From Idea to Prototype in Minutes With Weld.io

Swedish Weld is building a browser-based prototyping tool for websites and apps, with the goal of simplifying prototyping and development for everybody.

Prototyping made easy

Weld is a fast and responsive UX (User experience) prototyping tool for websites and apps, which makes it simple for non-programmers to create responsive web and app prototypes, which scale and adapt beautifully to different screen sizes. The browser-based prototyping tool is so simple, that anybody can use it and be productive within minutes.

The idea for Weld came from Tom Söderlund’s, Co-founder and CEO of Weld, own struggle with web and app technologies for quick prototyping. Tom was building web/mobile apps back in 2006, and the available tools and processes involved with building a simple proof of concept were frustrating him.

“Having a background with Visual Basic and Flash, the notion of going back to plain coding just felt off.” – Tom Söderlund, Co-founder and CEO of Weld.

He spent many years thinking about a simpler visual tool for building apps and prototypes, but the problem felt too big and expensive to approach. That all changed back in late 2013, when Tom decided to go for it.

“I started thinking “how” I could attack the problem instead of thinking “if” I should.” –  Tom Söderlund.

Tom started to interview UX designers, and found out that non-interactive wireframes made little sense to their clients. He also found out that, there rarely was time or budget for a real prototyping tool, and that the current responsive design solutions were painful to use with the designers existing toolset. With these problems in mind, Tom started laying the foundation for Weld.

Share your prototypes live with Weld

The features that makes Weld unique, compared to its competitors such as Sketch and InVision are:

• Weld is incredibly fast and easy-to-use.
• It makes responsive designs easy to create and maintain.
• Enables you to share and preview your products live on your phone or other devices.

The ability to show your clients the impact of your content on different devices is huge. It saves a lot of time and increases the awareness of responsive design. All design changes are reflected in real-time on all connected devices, and helps ensure that everyone is on the same page.

“Sharing my mobile app design live over SMS is a magical experience.” – Peter Sandberg, Project manager at Ziggy Creative Colony.

The main target audience are professional interaction designers and visual designers, mainly at digital agencies. The main benefits for professionals are that they can build better products faster, since it is very easy and quick to prototype and test with users or clients.

Weld is currently offering a free plan with one project available, a pro plan at $29/month with access to unlimited projects and is looking to introduce an agency plan available for design agencies only.

The team behind Weld is located in the Swedish co-working and meeting space, SUP46 in Stockholm. The co-working space has been very influential in Weld’s success as a startup.

“SUP46 has been great to us. We are a small team, and without this community, we would have felt very lonely. It is amazing to have the ability to share your problems with fellow entrepreneurs.” – Tom Söderlund.

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Success with Product Hunt

Weld has recently submitted its product to Product Hunt, an online community that surfaces the best new products every day. Product Hunt is the place for product-loving enthusiasts to share and geek out about the latest mobile apps, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations.

“After months of product testing with users we basically hand-picked, we felt the time was right to show it to the world.” – Tom Söderlund.

Weld was “hunted” last Friday, resulting in a big increase in the user base and proof of concept.

“We basically doubled our user base overnight, and we also discovered a new customer segment”– Tom Söderlund.

They also received a lot of positive feedback from the users, and one user wrote:

“Weld is a game changing product, especially for the non-technical among us, who like to conceptualize product designs but cannot seem to navigate through Photoshop or even sketch. I use sketch for design and InVision for interactive demos, Weld replaces both.”

Weld is currently starting up a small seed round of €300,000, and is looking to add more features to Weld for visual design and interactivity.

Sign up for Weld today and see for yourself, just how easy it is to go from idea to prototype, with Weld.