No-code startup Softr, which allows its customers to build apps from their existing data, announced Tuesday that it has added Google Sheets to its integration list.
Previously, Softr focused on Airtable databases. Its move to support data from Google’s spreadsheet product likely expands its potential customer pool. Even before that expansion, CEO Mariam Hakobyan told TechCrunch+ that her company grew its annual recurring revenue 3x from December 2021 to December 2022.
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Softr’s quick revenue expansion is a good reminder that while the tech world seems completely consumed by all things AI, there’s quite a lot of work going on in other areas that are worth keeping an eye on.
That said, there is an interesting connection between AI and no-code worth writing down: Both are potentially great expanders of human capability. AI tooling could operate as a second brain of sorts for the digitally busy, and no-code services may allow nondevelopers to build the tools they need to complete their work. In both cases, the genres of new tech development have a shot at helping regular folks do a lot more, more quickly and often at a low cost.
Something else that modern AI tooling and no-code share is accessibility. Softr, for example, grew its base of signed-up users from 35,000 to 150,000 in 2022. That’s really quite a lot for a service that was, until recently, Airtable-specific. On the AI side, I don’t need to reiterate just how much market demand there is for modern LLM tooling.
Let’s dig into Softr’s progress since we last covered the company and chat about what we can learn about no-code progress as a method of building more accessible software.
Softr, no-code and empowering the regulars
Ask anyone who works at a company that builds software and isn’t part of the engineering or product orgs how long it will take them to get something built for their own needs. Without even making Jira ticket jokes, we all know what the answer will be. And to a degree, the standard situation makes sense: What nondeveloper employees need is often pretty basic software, and expensive engineers need to focus on the company’s core offering not internal tooling.
That fact is cold comfort to, say, the marketing team that needs some darn development time. Solving that pain point has always been the reason why no-code, and its cousin low-code, have intrigued me. How much GDP can we unlock by tearing down the technical walls that keep problem-havers from being problem-solvers?
Softr fits in here by offering a free tier of its service — hence the rapid expansion in its registered user base — and a number of paid tiers that range from a few hundred dollars per year through enterprise plans that, we presume, cost a few more zeroes. Notably, Softr expanded its free service tier in February.
That’s not by coincidence. “We have all these tools,” Hakobyan said during our chat, adding that her company’s “goal is to make them accessible to anyone.”
After being asked about why her service felt underpriced after my peruse of its pricing portal ahead of our chat — always read a company’s pricing page to get a feel for how it thinks about itself — the CEO responded “is it?” before noting that she recently raised prices (as part of the same set of cost updates that expanded its zero-cost tier).
Now the company — which raised a $2.2 million seed round in early 2021 and a $13.5 million Series A in January 2022 — has a second data source that should open its service to an entire new user population. Mix that with a more generous free service and a low-cost prosumer plan, and I’m frankly very curious to see how many new, small customers Softr can stack in 2023. If it can double or triple its revenue and customer base this year, the company will not only be a shoo-in for a capital raise at a massive valuation bump but also will become an interesting company to keep on our extended “future liquidity” mental roster.
Where might the company find new customers? Hakobyan cited a laundry list of industries where Softr has users and customers, including nonprofits and governments to SMBs and larger companies. The list should only deepen with Sheets in the mix, given how popular Google’s G Suite is with companies of all stripes (including Yahoo, the parent company of TechCrunch+!).
Hakobyan told me that her company managed its 3x growth with only a doubling of its staffing, allowing it to keep a “very low” burn rate. This, I presume, is the power of a functioning free tier.
But what it also means is that as Softr is exhibiting the precise sort of growth that venture investors always covet and the burn profile that has recently come into vogue, it must be a hot ticket for the capital class. Sadly, for your local VC who might want to put some capital into the no-code space, Hakobyan said that her company doesn’t need money at the moment. Call it a conundrum: When venture investors demand that startups get efficient to unlock external investment, they partially engender a class of companies that don’t need external funds. Irony!