A few years ago, there was a debate in the technology market about the growth of low- and no-code apps and services. A global shortage of developer talent was part of the impetus for developing software that made building software easier, but there were some who saw no- and low-code tools as just very good opportunities, more, new exciting technical debt to accomplish.
Over the last year or so, I’ve noticed that conversations like this have waned while companies building products with low-code capabilities that empower non-technical folk move right on.
softer is a good example of the trend, as the startup raised $13.5 million in a Series A it announced this week. TechCrunch covered the seed round of the startup In early 2021, when Softr raised $2.2 million in outside funding.
The company’s Series A was led by FirstMarket Capital and involved a variety of people from across the technology world. I got wind of the deal a while ago, thanks Ashley Mayer, who worked at Box and Glossier. AtlanticLabs, which had previously invested capital in the company, also participated in Softr Series A.
what does it do The Berlin startup enables customers to create apps on airtable databases. But it has pretty big ambitions beyond its current remit.
In an interview with the CEO of Softr Mariam Hakobyan, TechCrunch learned that the company intends to expand the types of databases that can be used to build apps using its software. It also intends to create a marketplace for both components (to expand what Softr can do beyond official capabilities) and templates (out-of-the-box apps, in our opinion).
Hakobyan said Softr intends to become an ecosystem over time. Adding support for Google Sheets and other data sources will help with this work.
The company believes it’s floating downstream, with no-code services “just taking over,” Hakobyan said.
She identified some trends as to why no-code services – and I might add low-code services in general – are doing so well in today’s software market. The first is that there are not enough developers in the market today to meet the demand. That’s easy to understand. Her other argument was generational. According to Hakobyan, GenZ are more tech-savvy than previous generations, less interested in grabbing a traditional day job and looking for ways to build their own tools and the like.
GenZ as a no-code accelerator makes sense in my mind, although I can’t pinpoint exactly why — something to keep an eye on in the coming quarters.
How does Softr compare in the market? The company is very young in terms of time in the market with its product, so we can’t hit it too hard on year-over-year growth metrics, but it did share some early data. The company today has 30,000 registered users and more than 1,000 paying customers. Its primary customers are small and medium-sized businesses, which makes sense as these companies are perhaps the most likely to be priced out of today’s highly competitive developer market.
We’ll be curious to see how quickly Softr can bring more data sources into its service and how quickly it can roll out its planned marketplace. From that point on, the market will decide whether Softr is destined to become an ecosystem or not.
