Universe

Universe was founded by Joseph Cohen, a University of Pennsylvania dropout who had previously founded and served as CEO of Lore, an education-focused mobile social app that was acquired by Noodle Education. After selling Lore, Cohen said he spent roughly three years developing the idea for Universe, driven by a desire to 'turn phones into creative devices' and, in his words, to 'pick up the baton from Tumblr' as a home for casual, expressive, mobile-native web creation. Universe launched publicly as an iOS app on March 22, 2017, letting users build simple websites entirely from their phones using a 3x5 grid of drag-and-drop text, photo, video, and link blocks — explicitly positioned against desktop-first incumbents like Squarespace and Wix, and targeted at millennial creators rather than traditional small-business website buyers.

The company raised $3.2 million in seed funding, reported alongside its 2017 launch, led by General Catalyst with participation from Greylock Partners, Eniac Ventures, and Box Group. In March 2018, TechCrunch reported Universe had also gone through Y Combinator and secured additional funding as part of that program (specific amount undisclosed). The product continued to add functionality through the following years, including e-commerce and order/shipping tools introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, which TechCrunch reported drove roughly 10x growth in active sites as small businesses and creators moved online. This growth attracted institutional capital: Universe raised a $10 million Series A led by Google Ventures (GV) in April 2020, followed by a $30 million Series B in December 2021 with GV, Javelin Venture Partners, and Box Group participating (Crunchbase separately lists Addition as a lead investor associated with the company's most recent disclosed round). By July 2023, Universe's total disclosed funding stood at approximately $47.3 million.

By October 2021, Universe reported hundreds of thousands of active sites, with roughly 40% of sites being used as 'link-in-bio' pages, reflecting the platform's popularity among social-media creators. In June 2023, Universe — Website Builder won a 2023 Apple Design Award in the Inclusivity category, recognized by Apple for making website building accessible via features like Dynamic Type and VoiceOver support. The following month, in July 2023, the company launched GUS (Generative Universe Sites), an AI-powered conversational website designer allowing users to describe a desired site and receive an auto-generated, fully editable layout — part of a broader push to differentiate from both legacy website builders and newer AI site generators, with a stated mission to 'empower anyone to build the internet.'

Business model

Freemium mobile SaaS: free website builder with paid subscription tiers unlocking custom domains, e-commerce with lower transaction fees, branding removal, and advanced design/analytics tools.

Subscription tiers (Starter, Creator, Pro) plus e-commerce transaction fees on paid plans.