David Cummings on Startups

CodeGuard – Backup Service for Websites

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David Cummings

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Today I had the opportunity to talk with David Moeller, the CEO of CodeGuard – a backup service for websites. CodeGuard launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC a few months ago, won the audience choice award at the event, and announced a $500k seed round the following month.

Here are some details on the startup:

  • Idea: Websites, like a laptop, need to be regularly backed up, but many are not. CodeGuard is a SaaS product to backup and restore website files.
  • Business Model: Freemium with a free plan up to a certain amount of space and then a premium plan for more sites and storage
  • Technology: Git for the behind-the-scenes version control and FTP/SFTP to interface with the websites
  • Market: Small-to-mid-sized businesses that don’t have version control software in place
  • Distribution: Direct through PR and indirect through web hosting provider resellers

CodeGuard is off to a quick start and I hope to see the Atlanta startup succeed. Building critical mass with SMB companies will be extremely challenging and strong web hosting company partnerships will be key.

What else? What do you think of the CodeGuard startup idea?

Comments

3 responses to “CodeGuard – Backup Service for Websites”

  1. david_moeller Avatar
    david_moeller

    David – It was great to meet, share what we’re doing @CodeGuard, and learn about how you have built your Atlanta-based empire (for lack of a better explanatory phrase!). I think that many of the keys to your success – listening to customers, iterating, and developing business models that fit the unique needs of your particular startups, will be needed for us to succeed.

    One additional note – while we are fans of open source technology, and utilize git behind the scenes, we have some novel algorithms built to monitor for changes – and many users find this to be the most powerful part of our offering. When black hat SEOs infiltrate a site, many times you won’t know it until your search ratings plummet, since you are serving as a host for parasitic links that are not optimized for your business. Or if malware is injected into your site, even if you are using version control, your version control isn’t going to notify you that your site is infected!

    Ultimately, we agree with you that CodeGuard faces challenges in driving adoption in the SMB market and that partnerships will be key. We are currently featured in @CloudFlare’s app marketplace and will be deploying our cPanel plugin with a handful of select hosting providers by the end of Q4 2011.

    Reply
  2. Andy Powell Avatar
    Andy Powell

    It looks like this space is going to heat up — a new company called 6Scan is on TechCrunch this morning and they’re claiming to be “The world’s first automated protection suite against website hackers.”

    Reply
  3. John Avatar
    John

    In another related part of this market Dropmysite.com is offering a similar backup service which caters for both the website code, database and email.

    Reply

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