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Retool raises $45M at a $3.2B valuation

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Re: Retool raises $45M at a $3.2B valuation

#51

Post by no_wizard »

tomhallett wrote: post #38
no_wizard wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do see you pivoted away from some developer tooling things, like mock APIs generated from your database schema (that was a thing previous, no?). While I see you have the mock api generator service, I seem to recall you guys had a more robust paid offering that would read your database schema and spin up a mock API. Any reason you pivoted away from that product? I quite literally am in search of a company that will…

I have nothing todo with Retool, but I'm curious about the problem you are trying to solve. What do you want to consume the mock api? a) Is this for rapid prototypes? (web? mobile?) b) Do you have a microservice architecture and you want to mock out one of the services? (dev? ci?) c) something else? Lets say the generator looks at your schema and generates an api, how much would you want to tweak/customize that api?…

Cloud services have a real problem, they don't all have nice emulators for data or seeding. I'd love to setup a sandboxed test database automatically, and seed it with random data based on that schema (and perhaps some heuristics, like intentionally breaking some entries or random incomplete data sets)

and I'd like do it without incurring the cost of maintaining this fully in house. I know in some cases, like with GraphQL, I can do this somewhat easy if I use a 3rd party service, I know with something like AppSync there is some potential to run it locally via an emulator, but honesty the DX story around Cloud services is kind of crappy, and this would go a long way in solving that story.

Re: Retool raises $45M at a $3.2B valuation

#53

Post by monkeydust »

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…

Well said. Somewhat related and on front page of HN right now:

https://www.worklife.news/talent/developers-are-burned-out-q...

Re: Retool raises $45M at a $3.2B valuation

#54

Post by mbesto »

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.

Human bias at its finest - e.g. social proof. It's the classic "you don't get fired for hiring IBM" notion. If you were a CIO and chose Retool but it flopped, no one could say "what the hell was the CIO thinking by choosing a company that could go under tomorrow".

Re: Retool raises $45M at a $3.2B valuation

#55

Post by snarkypixel »

dvdhsu wrote: post #2

Hi all, founder @ Retool here. We've made a lot of progress over the past few years, but we first started on HN, and certainly wouldn't be here without all of you! For example, here's when we launched: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14515494 . Hilariously, we described Retool as "Excel with higher order primitives", and people understood it! (Only on HN!) After that, we spent around a year polishing the product…

Product looks really cool, well done

Re: Retool raises $45M at a $3.2B valuation

#56

Post by andreilys »

pointlessone wrote: post #14
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…

Wouldn't saying "we're actually profitable" be better? a) you still get into news (though for a different reason), b) gives prospective employees sense of stability, c) being profitable seems like good progress in my book, and d) no dilution for existing employees, not even a little.

Profitable companies that grow 2% y/y are not very attractive for employees.

Re: Retool raises $45M at a $3.2B valuation

#57

Post by te_chris »

tofuahdude wrote: post #45
dvdhsu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> if you have (say) 1M orders a day, you aren't able to put that data in Salesforce anymore Could you clarify in what way you can't put 1M orders a day into Salesforce?

Because you measure your fees in yachts at that point.

Re: Retool raises $45M at a $3.2B valuation

#58

Post by MangoCoffee »

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.

>bullish each day on low-code tooling

we use Microsoft PowerApps.

i see it differently. if you build too much internal software/tools on PowerApps. your company is tied to Microsoft for a long term since there is no easy way to jump from PowerApps to another low code platform without redo.

Re: Retool raises $45M at a $3.2B valuation

#59

Post by njudah »

tofuahdude wrote: post #45
dvdhsu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> if you have (say) 1M orders a day, you aren't able to put that data in Salesforce anymore Could you clarify in what way you can't put 1M orders a day into Salesforce?

Having any object / table in Salesforce > 1M rows is somewhat exceptional; doing that daily (using standard Salesforce capabilities) is off the charts -- just moving amount of data into Salesforce within a 24 hr window is questionable. Its built for B2B, where the data volumes are much lower, and conversely the kinds of operations / workflows you want to do on that data are typically more complex.
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