The Sydney-based startup Qwilr wants to drag the decrepit document kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.
Cofounded by Dylan Baskind and Mark Tanner, the platform allows users to create simple, well-designed webpages with data and interactivity, instead of the static documents you might know from Microsoft Office, Google Docs or Apple Pages.
The idea came to Baskind when he was working as a freelance designer and developer, Tanner told Mashable Australia. He would create a website to distinguish himself from big agencies when pitching for projects, but it was a continual frustration how long they took to build.
Qwilr was born when Tanner, who had been working in New York at Google, connected with Baskind at a wedding in Sydney. Now they have a team of five, and on Thursday announced a A$500,000 seed funding round from local investors including Sydney Seed Fund and Macdoch Ventures.
According to Tanner, the basic idea is that while it is easy for anyone to create a document, documents are "fundamentally rubbish."
"They haven't evolved, they haven't changed in the last thirty years," Tanner said. "They're A4 pieces of paper that live in the cloud ... usually ugly and always deliberately unintelligent." Qwilr, on the other hand, lets users make a simple, easy-to-build webpage instead of a document -- with plugins like Google Maps, video and analytics.
Although the interface looks and works similarly to website builders like Squarespace, Tanner said Qwilr was different because you can use the platform to make quick, one-off online pages for a presentation, report or CV. "Our biggest users have made into the thousands of documents," Tanner said.
Qwilr now has client companies in about 30 countries, as well as several thousand users.
The startup has had paying customers since launch, Tanner said. It operates on a freemium model -- users can create basic online documents free of charge, but to get benefits like analytics, monthly fees start at A$29. The team will also create customised packages for enterprise.
Tanner said the recent funding round would allow the startup to scale, as well as invest in good engineering and digital marketing talent.
Although Australians are used to hearing complaints about the country's small startup scene, Tanner said Sydney had been good to Qwilr. Thanks to companies with Sydney offices like Google and Atlassian, he said, there are first rate engineers in town. Raising money has also gotten a lot easier, he added.
As well as Qwilr, he pointed to Canva, DesignCrowd and 99designs as other names behind an emerging Australian trend of startups marrying engineering and design.
"It's nice to do this in your home town," Tanner said. "As long as you've got the core foundation of talent and support ... it's all good."