After proving need for no-code apps, Glide rewarded with $20M Series A

When Glide came out of Y Combinator, it was looking to help people with no coding ability build a simple, but functional mobile app from data in a spreadsheet. It has expanded its capabilities to build web apps as well. A $20 million Series A was announced today.

David Siegel, the company's co-founder and CEO, said that they were able to prove their thesis after launching out of YC.

The company began to see an increase in interest after the Pandemic hit in 2020. It could have been about coordinating who could be in the building and where to find masks.

One question we had in the new year was, "Do people who aren't software developers want to create software in general?" We didn't know the answer to that. If it is easy to use and accessible, everyone will want to create software.

The company started seeing businesses create more sophisticated applications using their service last year, and Siegel says that these applications were being built by people without programming knowledge, who were tired of waiting for developer help on these projects.

The restaurant digital menu app was built. The image is called Glide.

A Fortune 500 retail company used Glide to coordinate pickup and drop off of inventory in their stores. The solution was built by non-engineers who had been waiting years for a mobile solution in the company.

Airtable and excel are now supported by the company, which used to only support building apps from spreadsheets. It also has a template store to help different industries such as restaurants get started faster with Glide, and it has added a Teams pricing level for companies building multiple apps.

500,000 users have built a million apps with its platform, and just 15 employees have been hired so far. He believes that as a remote company, he can get employees from anywhere and that will make it easier to find a diverse group of employees.

When we get people from across the spectrum in any country and different stages of their career, they bring the other parts of their life to inform how we think about providing this solution to our customers. He said that having a diverse team helps keep that perspective.

Today's round was led by Benchmark with participation from YC Continuity, First Round, and existing and new industry angels.