Mobile development platform Trigger is announcing one million dollars in funding today, from way legit investors SV Angel, Paul Graham, Ron Conway, 500 Startups, Russ Siegelman, Steve Walske, RightVentures, Venture51 and John Taysom.
In the same space as Appcelerator and Phone Gap, Trigger, which was previously web bookmarking tool WebMynd, aims to make web to mobile development a snap (yes, I know this is cliche), allowing web developers to write an app once in HTML 5, CSS or Javascript and then use the Trigger ‘Forge’ framework to translate the app into Android, iOS and desktop browsers. “It’s designed for web developers who may not have any experience of mobile development yet,” says co-founder Amir Nathoo, “We’re a faster, simpler development process, focused on the much larger percentage of people who develop for web.”
Trigger’s Javascript API lets developers wrap their code in a native wrapper, letting them use phone-only functions like Camera and Notifications and submit their apps to a native app store, “Basically gives you more power as a developer,” Nathoo tells me.
The Trigger team consists of 14 people split between SF and London and will use the funding for expansion. The company monetizes through a freemium model that involves a “with attribution” and “white label” product, and it already has hundreds of developers using it in thousands of builds, as well as paying customers and “significant” revenue.
“Amir is an awesome hacker and is building something that solves a real pain for him and other developers,” SV Angel’s David Lee enthuses. ”It’s really hard to support all the different platforms out there,” Nathoo says, “If I’ve developed once for iOS, the last thing I want to do is develop for Android. Any one developing software in the next ten years is going to be developing mobile software … If you talk about software for the next ten years you’re really talking about mobile software.”
James and Amir founded Trigger.io and WebMynd before that, originally going through the Winter ‘08 session with Y Combinator. With WebMynd we built apps ourselves that have been downloaded millions of times and learnt all about the pains that app developers face. Now with the backing of SV Angel and other top investors we’ve launched Trigger.io to do hybrid mobile apps right.
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