Retool, the low-code platform that makes the building of internal tools both quick and simple has raised $45M at a $3.2B valuation. Zillionize invested in Retool as part of the YCombinator W17 batch and recently YCombinator listed Retool at number 29 on its Top Companies list.
Founded in 2017 by David Hsu, the company has grown fast and now services companies in the e-commerce, financial, retail and marketplace industries. With a customer list that boasts Amazon, Peloton, NBC, Coinbase, Warner Brothers and fellow YC Alumni ShipBob, we are proud to have invested early in their history.
Retool has launched a new free plan which is designed to benefit teams with less than five people. With 500k apps built on the platform, it’s clear that they are delivering the “just enough code” service that its customers love.
Alongside the new free plan, the team has launched an extremely comprehensive component library, source control features that allow you to employ version control on your low-code apps as well as a plethora of other improvements – in short, it doesn’t look like the Retool team plans on slowing down any time soon.
David, the Retool founder and CEO shares:
“Our Series C2 is a continuation of our unconventional approach to fundraising—instead of raising the maximum amount at the highest valuation, we raise small rounds at lower valuations, which minimizes dilution and preserves upside for employees. Our fundraising strategy is optimized for our team, not for vanity metrics. (We think those vanity metrics are distracting; we prefer to focus on our core work: shipping great products and delivering value to customers.)”
The concept behind Retool, in the words of David, is that it provides “a new way of building software.”
“Our core thesis is that when you look at how software has been built for the last 20 or 30 years, it really hasn’t changed. The idea behind Retool is that maybe there could be a much faster way to build software.”
This C2 round comes courtesy of Sequoia Capital, Stripe co-founders John and Patrick Collison, GitHub’s former CEO Nat Friedman, Elad Gil, Daniel Gross and Caryn Marooney.
We’re excited to see Retool go from strength to strength, you can read more about this round of funding directly on the Retool blog here.
Zillionize is a seed round investor which has been investing in technology startups since March 2011. We look for early startups who we believe can see the future. We use a data-driven approach to identify startups we love and want to invest in for the long term. Zillionize has invested in a number of unicorns and we look forward to more of our portfolio joining this list in the years to come.