The Future of Enterprise Software is No-Code: Announcing Unqork’s Series B Financing

It’s been an incredible last few months here at Unqork. In addition to exponential customer growth and massive advancements to our platform, I am proud to announce we’ve secured $80 million in Series B funding led by CapitalG, Google’s parent company Alphabet’s growth investment arm, to further accelerate our business. Joining the round are existing investors and funds and accounts under management by subsidiaries of BlackRock, Inc. This round is a testament to the hard work of every Unqork employee and partner, and will allow us to better serve our growing customer base and help them achieve even greater success in the future.

First, some background

As a career enterprise technology executive, I’ve lived the challenges our customers face on a daily basis for over 25 years. As an industry, we’ve always been forced into a fundamental tradeoff:

Simple projects can be built using simple SaaS products (think marketing websites, small online spreadsheets, or simple forms) but more complex, enterprise-grade projects require all sorts of tooling, small armies of developers and consultants, and, most importantly, large, fragile codebases. 

The sheer weight of complex projects can bring a large enterprise to its knees. And it’s not just the initial build, what most people don’t realize is the costs of legacy maintenance and integrations makes up well over 50% of IT budgets. Hiring is another area that becomes really difficult, finding skilled engineers is extremely challenging when you’re focused on maintaining legacy systems and competing for top tier talent with companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, and Unqork (see what I did there?).

But most importantly, companies spend all of their time on these more tactical, lower value add projects, and not enough time on projects that truly move the business forward and further its competitive advantage.

By combining the simplicity and intuitive nature of no-code software development with the power of true enterprise grade functionality, Unqork allows companies to build complex applications in a completely visual environment, letting anyone configure instead of code industrial-grade functionality.

This “no-code” promise has been a bit of a pipe dream in the enterprise for a long time. I should know, I evaluated tool after tool that claimed some flavor of this exact value proposition! The issue is simple: it’s always been impossible to build true enterprise functionality on a no-code system. It has worked for small things, but not for big things.

That all changes with Unqork. No-code has finally made its way into complex enterprise application development.

No-code is enterprise ready because it’s already there.

The Proof is in the Pudding

I could go into a detailed explanation of how we were able to achieve this, but as they say, the proof is in the pudding. Today, large enterprises like Goldman Sachs, Liberty Mutual, John Hancock and dozens more are using Unqork to build complex applications without having to write a line of code. 

And these aren’t small, simple applications, these are mission-critical internal and externally-facing applications that power big, important use cases across their organizations. Our customers are seeing accelerated times for initial deployment, way more collaboration across their businesses, and reduced costs of hiring and legacy maintenance. 

Looking forward

Which brings me to CapitalG and our Series B. A few months back we had an introductory meeting in our New York office, and it was the most fun we’ve ever had in a session. One of the great things about no-code software is that you can spend most of your time showing–not just talking about–the product. We spent the day digging into the platform, and instead of our usual demo of building one enterprise application, we built 5!

Our team felt immediately aligned on so many levels, and then talks continued from there. Over the few weeks the round came together with participation from Blackrock and existing investors. Laela Sturdy, General Partner at CapitalG, will be joining our board of directors alongside independent director Paul Walker, a legend in enterprise IT. Laela is an incredible addition to Unqork – she felt like a founding team member from day one.

As I mentioned earlier, this round will be used to further the revolution in enterprise no-code. As our customers grow exponentially, they are driving us into new markets, new industries, and new countries. Our target market is the global economy. We are actively expanding our go-to-market, engineering, and training teams.

We’re extremely passionate about the work we’re doing – and none of it would be possible without our relentless team, devoted investors, and the customers that took a chance on us. This  round is a testament to the hard work of the Unqork team and our singular focus to helping enterprises unlock their competitive advantage.

We’re more excited than ever for the next year, and are looking forward to having you along for the ride.

Official press release here.