Formaloo, a no-code startup based in Estonia which offers professional teams a collaboration platform for building business apps, has closed a seed round of €2 million, led by Change Ventures. The investor lineup includes Hyde Park Venture Partners, Mana Ventures, and Startup Wise Guys.
Greg Barnes, Partner at Hyde Park Venture Partners, says: “Formaloo is a standout in the no-code market, offering business users a way to build powerful applications with outstanding collaboration and data access management. We’re thrilled to be involved and supporting the Formaloo team.”
Every business is unique, and companies need custom solutions to be more efficient, but coding to create software is limited to a small minority. Formaloo aims to give everyone the powers of a developer.
This Estonian startup offers a freemium no-code collaborative platform, a versatile tool that combines forms, apps, and databases. It helps small teams cut down on the number of enterprise software subscriptions they’re paying for.
Formaloo users can collect and organize their company data and turn their data into custom business apps and customer engagement tools. With integrations to many popular tools such as Slack, Google, and Microsoft, the Formaloo platform lets users create powerful databases and easily add interfaces by dragging and dropping building blocks just like playing with Legos.
Founded in 2020, Formaloo actively involves its 25,000+ users through its ‘build in public’ approach, fostering a rapidly expanding community of citizen developers. This community of Formaloo ambassadors not only shares templates and tutorials but also actively participates in the platform’s development process.
Farokh Shahabi, Co-founder and CEO of Formaloo, is a serial entrepreneur who started his first startup at the age of 17. He had 2 exits and M&A experiences under his belt before starting Formaloo with his co-founders. Formaloo’s 4 co-founders are originally from Iran, a land not typically associated with thriving global startups. The company has overcome numerous challenges to become a rocket ship in the no-code industry.
Shahabi comments: “We have one goal in mind. We want to democratize software development. Everyone can be a developer with Formaloo! With this investment, Formaloo will become a workspace hub, which enables business users to access their tools in one single platform and create any kind of applications they want in a matter of minutes, not months. Formaloo aims to be more than just yet another no-code platform. Our goal is to establish a comprehensive no-code ecosystem, where every no-code developer can bring their ideas to life using a unified set of tools. Not just Formaloo, but all of their favorite tools, together.”
A recent study by Formaloo shows that switching to the Formaloo platform provides proven average savings of 19 hours per week, per team. Formaloo also makes workflows and marketing more manageable, reduces the duplication of datasets, and allows for real-time collaboration. Formaloo has its own data storage options and provides advanced access management to give its customers total control over their data security.
With more than 650,000+ databases and business apps already created on Formaloo, Formaloo is actively used in the US, Germany, France, India, Australia, and South-East Asia. In just under two years Formaloo has amassed a staggering monthly customer base of over 25,000 companies, counting noteworthy clients such as Meta, Bolt, and McDonald’s.
Rait Ojasaar, Investment Partner at Change Ventures: “When we first met with the founders of Formaloo, it was not only their impressive traction that immediately captured our attention but also the multitude of obstacles they had managed to overcome despite their limited resources. From their relocation to Estonia to their successful acquisition of thousands of users, and their compelling articulation of the grand vision for Formaloo, their journey was nothing short of remarkable. A true testament of grit, urgency, and resourcefulness.”
Formaloo targets a $46B market, focusing on SMBs and SMEs with up to 500 employees, globally. Created by a team of serial entrepreneurs and data analytics experts, the platform is on track to reach 100K+ businesses by the end of 2023.
The investment will take the company to a new era of rapid expansion through vigorous marketing efforts in existing markets, as well as in the UK, Canada, and other English-speaking countries. In five years, Formaloo aims to have 10 million clients and become the household name for a no-code ecosystem that can turn anyone into a developer.
