Scott Gallant and Jordan Patterson realized they were on to something with their new startup Forestry.io when details of the product leaked to a tech publication and 3,000 people suddenly signed up.

Things were already heading in the right direction for Forestry.io. This summer it was accepted into the New York cohort of Techstars, one of the world’s most famous accelerators. The Charlottetown venture is one of the few Atlantic Canadian startups ever accepted into one of the big American accelerators.

The fact that 3,000 geeks in July suddenly signed up for their new content management system, or CMS, product showed the demand for it. But it was daunting as well.

“It told us that people were really into what we were doing,” Gallant said in a phone interview from New York last week. “But we weren’t really ready for it.”

Digital Segment Takes Off in Charlottetown.

So what have Gallant and Patterson created to cause all the excitement?

The two journeyman developers have capitalized on a trend in website development and created a CMS that can be used with static site generators. More and more developers are building websites with these static site generators because they are cloud-based and simpler to use and more secure than dynamic systems like WordPress.

But the static sites have been missing a main component. While static site generators simplify the work of the developers, there is no content management system to let non-tech personnel post and manage content on these sites. Forestry.io fills that gap.

“We see the whole UI (user interface) that we’re creating as the missing piece of the puzzle,” said Gallant. “We think it will change the way websites are built around the world for the next five or six years.”

Gallant and Jordan conceived of the product last year after finishing work at Foursum, the Moncton-based maker of a golf app. They began to develop the project over the winter and were accepted into Techstars New York in the spring.

Their acceptance into Techstars granted them access to US$120,000 (C$157,000) in funding, and that has helped them to grow their team, which now comprises six members. Three are in Charlottetown, and there are also developers in New York, Philadelphia and California. After the TechStar cohort ends, Forestry.io will maintain a New York office, and Gallant will travel between Charlottetown (where the company will continue to be based) and New York.

One thing Gallant has noticed while working at Techstars is that other teams in the accelerator have a dreadful time finding developers. But Gallant has been contacted regularly by developers that have dabbled in the product and want to work for the company.

“Almost everybody we’ve hired was a beta user of ours … in the early days,” he said. “They loved it so much that they wanted to work with us.”

Forestry.io has completed its beta tests and got the kinks out of the system, and users now have confidence the company will be around for a while, said Gallant. The team is preparing for a major launch later this month.

The organizers of Techstars are helping Gallant and Patterson to line up investors for its first round of funding. Gallant would not say how much they are hoping to raise in this seed round, but the company already has created a lot of buzz at it taps investors.