No-code is inevitable: how we found a gap in the market that got us $71.5M in funding
It seems just like yesterday that EasySend has announced its $11 million in Series A funding. Following a year of accelerated growth, we've grown ten-fold in the United States, working with industry leaders such as Cincinnati Insurance, NJM, PSCU, Sompo, and Petplan.
And today, I am happy to share that we have raised a $55.5 million Series B funding round, bringing the total amount raised to date to $71.5 million.
How an internal development tool grew into a $71.5 M funded company
From bootstrap to a funded startup
When we started, our aim was to tackle an extremely serious problem in the insurance and financial services industries - paperwork.
We saw the amount of wasted effort going into reuviewing, printing, signing, and filing documents. The healthcare industry in the U.S. alone spends $800 billion each year on administrative costs.
So we thought: let's digitize paperwork!
At first, we turned to code to develop our clients' PDF forms into digital journeys. While we have created central libraries to make the process more efficient, EasySend was still a code-based solution at the start.
To begin, we had to save the PDF in an image format, and then a developer on our team had to find the precise pixel positions and start typing them into code. Consider having to do this for hundreds or even thousands of PDFs - this tedious task is not something you would wish upon your worst enemy.
We started small by building a relatively simple PDF rendering engine, and the rest is history.
So we ended up building a no-code solution for ourselves - after all, developing hundreds of forms was a convoluted process, to say the least. So we started coming up with ways to make things easier.
When we began working on the no-code builder, we did it for a selfish reason: to make our job more efficient. But the platform we created fit the gap in the market so perfectly that the idea of turning our internal tool into a product was the logical next step.
From A to B in one year
Fast forward to today, where we are adding new customers that are growing their customer base thanks to our solution.
As exciting as this is for us, we're not the only ones who think no-code has a big future. In fact, our vision of no-code is shared by several high-profile investors. Our latest round of funding will be used primarily for product development and sales expansion in the new verticals and markets.
High code vs low/no-code
I truly believe that no-code is the future.
Moving from high-code to no-code environments is the natural evolution of technology. Remember the first days of the Internet. In the beginning, websites had to be built exclusively with code. Then came the era of CMSs. Today, businesses focus much more on content and user experience than they do on code - which is obvious when you think about it.
The same trend can be seen in mobile apps development, where native code is being replaced by a shift towards a more streamlined process to build software.
There have been many discussions about the future of high-code vs. low/no-code and whether or not there will be a shift from high-code to no-code. Some say that this shift will take decades; others say it's already happening.
At EasySend, we believe the no-code era is already here. We're not saying that high-code will go away, but it makes more sense to focus on the end-users rather than spending time writing code. It is simply a matter of time before more companies figure out that they don't need to rely on their internal developers to build digital customer journeys.
Why create customer journeys with no-code?
Customer experience has a tremendous influence on business outcomes across verticals and industries. With the rise of self-service technology, companies are forced to rethink their processes and look into ways that will increase customer satisfaction while reducing costs.
At the same time, insurance companies, banks, financial institutions, and other enterprises rely on an army of employees to manage paperwork. Manual processes have led to poor customer satisfaction, high costs, and missed business opportunities.
Insurance companies, for example, can use no-code apps to improve claims management, claims processing times, and enhance customer experience.
And for this reason, we're working on a no-code application development platform that will allow anyone - regardless of their technical skills - to build digital customer journeys and deploy them to production quickly.
In my view, the future lies in the speed at which non-technical employees are able to create personalized customer journeys that meet their individual business needs. We are proud to offer a unique technology that allows companies of all sizes to meet this future head-on.
Can’t I just use code to build digital journeys?
Yes and no.
The number of digital touchpoints with customers grows exponentially, and most IT departments simply can’t code fast enough to catch up. It’s resource-intensive to build the digital journeys that business needs fast enough while relying on traditional software development methods.
That is why enterprises should look into no-code technology to solve this problem. Using tools that allow anyone, regardless of technical skills, to build apps with no coding required will help them save tens of thousands on IT development costs while speeding up implementation.
One of our biggest success stories is the customer who was able to turn around a 5-year project in just 3 months. Let it sink for a second. Imagine the impact on your business if you could accelerate your digital transformation plan from 5 years to 3 months only?
Bringing startup agility to enterprise companies has always been a challenge. This is part of why no-code is so attractive: you can build upon pre-existing technology or bring in expertise from the outside without needing to worry about IT support staff, budgets, and wasting valuable time on technicalities.
Filling The Gap
There are two types of digital journey tools for businesses looking for no-code solutions to improve their client experiences: heavy and complicated, or lightweight but very limited.
The most current no-code/low-code customer journey technologies on the market, however, are a mirror image of high-code environments and have similar drawbacks. On the one hand, you have highly customizable but are very complex to implement technologies (which are no-code in name only as they require significant IT support). On the other hand, you have tools that are simple to use and citizen-developer friendly, but at the same time are very limited and address only a single aspect of the digital journey.
There are several recognizable players, but none offer the full range of features that EasySend does. This makes us stand out in the market and enables us to fill the gap and offer customers the best of both worlds: a simple, powerful, and flexible platform to manage digital journeys end-to-end without code.
As more IT tools shift towards no-code, the market for no-code digital journey solutions will grow exponentially. We are excited to be at the forefront of bringing no-code technology to our users, allowing them to focus on what matters most: their business.
No-code is the future. Get on board!
As you can see, there are multiple good reasons to consider no-code as the way forward for your customer journeys and internal processes.
Our goal is to make no-code simple, flexible, and powerful enough for the non-coders to create customer journeys that are both engaging and scalable across channels. I am thankful to the EasySend team as we come to realize our vision, and I look forward to continue sharing our journey with you.
Eran Shirazi,
CTO at EasySend
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