Retool Raises $50M from Sequoia
Hi all! David, founder of Retool here. We’ve come a long way since we our very first Show HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14515494) and subsequent launch (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17725966)!Briefly — Retool is a visual programming language, built specifically for building internal front-ends. The idea is that we can let you use a visual programming interface to get you 70% of the way there very quickly, and then let you customize the rest with code. This lets you build apps much faster, but also retains the customizability and flexibility of code.We support writing JS anywhere between {{ }} [1], importing custom React components [2] , hosting on-prem [3] (can be setup in 5 minutes: https://docs.retool.com/docs/running-retool-locally), etc. And then once your applications are built in Retool, we manage the authentication (via SSO if you want), authorization (syncing with your groups in Okta via SCIM), and audit logs (can be stored in your own database, so you can build apps on top of it.)One interesting differentiator is that we don't store any data, and are happy to connect to any back-ends you already use (including both databases and rest / graphql / grpc endpoints).Here’s a 4 minute demo video: https://d3399nw8s4ngfo.cloudfront.net/videos/intro-to-retool...HN is what got us this far, so if anybody has any comments / suggestions, please feel free to let me know! We aim to be surprisingly responsive to HN feedback, since we’ve found it highly predictive of what developers in general want. Feel free to email me at david AT retool.comedit: fixed video. Thanks!1. https://docs.retool.com/docs/javascript-overview
2. https://docs.retool.com/docs/custom-react-components
3. https://docs.retool.com/docs/setup-instructions