Duda

01The full story

Duda began in 2009 as a mobile site builder created by Itai Sadan and Amir, former SAP colleagues and longtime friends. The original product converted desktop sites into mobile versions, a practical fix when smartphone browsers still required pinch-and-zoom. The founders sold websites as a small agency themselves, knocked on doors in Palo Alto, and tested Google ads while keeping their jobs. In 2010, AT&T became interested and white-labeled the product for small-business customers, creating a major customer proof point that helped investors engage. Duda later added responsive web design, then faced pressure to choose between small businesses building their own sites and web professionals building many sites for clients. It focused its product and messaging on agencies, adding collaboration, client management, and white-label capabilities. Cofounder Itai Sadan reported eight-figure revenue, 22,800 digital marketing agencies, more than one million active paying sites, and 180 employees at the time of the interview. The founder also described roughly two years of flat revenue during a product transition. These scale figures are founder-reported, with no financial statements shown.

Duda’s earliest customers came through direct selling to local businesses: the founders knocked on doors along University Avenue in Palo Alto, spent a little on Google ads, and built sites themselves so they could test the service end to end.