.bubble
Enabling users to build applications without writing a line of code.
Funding Rounds:
Seed Round: $6,300,000 - June, 2019 (led by SignalFire)
Series A: $100,000,000 - July, 2021 (led by Insight Partners)
Total Funding Amount: $106,300,000
Industry: No/low Code Tools - Developer Platform - Web Development
Founders: Emmanuel Straschnov - Josh Haas
Key Investors:
Betaworks (Series A)
Third Kind VC (Seed & A)
Neo (Seed & A)
Insight Partners (series A)
SignalFire (Seed & A)
BoxGroup (Series A)
Nitesh Banta (Seed)
Foothill Ventures (Seed)
Scott Belsky (Seed)
Neil Blumenthal (Seed)
Frederic Kerrest (Seed)
Ross Mason (Seed)
Joseph Zwillinger (Seed)
Eric Ries (Seed)
Charlie Songhurst (Seed)
Michael Katz (Seed)
Jeffrey Raider (Seed)
Nat Turner (Seed)
Zach Weinberg (Seed)
WndrCo (Seed)
David Gilboa (Seed)
Snapshot:
Bubble is a no/low-code web development platform that provides a point-and-click programming experience for building web and mobile applications. In a nutshell, Bubble allows its users to build web and mobile applications without needing any coding experience.
The Problems & Solutions:
Problem:
Every day we are entering a more digital world. Technology surrounds us. However, the ability to build that technology and take part in the world surrounding us still depends on a skill set that is still considered scarce and niche - coding. Therefore, we have a giant percentage of society consuming the technology being created by a small group of technologists.
Solution:
Bubble’s goal is to destroy the distinction between building technology and using technology by making programming as user-friendly as your favorite app. They want to “build tools that empower people to be first-class citizens of the digital world.” By doing this, Bubble is leveling the playing field by allowing everyone to become a builder, or founder, in this digitally driven ecosystem.
Problem:
There is a growing sentiment that people who don’t know how to code now will be at a disadvantage in the future. I, too, have had this concern where I’ve made the analogy that I’ve feared that people my age who don’t know how to code will turn into our grandparents first trying to use an iPhone (probably dramatic).
Solution:
Bubble wants to live in a world where the average person can create technology, not just consume it. They don’t believe the solution is teaching everyone the code - “Why should humans learn to talk like computers? Let’s build computers that can talk to humans.”
Problem:
Building tech is usually a slow and expensive process.
Solution:
Bubble’s point-and-click experience has enabled a faster process in building mobile and web applications while providing flexible subscription level price points.
How Bubble Works:
Bubble has all the tools you need to build any web or mobile application.
Customizing the UX:
With Bubble, you can build out the logic and determine what happens as users navigate your application. You can build chats, news feeds, and other real-time interactivity with Bubble’s easy-to-use dynamic containers and comprehensive library of visual elements.
Managing data and accounts:
With Bubble, you can design, search, and export data structures in their scalable & secure data store. Set up user accounts and enable log-ins with passwords or any OAuth 2.0 compatible provider, including Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google. Every Bubble app comes with a ready-made user management system.
Integrations:
Fully extend your Bubble app with Javascript plugins, or connect to any API with their no-code API connector. Find a solution to any business problem in Bubble’s plugin marketplace, or create your own plugin for the no-code community.
Drag and drop:
With Bubble, you can create pixel-perfect designs and insert images, icons, videos, maps, and more without knowledge of HTML or CSS. In addition, with their responsive editor, you can make apps that better fit mobile browsers.
Use dynamic content:
Display user-generated content or data fetched from services like Stripe, Google, and Facebook. Change the font, color, or visibility of anything on the page based on information from your app with their dynamic elements.
Create multilingual apps:
Translate your app’s text and automatically display the right language, currency, and formats for website messages without additional work. Bubble supports 80+ international languages and adding.
Scale with robust, hosted infrastructure:
With Bubble, you never have to worry about server maintenance, infrastructure, or operations. Bubble securely handles deployment and hosting for you. There are no hard limits on the number of users, the volume of traffic, or data storage.
Scaling your application:
Allocate more server resources as your base grows and scale up from a demo app to a web-scale enterprise without technical changes. Bubble lets you boost your capacity as you go, so you won’t pay for more than you’re using to start.
Version control and backups:
Test changes safely on a private development version of your site, merge changes, then deploy them live to users with one click. Instantly revert your application to any point in its history if you need to make revisions.
Security & privacy:
With Bubble, you can keep your collaborators and users safe with free, automatic SSL certificates for all Bubble websites, multi-factor authentication, and secure infrastructure.
Expand, engage, measure:
Develop an engaged customer base with features like email and SEO that integrate with tools you’re already using. Then, measure and track behaviors to make better decisions as your product and business evolve.
Make informed decisions:
Track which parts of your app are the most used with Bubble’s powerful dashboards, and connect with popular analytics and customer management services such as Mixpanel, Google Analytics, or Segment. Bubble lets you check your app’s CPU usage, page views, real-time workflows, etc.
Build and grow your audience:
Send customizable, transactional emails to users and integrate with email list management services—Control SEO by setting meta tags, customizing URL text and titles, and generating site maps.
Process payments:
Integrate your Bubble app with Stripe and Braintree to support complex payment models, including subscriptions, deferred payments, third-party transactions, etc. Build a checkout cart for your e-commerce site, develop a SaaS product, or create a crowdfunding platform, all in one place.
Collab:
With Bubble, you can bring on up to 40 teammates to work on your application with you, with customizable permissions and access rights. So from marketing to legal to design, anyone can pitch in…and without needing to write code.
Work together in real-time:
See what your collaborators are modifying live and provide feedback by marking up your app with notes, tasks, and comments for your team to view.
Develop in privacy:
Secure and password protect your application so you can share selectively until you’re ready to unveil it.
The Business
Bubble is a subscription-based business. They have four different plans - Free, Personal, Professional, and Production. They offer monthly and annual pricing models. Their free plan lets users learn about the platform and build out their applications. The freemium is where Bubble creates the stickiness with their customers. The free plan enables the customer to see how they can easily build out their applications to their visions. Once they see how intuitive it is, they will then move to a premium plan so that they can start to scale their application with Bubble’s additional premium resources. Bubble creates trust with the customer and then scales their revenue as the users scale their applications.
Agency Plans:
Bubble also provides an “Agency Plan” for users who build software for their clients. The agency subscription lets users subscribe on a per-user basis to unlock features that make the process of building apps for clients frictionless. The Agency Plan is recommended for teams that work on projects for multiple clients and need access to paid functionality on an affordable basis.
Agency Plan is $852/annually ($71/month) or $78/month. Per designer.
Bull Case For Low-Code and Bubble
Initially, the sentiment for the use cases of low-code was that it is used for creating gimmicky applications, mainly used by marketers and non-serious technologists. However, the sentiment has changed from gimmicky to being used by serious DevOps and security engineers in recent years. In addition, because traditional organizations had to step up their digital user experience during the pandemic, the use of low-code exploded. From a report in 2021, Gartner forecasts that by 2024, low-code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of application development activity.
“Low-code application platforms (LCAP) are expected to remain the largest component of the low-code developement technology market through 2022, increasing nearly 30% from 2020 to reach $5.8 billion in 2021.” - Gartner
Bubble’s stance on how humans shouldn’t have to learn how to talk to computers, but computers should be built to talk with humans - that sentiment seems to be shared with the progression towards building software applications made to serve those without a technical coding background. A report from TechRepublic stated that “nearly 60% of all custom apps are now built outside the IT department. Of those, 30% are built by employees with either limited or no technical development skills.”
