Deco.cx grabs $2.2M to bring simplicity back to brand website creation

Guilherme Rodrigues, Luciano Junior and Rafael Crespo met while working at VTEX, a commerce company providing tools for managing web storefronts; however, they bonded over wanting brands to have more control over their website front ends.

That’s how Deco.cx came about. The trio created an open source front-end development platform for Deno, JSX and Tailwind that runs websites on a global edge infrastructure.

“The web was created to share information to help everyone,” Junior told TechCrunch. “For some reason, we, as developers, have made it very complicated. That is not the case here. We started creating a vision of super tools so that people can focus on what they actually want to do instead of spending time on code that’s not related to their job.”

As such, the Brazil-based startup is creating tools for developers of growing e-commerce brands to create high-performance digital experiences by bridging the gap between basic no-code site builders and complex full-code setups. It also incorporates drag-and-drop and natural language tools. Clients using Deco.cx see, on average, a 5x increase in PageSpeed score and a 30% increase in conversion rates, Crespo said.

The concept has caught on since its inception in October 2022. Deco.cx signed over 65 clients, including Brazilian retail brands Grupo Reserva, Osklen and Zee.Dog. It also amassed a community of more than 2,400 web developers and 36 system integration partner agencies.

It also caught the attention of a group of venture capital investors that put in $2.2 million for a seed round. The investment was led by MAYA Capital and included FJ Labs, Lanx and Crivo Ventures.

“We spoke to a lot of potential clients and saw the pain point was so real and so urgent, and nobody was able to solve it yet,” said Monica Saggioro, co-founder of MAYA Capital, in an interview. “We see a massive opportunity, especially because of expected commerce to continue to grow and to reach the penetration that we see in other countries, like the United States or Asia.”

Meanwhile, the company plans to use the new capital to inject some artificial intelligence technology across its platform, Rodrigues said. He also wants to grow the company by bringing on additional engineers so Deco.cx can go into new markets, particularly the United States.

“We want to be the new WordPress, and to do that, we have to take on the U.S.,” Rodrigues said. “We want to be the first choice for the next 10 million web developers who don’t want to spend their time connecting pipes.”

Embracing digital commerce may be retailers’ best bet for staying ahead of a fast-moving industry