Estonian instant website creator Edicy will participate in this year’s Le Web start-up competition in Paris.
Among 30 companies from 18 countries Edicy (Fraktal), founded by Tõnu Runnel and financed by Toivo Annus, founder of Skype, is the only company from Estonia.
Edicy is a platform enabling to create professionally designed websites quickly and easily, without any specific knowledge required. Their slogan says: “Everyone can create a website.“ Even you!
Estonian representation in Paris
Runnel, who has promised every Le Web finalist one Edicy website as a present, is extremely thrilled about the remarkable milestone for the company. “Le Web is one of the biggest tech start-up events in the world,” he says. “The fact that we were chosen from hundreds of companies around the world, is a serious appreciation for our work and potential.”
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At Le Web the start-ups are given seven minutes to prove what they offer is the hottest. That’s not easy, but Runnel is already happy with the media coverage and all.
24.000 websites created
Since July 2008 over 24.000 websites have been created with Edicy. Estonia and China used to be the dominating markets, in China over 6000 websites use Edicy platform. Lately the Western Europe and US are booming markets for the promising company.
Runnel says that non-English markets are the primary ones, where to achieve the leading position. English markets are just full of different tools already. Edicy uses many different languages and people say it provides significantly nicer website design than many of its competitors are offering.
Freemium model
Edicy is mostly used by SMEs, non-profit organizations and private individuals. It’s basically a free service, but you have to pay for some extra services, like registration of the domain. Runnel’s goal is to reach 100 000 Edicy created websites by the end of the year, about one percent of them using Edicy Pro – the paid service.
A fight with Lepp
There’s only one thing frustrating Runnel – a dispute with his former colleague Mattias Lepp. Runnel used to work for Lepp, but now Lepp is accusing Runnel of stealing the intellectual property. Lepp claims that Runnel left his company with some critical knowledge, used it to establish Edicy and now enjoys the glory and success. Lepp charges Runnel over 2 million euros for the damage. Runnel feels no guilt, he sees Lepp just being covetous.
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