By Sierra Jackson

Law360 (October 7, 2020, 4:51 PM EDT ) Shogun, a drag-and-drop web design platform for e-commerce enterprises, announced Wednesday it has scored $35 million in a financing round led by Gunderson Dettmer client and venture capital firm Accel as the coronavirus pandemic has pushed many customers to shop online while brick-and-mortar stores closed their doors.

Palo Alto, California-based Shogun said the investment comes as its platform, which helps users create websites without writing code, has seen a surge in popularity amid the pandemic, according to a press release. Accel managing partner Ethan Choi told Law360 in an interview Wednesday that the money Shogun raised would fund marketing and sales initiatives, as well as international expansion.

Along with Accel, existing investors Initialized Capital, VMG Partners and Y Combinator also contributed, according to a press release.

Shogun co-founder and CEO Finbarr Taylor said in a statement that his company gives any merchant the tools to "quickly create flexible themes and memorable online experiences that directly boost the bottom line."

"We're redefining what it means to have an exceptional online storefront," Taylor said.

Launched nearly six years ago, Shogun said it first released its original product, Page Builder, on Shopify so that users could drop and drag modules to create their e-commerce platforms, according to a blog post published Wednesday. The enterprise announced that it has created a second product, called Frontend, to create even faster-running webpages for its users.

The no-code webpage building company also noted in the release that it has over 15,000 e-commerce brand clients across 100 countries, including NOMAD, Leesa, MVMT, Timbuk2 and Chubbies.

And since the beginning of the pandemic, Shogun said in a statement it's seen a 50% increase in the baseline use of its page builder.

Accel's Choi told Law360 that Shogun has benefited from the pandemic's positive effect on e-commerce businesses, a move toward no-code and low-code technology and "headless commerce," a method of separating technology's architecture to make sites run faster.

"On top of that, Shogun is extremely capital efficient and has grown organically, largely thanks to a product-led strategy — they've done virtually no sales and marketing," Choi said. "And [founders] Finbarr and Nick are as product-focused, customer-obsessed and authentically people-orientated founders as I could find and have met, so I'm thrilled to be working with them."

Accel is a nearly 40-year-old multistage firm that was an early investor in Facebook and Slack, Choi said. The firm has also invested in website builders Squarespace and Webflow, as well as Etsy, Bumble, Crowdstrike and a host of other companies.

Individual investors that participated in Shogun's latest funding round included Bryant Chou, the chief technology officer at software company Webflow; Mark Lavelle and Mark Lenhard, the former CEO and senior vice president of strategy of Adobe's e-commerce platform builder Magento; Alex O'Byrne, the CEO of Shopify agency We Make Websites; Brian Grady, the CEO of Magento Agency Gorilla Group; and Romain Lapeyre, CEO of e-commerce help desk and live chat platform Gorgias.

The funding achievement also follows the company's $10 million finance round, which closed in February.

Another no-code tech company, Unqork, made waves this week when it announced it hit a $2 billion valuation after raising $207 million in Series C funding.

Representatives for Shogun did not immediately respond to requests for comment and counsel information for the company was not immediately known.

The Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian LLP team advising Accel includes corporate partners Nick Harley and associates Alex Whatley, Angela Lyons-Justus and Travis Glock, and intellectual property partner Tom Villeneuve and associate Jessica Verran-Lingard.

--Editing by Amy Rowe.

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