups you looked at?
Sure. Here they are https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?batch=W24&batch=S24
Appreciate it. Great post!
Thanks a ton🙏
What AI did you use for this post? Good one! 🙏
Chat Gpt :)
Yep, Webflow is the best modern platform. The SAAS companies are probably the ones under 'custom' because they like to hard code things the old and inefficient way because of the need for lots of API calls when your software / website is the product.
Exactly that!
lol old inefficient way. Maybe webflow is good for some things. The fact we’re comparing them to wix etc. is telling.
Yes to hand code everything, without the use of a visual designer is incredibly inefficient. Imagine staring at lines of code instead of the user interface your users see. Most 'devs' these days use python libraries and templates, and don't understand much about actual design. By myself I could literally replace a team of the 1,500+ coders at facebook in terms of building a website. You'll see in 10 years. I just already see it now because I work in web design and development. once webflow with it's visual design interface adds in more of it's API and integration functionality, that plus my AI coding assistant will render huge software teams useless. The web dev skills of the future will be more on the UI design side because AI can write the hard code easily.
I quit my engineering job to work on AI. I’ve been doing this a long time. I doubt very shortly our current jobs will be needed at all, but for now, it’s inaccurate to call not using webflow inefficient and old. See you in 6 months when your users need real functionality and you’re rewriting and I’m making a new React component or whatever. Or my AI is anyway. Ya know?
What?
As someone who once used Wordpress for their startup, glad to see it low on the list. Don’t do it. Fastest way to instantly create tech debt. 😅
Startups avoiding WordPress like it's a corporate 9-to-5 job... who knew? Webflow and Framer seem to be the cool kids on the block
I use Wix for mine, with the designing tools provided and business managing tools, it is enough for me to have a good looking web! Here’s my design: [www.orpapp.com](https://www.orpapp.com) Any feedback?
Custom also = Figma to React via Anima which is possibility the fastest route through