For the past seven years, NYC-based Bubble has been quietly building an empire: without spending a penny on marketing, the company has built a visual-based web development platform and pulled in over 270,000 users, who have created more than 230,000 Bubble-based apps.
The company’s fervent followers — known as “Bubblers,” for obvious reasons — have even managed to make it into the ranks of Y Combinator with products built on the Bubble platform.
Now, Bubble is ready to take the next step.
On Wednesday, Bubble announced it had closed a $6.25 million round of seed funding. Not only is that an impressive number for a seed round, but the list of investors is overflowing with famous faces from the tech world and beyond.
SignalFire and Neo led the round, with participation also coming from BoxGroup and ThirdKind. The round also featured a handful of individual investors: Nas (yes, that one), and founders of startups like Allbirds, Flatiron Health, Harry’s, Okta and MuleSoft.
It’s easy to see what makes Bubble unique. The company’s cloud-based, visual development platform allows users to create beautiful, complex and fully-functional website and app concepts without traditional coding knowledge. Instead, Bubble operates using a drag-and-drop model.
Our solution was to turn everyone into programmers.”
“We started Bubble in 2012 because we felt that starting a company was just too costly in terms of engineering resources,” co-founder Emmanuel Straschnov explained in a blog post. “Many projects, especially outside major cities, never even get off the ground. Our solution was to turn everyone into programmers.”
The company promises flexibility and scale to its users, meaning that their Bubble concepts can grow easily alongside the growth of their companies or products. Users can try Bubble’s “hobby” package for free, while other personal plans begin at $14 per month.
Straschnov said his next goal for Bubble is for it to become “the primary platform for startup creation.” To achieve this, Bubble will use its seed funding to invest in its internal engineering team, as well as giving the company a marketing boost.
“The first seven years were about taking a vision that everyone said was impossible and making it a reality,” Straschnov said. “The next seven years will be about distributing that reality to the next generation of entrepreneurs!”
