Retool raises $45M at a $3.2B valuation

Post by thunkshift1 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 4:03 PM UTC

nrmitchi wrote: post #17

dvdhsu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We actually didn't need the money (we're cashflow-positive). In fact, we haven't touched the money from our Series B (in 2020) nor our Series C (in 2021). But raising money is helpful because a) it gets prospective customers interested in the product (oh, X company raised, let me check out what their product does), b) it gets prospective employees interested, c) it allows people externally to see that the company is…

> TBH, fundraising is kind of like charades: it's a way to signal you are doing well, without telling people your private company metrics. I hate that this is the answer. Edit, for clarification. I don't hate that this is Retool's answer , I hate that this is how the world actually works.

Post by itomato » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

hestefisk wrote: post #25

So a company that produces something which “RAD” tools have tried to do since approx 1990 is valued at how much again? Read a product description from a RAD environment such as Delphi or VBA or a 4GL like Rational and you will find almost the same language. I would not touch this with a ten foot pole; it’s a massive lock in / walled garden.

Post by tofuahdude » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

dvdhsu wrote: post #4

alexk307 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats on the funding and evaluation! At first, I was admittedly skeptical of yet another low code tool, but this seems pretty powerful. I think there is a large segment of the market that needs a drag and drop Visual Studio editor to build simple data workflows. Do you manage the underlying database for the customers, or are they connecting their own managed data stores? What are the most common use cases that you…

Yes, that is our target market too. We don't think people will be building airbnb.com (say) in Retool, but not all software is like that. (In fact, we think most software is probably just CRUD apps, haha.) We don't manage the database for customers; we instead connect to your data (whether it's behind an API or database). That was one of the first decisions we made — as a developer, if my data is already in postgres,…

Post by Closi » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

itomato wrote: post #43

hestefisk wrote: post #25

So a company that produces something which “RAD” tools have tried to do since approx 1990 is valued at how much again? Read a product description from a RAD environment such as Delphi or VBA or a 4GL like Rational and you will find almost the same language. I would not touch this with a ten foot pole; it’s a massive lock in / walled garden.

If you used a RAD tool in the 1990s you know what a rich and underserved market that continues to be. SMB need little more than this. They could run for decades.

Post by bdcravens » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 4:32 PM UTC

phphphphp wrote: post #30

monkeydust wrote: post #23

As someone on the product side I am getting more bullish each day on low-code tooling as it gets increasingly hard to source and retain engineering talent. Whist it might comes with downsides and limitations I think the positives in terms of time-to-market and cost outweigh these on balance for many types of needs (not all for sure). Congrats.

As a pragmatic software engineer: same. The code by default era can’t end soon enough, we shouldn’t be carrying the burden of our own inferior versions of things that already exist. A decade from now we will look back on the amount of code written now as a puzzling artifact of the past. Code when a ceiling has been reached with existing tools is the future — a ceiling which is getting higher and higher, thanks to Ret…