Tag: Vid Luther

Vid Luther started ZippyKid, which hosts and services WordPress websites.
Starting at $20 a month, San Antonio-based Zippykid provides fast and secure hosting on Rackspace’s servers.

Ten Questions with Luther, founder and CEO of ZippyKid.

1Q. Where did you come up with the idea for Zippy Kid?

A. Basically the idea came about because I was getting a lot of customers calling me and asking for help.

2Q, When did Zippy Kid launch?

A. The first version of ZippyKid launched in 2009. It wasn’t called that. It was called PSD2Live

3Q. Where did you get the ZippyKid name?

A. Wes Wilson runs a site called Brandstack and he put up weekly posts of the top domain names on the site. I saw ZippyKid and it reminded me of a customer comment. They said “my website is so zippy now I love it.” So the name seemed perfect.

4Q. What does ZippyKid do?

A. We are a WordPress hosting company. We only do WordPress as a content management system targeting 60 million users. We make sure your website is stable. We make sure your website doesn’t get hacked. People want a secure website. Lately, the number one thing people come to us for is speed. If your page loads slower than two seconds, you’re going to lose customers.

5Q. How many customers does ZippyKid have?

A. We have 1,000 from all over. We’re getting a lot customers from Europe. We’ve got customers from Australia and India. (Only 20 customers are from the local area)

6Q. Who are your customers?

A. We’ve got large enterprise customers and small individual bloggers and journalists. Virginia Tech is a customer. Anyone who is making money on the Internet they host with us. They don’t want to spend time managing their server.

7Q. What is your relationship with Rackspace?

A. We’re a partner with Rackspace. We handle all the server stuff for you. We do everything for you so that you can focus on your content rather than your server. Our slogan is “You post, we host.”

8Q. Who is your competition?

A. WPEngine in Austin and some others. But overall, Godaddy is my competition.

9Q. How do you market ZippyKid?

A. Our number one customer driver is actually word of mouth. We’re doing a lot of search engine optimization for when people are looking for WordPress solutions. We’re like a drug, people try us out and they get hooked. They can’t get enough.

10Q. What was the hardest part about launching ZippyKid?

A. Deciding to do it. Deciding to stop being passive aggressive and just go ahead and do it. If it fails, it fails.

ZippyKid has partnerships with other companies like Torbit. For $60 a month plan, ZippyKid’s customers get Torbit included. It also has partnerships with GravityForms, Woothemes and Backup Buddy. ZippyKid has six employees and is based at Geekdom. Luther applied for the TechStars Cloud program. That’s John Gray, ZippyKid’s Chief Technology Officer, sitting across from Luther.