Retool: Operational Excellence As A Service
Retool: Operational Excellence As A Service
Retool is transforming the way developers develop, dawning a new age of how we build tools.
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Developers write the code & run the world
Today, developers go by a lot of names. Programmers, coders, hackers, problem-solvers. The list goes on and on. Regardless of what you call them, it’s hard to debate the fact that they’re a business’s most important resources.
Almost everything today is digital, and developers are the ones who make the digital world go round. These builders are focused on crafting all the tools that the world knows and loves. But they’re also responsible for the tools and workflows that the world never gets to see.
On average, developers spend more than 30% of their time building internal tools — and 2 in 3 developers default to building entirely custom apps from scratch. This intensive process can take weeks, months, or even longer.
If you’re non-technical, you may be under the impression that building software is “easy.” The truth? It absolutely is not. No matter how talented, efficient, or motivated developers are, it takes time, experience, and many iterations to get it right. You simply can’t produce complex, unique software quickly.
In fact, the faster you go, the more likely you are to make mistakes that will draw the process out even longer. Remember the comic move fast and break things?
Unfortunately, the pressures are mounting on developers. Automation (and the software that fuels it) is clearly becoming “the future of work” — but the way software is built hasn’t caught up to today’s demands.
In the past, software was simply used to support operations. Today, according to Chris Sperandio, it’s “no longer viewed only as a tool to optimize existing things; it’s combinatorially interconnected, and it permeates everything. In this networked world, customer experience is the only true competitive advantage.”
In order to provide an outstanding customer experience, Sperandio says that companies will “have to integrate their sales, marketing, and customer support functions. …They should converge on a shared, ever-updating understanding of who their customer is to tailor their experiences accordingly.”
In a piece he wrote while at Segment, Sperandio argued that APIs are eating the value chain. Basically, the idea behind Sperandio’s proposed model is to build blocks for developers to systematize workflows. This would make those workflows easy to replicate and make building systems more like assembling with LEGOs (rather than clay).
If APIs are the LEGOs in a developer’s tool kit, Retool is the robot that builds your 10k piece LEGO Titanic (yup, that’s a real thing).
In a Not Boring essay, author Packy McCorrmick states:
Serendipity is one of the most powerful building blocks for developer platforms. You’re exposing helpful primitives to developers so that they can build better products.
The key to utilizing and implementing all of this important data via API for the customer experience? Internal software. It’s why companies like Twilio are willing to spend $3.2B to acquire companies like Segment, which have the ability to unify data and make applications easier to build.
Companies need custom internal software to streamline operations, automate repetitive tasks, and provide the best customer experience possible. In fact, it’s such a priority that 57% of companies report having a full-time employee focused on internal tools. These tools are even more important for larger companies: 77% of companies with more than 500 employees have dedicated teams to develop and maintain internal apps.
Developers have had no choice but to shift their focus toward internal software development. Unfortunately, that’s leaving them little to no time for other business-critical tasks — like developing their company’s customer-facing products.
But here’s the thing: even though internal apps are custom, many of them share similar building blocks. In fact, that’s the very idea behind Retool, the platform that helps developers build powerful tools faster.
Retool, now valued at $3.2 billion, exists to help companies build internal software “10x faster.” That means businesses can create smoother operations and solve their teams’ pain points within hours — not months.
Basically, Retool has created a modularized drag-and-drop interface that saves developers hours of time on building from scratch. Instead of hiring additional engineers and using resources on a second-tier Frankenstein product outside of its core competency, companies can easily build elegant internal applications to streamline their operations & product development.
According to Jamie Cuffe, product lead at Retool:
“Developers are uniquely positioned to help businesses do more with fewer resources: they can help rethink the process of how things get done, and they can automate the necessary but tedious work away. Retool helps you do both. We’re removing the cruft so developers can build better automations faster and, in turn, help the entire business focus on solving the most critical problems.”
Since the company was founded in 2017, over 500,000 apps have been built on Retool’s platform (not to mention, billions of queries that point to high app usage).
With a developer-first approach, Retool empowers engineers “to accelerate the operations of their companies by building internal software incredibly fast.” Even more incredible, they’re redefining the way developers actually develop. They are helping developers go from ‘move fast and break things’ to ‘move deliberately, fix things’.
In this month’s newsletter, we’ll be spilling the details on the story behind Retool, how it works, why developers love them, and some big news they have to share.
What is an internal tool?
Let’s start at square one and discuss what an internal tool is, how they are used, and why they are a BFD.
In today’s digital-first world, internal applications are foundational to how modern companies operate. In fact, Retool founder David Hsu claims that 50% of all software in the world is actually internal-facing. 50. PERCENT.
This all may leave you wondering — what is an internal app & why are there so many?
To put it simply, an internal app is a custom software application built for internal users in an organization. These tools are helpful because they are designed to meet an organization’s, or a team’s, unique needs. They’re built to fit seamlessly into existing processes, saving employees significant time on everything from marketing campaigns to finance operations to data engineering.
An internal tool can make customer data searchable and accessible across the organization. It can also be used to streamline operations across multiple tools — like Whatsapp and Google Sheets. The capabilities of internal software are basically limitless.
That all sounds great, but internal software development isn’t easy, and it’s rarely a priority for growing companies. Here are a few reasons why:
Internal apps require a lot of developer resources, both to be built and maintained
Most companies don't have extra developers to dedicate to these projects (especially with the developer talent shortage and recent economic uncertainty)
Companies need their limited developers to work on customer-facing products and services — NOT internal builds
Even with the challenges, though, there’s a huge need for internal tools in today’s digital environment. Remote work is more common than ever, and that means we’re relying on all kinds of software to make our jobs easier.
In fact, according to an Okta report, companies with 2,000+ employees deploy an average of 175 apps, while companies with fewer employees deploy an average of 73 apps. This app sprawl requires internal systems to operationalize and orchestrate the organization.
App sprawl is the most common reason why companies need to focus on internal builds. The more applications you leverage, the more data you have. If you don’t string it all together through reports, tools, and workflows, you’ll end up with siloed (and basically useless) data.
According to David Hsu, founder and CEO of Retool:
“There are 500M+ applications coming to market in the next few years, but the number of developers won’t keep pace. Retool helps developers meet the demand without sacrificing the flexibility and power of code. As the number of applications in the world grows, so too does the need to connect all of this software together. Retool is bringing our faster, modern approach from UIs to automations to do just that.”
Reports show that organizations leave 97% of their data unused. That means the potential for internal software is huge. If a platform like Retool suddenly made it easy to build extremely powerful, customizable tools, businesses could make major leaps forward in productivity, agility, and even profitability.
According to a 2022 survey by Retool, 57% of surveyed companies already have at least one full-time employee dedicated to building or maintaining internal tools. Clearly, industry leaders know that the ability to read, understand, and act on data is crucial. And Retool has seen that when companies learn how to leverage their platform, they start building tool after tool after tool.
The market potential for internal software is massive, and we can’t wait to see how Retool helps unlock this yet-untapped opportunity.
Pivoting from Fintech to the world's biggest hub for building internal tools
Retool founder David Hsu originally aimed to build a UK-based product that could compete with Venmo. But as the Y Combinator Demo Day for the Winter 2017 class approached, Hsu’s team was losing money.
Fintech is a tough business to be in, especially when you’re building from scratch against a ticking clock. Besides creating a profitable product, Hsu and his team had to spend tons of time building internal tools to manage stringent regulations, fraud detection, and user ID verification.
In one interview, Hsu recalled that they were in a “pretty dire situation” as Demo Day approached. They decided to go back to the drawing board, and after revisiting some of their prior work, Hsu recognized a pattern among all the internal tools they had been building. Basically, they were “just a bunch of tables, buttons, drop downs, and forms.”
This led Hsu to ask the question that changed everything: what if there was a way to help developers build internal tools faster with a drag-and-drop platform? With less than 60 days to go, Hsu and the team decided to rise to that challenge and make a total pivot.
Within days, they finished a functional prototype called Retool, presented it at YC’s 2017 Demo Day, and signed on an enterprise customer for a paid pilot worth $1.5 million.
While they were off to a great start, it did take Retool some time to find the right product-market fit — they didn’t originally focus on internal tools.
Their team worked aggressively to reach out to potential customers through a variety of strategies. But it wasn’t until 2018 that they discovered their ideal audience was actually internal application developers — not the legacy-tool market. After Hsu posted the below to Hacker News in 2018, Retool suddenly had dozens of companies signing up on a daily basis.
From then to now, Retool has signed up thousands of customers including Amazon, DoorDash, Twilio, Plaid, Lyft, Coinbase, and many more. In fact, their business has grown exponentially since 2017, even as Hsu has led with an unconventional approach to fundraising.
Small raises, big valuation
Retool raised a $25 million Series A in early 2020 and a $50 million Series B later that year, both led by Sequoia. In December 2021, the company intentionally raised a smaller Series C of $20 million — which valued it at $1.85 billion.
Most recently, Retool almost doubled its valuation to $3.2 billion with another fundraise of $45 million. However, the company is not in a race to maximize its valuation, unlike others in the tech space.
In fact, founder David Hsu has become known for this “lean fundraising” strategy. According to Retool, “Instead of raising the maximum amount [of funding] at the highest valuation, we raise small rounds at lower valuations, which minimizes dilution and preserves upside for employees. Our fundraising strategy is optimized for our team, not for vanity metrics.”
Take an example of a public company like Uber. Many early employees had large amounts of equity and are now millionaires. Meanwhile, recent hires don’t get the same advantages — this can create hiring and cultural challenges, especially in today’s competitive talent market.
This has become a concern for many big tech companies lately. In a recent Reddit post discussing Meta’s plummeting stock prices and how it impacts employees' RSUs, someone chimed in saying, “Imagine getting 50k in RSUs every year for five years, which would total 150k vested if there’s a five-year vesting period; then you have to watch your CEO just completely torpedo 45k from that holding because he wanted to start with this new idea that no one else is interested in.”
According to a feature piece from last year, Hsu “was bothered by the idea that employees who joined tech companies in the weeks after they reached a $5 billion or $10 billion valuation faced far less financial upside than those who joined in the weeks before. Pursuing a different model of smaller, stepped funding rounds every six to nine months, Hsu calculated that the typical engineer would save one million dollars in exercising their stock options; executives could save up to $10 million.”
According to their Series C blog post, Here's the framework Retool used to raise differently:
Raise at the right valuation, not the highest valuation possible
Raise the least amount possible to achieve our goals
Align with investors who put the team first
Ultimately, Hsu hopes that this method will help them win talent battles and stay disciplined in spending. And while some argue that lean fundraising is a risky strategy, it seems to be working for Retool. Hsu shared in a recent Hacker News post, “Today, we have tens of thousands of paying customers, are ~cashflow-positive, and have substantial revenue.”
So what does Retool do?
We’ve all heard that software is eating the world. As an industry, it’s driving enormous economic impact. On a deeper level, software is “supporting breakthrough advances that can spur further innovation and an even more prosperous future” for the United States and beyond.
The problem is that even as software disrupts new markets, the way that it’s developed hasn’t really changed over the past twenty years. According to Sam Altman, “the frameworks are better, the languages a bit more clever, but mostly we’re doing the same things.”
That’s where Retool — and its unique developer-first approach — comes in. At the most basic level, they help developers build internal tools faster. But what might seem like a simple concept is actually a groundbreaking, totally new way to build software.
Mario Gabriele, founder and editor of The Generalist in The Age of the Remix, explains,
“Whereas in the past, a development team might have spent days or weeks home-growing internal tooling for a set of bespoke use-cases, they can now turn to Retool. In a fraction of the time, they can piece together an internal dashboard complete with forms, tables, maps, and wizards. In that respect, Retool is remixing open-source components, custom code, and drag-and-drop builders.”
You might have heard Retool referred to as a low-code platform, but that label completely waters down what their platform is actually doing.
Low-code and no-code tools are typically aimed at novices who need an easy way to create a tool or dashboard, without having knowledge about how software actually works. Since their users tend to be novices, low-code and no-code platforms need to have guardrails around customization — but these guardrails create inflexibility and sandtraps for an actual developer.
Think of low-code/no-code platforms as toddler bikes with training wheels. Retool is an eBike: fully customizable and hackable. It lets you do what you already do, but much more efficiently.
Retool is developer-first. They don’t try to appeal to the novices — their goal is to make developers 10x more effective by eliminating boilerplate code and the boring stuff. That way, they can focus on writing the code that actually matters.
Ingrid Lunden of TechCrunch does a great job explaining why Retool is more than just another low code tool, “Retool’s core platform today is built around around 90 “components” that can be fit together — not so much in a “low code” approach but for software developers and engineers to get some of the basic building blocks like forms, charts, and tables out of the way. On top of this, it also provides validation, accessibility, and other tools needed to verify all is working as it should be. Then developers can connect up any database or API — anything with a REST or GraphQL API, it says, as well as PostgreSQL, MongoDB and other data stores — to finish writing the rest of the software.”
According to Jamie Cuffe, product lead for new products:
“Retool’s mission is to change how software is built. Today when most engineers build a new tool they use React. Our goal is to become the default way people think about building software. We want to make building an app 10x faster but also the end product should be 10x better with best-in-class UI, collaboration, maintainability, and more. It’s a lofty aspiration, and we have a long way to go, but with Workflows we’re tackling the next major step towards that vision.”
Here’s how Retool might work for a developer that wants to build a new internal tool:
First, developers can create a blank app or new project in Retool.
Then, they can connect to any database (e.g. postgres, mySQL, etc.) or any API (like Stripe’s API). By default, data isn’t stored on the platform.
While Retool works in the backend to fetch data, developers can start building from Retool’s massive library of 100+ drag-and-drop components (think charts, buttons, lists, containers, maps and so much more).
Finally, the developer can customize what data is brought into the new app, how it handles the data, and what data it writes back. This can be done by writing custom SQL queries (to read data from wherever it's stored), JS (to manipulate the data), and custom API requests (to write data to wherever their backend is).
Ultimately, the process of creating an entirely new dashboard or internal tool can take as little as 10 minutes. What used to be a massive, universal headache for developers has now been streamlined and majorly simplified by Retool’s innovative platform.
Along with making tools easier to build, the residual impact of using a tool like Retool is the time saved on code maintenance. We mentioned earlier that developers spend around 30% of their time actually writing code, but they spend just as much time (if not more) maintaining and testing the code.
Here’s an example showing how easy it is to build your first app using Retool.
Big companies want to enable their top resources, developers
Companies like Amazon, ShipBob, and Rappi used Retool to address daunting logistical challenges, especially those that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. And that just scratches the surface: Retool has helped educators bring students back to the classroom, enabled nonprofits to get more voters to the polls, and Fintech businesses scale to new heights.
One of Retool’s most impressive case studies features DoorDash, a last-mile logistics platform most well-known for its food delivery services. For businesses like DoorDash, managing the expectations and priorities of customers, delivery people (known as Dashers), and merchants can be a nightmare — without the right tools.
Before DoorDash implemented Retool, their engineering team had to spend months at a time building one-off tools from scratch. For example, they needed a way to visualize the delivery person’s route. Being able to provide such a critical feature fast would be hugely beneficial to the customer experience. Unfortunately, starting from scratch makes it an incredibly time-consuming and manual process.
DoorDash’s engineering team needed a way to meet operational challenges quickly. After some online research, they came across Retool. Suddenly, developers were able to improve their processes and build internal tools in a matter of hours — not weeks.
Retool has allowed DoorDash’s engineers to automate manual tasks like running scripts and filling out spreadsheets. They’ve also been able to reduce human errors, avoid mistyped data, and streamline complicated processes.
As a result, DoorDash’s developers can respond to operations needs quickly. One engineering leader even reports that upon implementing Retool, “we went from 1-2 months on each tool we needed to build to 30-60 minutes.” DoorDash has now built over 40 internal tools using Retool’s platform and continues to scale.
Internal tools keep the ship running
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated global digital transformation by years. In fact, according to KPMG’s CEO Outlook report, 74% of respondents said that the events of 2020 pushed them towards a next-generation operating model.
As customers become more demanding and companies face talent shortages and economic uncertainty, operational excellence is crucial. And Retool is giving developers the power to contribute to that excellence with more agility than ever before — according to Bryan Schreier, a partner at Sequoia, “Retool empowers engineers to accelerate the operations of their companies by building internal software incredibly fast.”
Enabling developers to move faster is an area that’s rapidly expanding. An example every developer is familiar with is how GitHub Copilot uses the OpenAI Codex to suggest code and entire functions in real-time, right from your editor. Products like this help developers spend less time creating boilerplate and repetitive code patterns, and more time on what matters: building great software.
This is a particularly important value proposition for the Fintech industry. These companies thrive according to their ability to handle large amounts of sensitive data or rigorous manual processes. That means usually, they need to rely on complex, custom-built internal tools.
Unfortunately, as we’ve made clear here, that process is costly and time-consuming. And when you’re a young company trying to gain traction, it can keep you from providing the outstanding customer experience needed for growth.
Ramp, a corporate card and expense management platform, learned this lesson early on. The company’s head of product, Geoff Charles, knew firsthand how painful it was to build internal applications from scratch. Yet, he also knew that they needed these tools to create a successful Fintech business.
Leaders at Ramp decided to implement Retool. This has resulted in “at least 10-20% improvement to operational efficiency” according to Charles. Since Ramp’s developers were able to get foundational internal tools off the ground fast, they’ve been able to spend more time focusing on core product features.
They’ve also been able to transform the way their customer support agents do their daily work. By being able to quickly build a powerful internal tool, Ramp’s developers gave agents the ability to quickly and easily handle complicated processes like risk management.
Operational excellence is crucial for businesses that want to scale. Retool is providing the tools that developers need to accelerate those efforts, and the impacts are massive.
Built for developers
In recent years, businesses have finally begun to recognize and find solutions to serve the unique needs of developers — a community that’s expected to grow to 28.7 million people by 2024. This population represents massive revenue potential for companies that leverage the opportunity. It also represents the significant chance that forward-thinking companies have to provide innovative solutions and change the way software developers work.
Amazon recognized the rise of the developer early and as a result, has made billions in revenue by providing infrastructure to software engineers. GitHub, a hosting service that helps developers store, manage, track and control changes to their code, also caters to this market and recently reached 4 million active users.
You might also have heard about the infamous Twilio “Ask Your Developer” campaign, which put the spotlight on developer-centric tools. Twilio helps software developers build and deliver personalized customer experiences. Today, they are one of the top 50 publicly traded SaaS companies in the world.
Essentially, Twilio paved the way for platforms like Retool to enable developers with a complete set of powerful building blocks and more seamlessly build internal applications. Twilio demonstrated that a company with a developer-first approach could become wildly successful, and now Retool is doing the same thing.
From the company’s start, David Hsu and his team deeply understood the struggles that developers face. In fact, it was only the painstaking process of creating their own internal tools from scratch that led to the creation of Retool (as we discussed earlier).
What makes Retool stand out is its developer-led approach. Hsu didn’t just want to create a drag-and-drop, no-code solution. Instead, he recognized that the businesses that use internal software have a wide variety of specific use cases, challenges, and requirements.
Hsu’s main goal was to free developers from mundane, manual work. He knew that when they don’t have to build everything from scratch, software engineers can be inventive, creative, and innovative. They can focus on making a real business impact with their work, which in the long run, is far better for both the individual and the company.
Retool is loved by developers because it’s highly hackable and just about limitlessly customizable. Unlike no-code and even low-code solutions, developers can write JavaScript almost anywhere inside of Retool, which provides an escape hatch when they want customizability that drag and drop doesn’t allow. Plus, they can leverage automation features and easily scale workflows.
The Twitter buzz around Retool is amazing. Developers say over and over again that the platform saves them an incredible amount of time. They report building an admin dashboard in just 45 minutes, solving major customer support inefficiencies in just a day, and accelerating otherwise time-intensive internal processes.
According to the Retool team, time and time again developers will come onto the platform to work on a specific tool. Once they understand Retool's capabilities, they end up building dozens of tools with Retool.
Bryan Schreier of Sequoia Capital says, “By moving engineers ‘up the stack,’ the Retool team has already embodied one of the great opportunities of the low-code movement — and taken an important step toward rapid innovation. With Retool, millions of engineers can spend more of their time on the most fulfilling work, while their partner teams still get better tools, faster. It’s a win all around.”
Retool has also prioritized community-led growth and innovation. They offer an impressive web of support for users, including an exclusive Slack group, Retool University, and ongoing virtual events. They also have an entire Developer Network dedicated to helping Retool users to get support from agencies and developers who are experts on the platform. That’s on top of thorough documentation guiding users on how to create all kinds of internal apps.
Transforming enterprise workflow automation
We're excited today to pull back the curtains on Retool's newest product, Retool Workflows.
Developers typically use Retool to build internal tools that need UI, like an admin dashboard. However, their team is very aware of the fact that business processes span further than the frontend layer.
Most companies have complex business processes that don’t require front-end UI. By using workflow automation for these processes, they can improve employee efficiency, productivity, and scalability.
But what is workflow automation? Hubspot defines it as “the process of using rule-based logic to launch a series of tasks that run on their own without any human intervention.” Workflows are basically another class of custom internal software that supports a wide range of business operations, from billing automation to sales alerts in Slack.
The problem with workflow automation is that though there are a lot of automation tools out there, very few are targeted and tailored for developers specifically. Much like the process of building internal apps, you can create workflows from scratch (by writing one-off scripts, ETL tasks, or cron jobs) or use a no-code software solution that lacks customization.
That said, workflows are a critical business function that need to be utilized — employees regularly lose up to 60 hours per month on automatable tasks.
Workflows, especially at the enterprise level, are yet another area where developers find themselves choosing between speed and flexibility. The good news? Retool has addressed this developer challenge through the rollout of its new product, Workflows, now available in Public Beta.
Think of Retool Workflow essentially as Zapier for developers and business data. As Retool puts it, “Retool Workflows empowers you to build, test, version, schedule, and monitor your jobs, alerts, and ETL tasks — all in one place.” Instead of cobbling together various software and one-off scripts, developers can use Retool to seamlessly sync data sources and build workflows fast.
Retool Workflows is unique because it was built with the developer in mind, from the ground up. This is the key difference from other no-code platforms like Zapier — Retool puts users in a developer-friendly environment that gives them a huge amount of control over what they’re building.
According to Jamie Cuffe, product lead at Retool:
“Developers need the flexibility of code. They want a toolset that speeds up work without narrowing their options. Retool Workflows aims to abstract away the tedious parts of building automations from scratch while preserving the ability to write code to solve the problem.”
Retool lets developers move fast with pre-built logic blocks. Then, they can write custom code as needed on top. Developers can also reuse their own code across projects, making workflow creation at scale infinitely simpler.
Imagine a product feature as simple as deciding when to send a Slack notification. In theory, the product build sounds pretty straightforward. In reality, the backend workflow looks something like this:
All of the steps in this workflow required a developer to compile data from several sources, set up the right logic, and create testing to ensure everything is firing correctly. It would take a team months to code and build this.
Cuffe also says:
“Code has always been a great way to solve automation, but it comes with a lot of overhead. Retool Workflows does away with the ceremony of building from scratch—spinning up infrastructure, authenticating resources, combing through API docs, etc.—without losing the hackability that developers expect.”
In Retool, stringing together a similar workflow is as easy as it is to create a LucidChart. But now it’s as easy as creating a simple Workflow.
Developers already love Retool for its automation features, and Workflows maintains the same powerful triggering and scheduling features. Maintenance is also far easier for Retool users thanks to robust logging and error handling.
Retool has already seen great customer results from the Workflows product. For example, beta tester The Modern Milkman has 100+ Workflows in production today that operate as an ETL system, stitching various services together. These include passing data from their customer engagement platform Braze to their internal databases, creating maps for their field workforce based on the day's deliveries, and sending activation offers to new customers based on purchase amounts.
Retool has seen 4 million workflows run in a recent 30-day period, across multiple functions and use cases. This is an entirely new way to build enterprise-level automated workflows, and it has the potential to change the game completely.
One of Retool’s core value propositions is its position as a single, powerful, highly hackable platform. In a time when leaders are tired of juggling dozens of different SaaS products for all their needs, this is important. According to one report, “94% of business professionals at enterprise organizations say they would rather use a unified platform integrating their applications and building workflow automation than rely on several systems.”
What’s next for Retool?
Retool’s truly innovative, developer-first approach is helping them take over the developer experience one tool at a time. The company is already on its way to becoming the de facto solution for building software out internally — and they’re just getting started.
As Retool continues to roll out Workflows and expand its user base with a new, free plan, we expect the platform’s influence to massively expand. According to Hsu, “Broadening access to the Retool platform is a key step in our mission to change the way the world develops software. Internal tools are just the start.”
Retool’s free plan is more generous than previous free versions of the platform and allows developers (and teams of up to 5) to build unlimited Retool apps. Since the free plan launched in late July 2022, Retool reports seeing a big spike in users. That means Retool is already enabling more companies to build more software internally — giving them the ability to make software developments as a whole more seamless.
The new Workflows product is also shaping up to be an industry game-changer, making software development as seamless as building with LEGOs or putting together a PowerPoint.
In another Not Boring essay titled Compounding Crazy, The API Economy’s favorite writer Packy M wrote that composability is the reason that human progress accelerates stating:
That’s what powers the increasing pace of innovation. Discoveries become inventions become building blocks become inventions become building blocks, ad infinitum.
With the free tier and Workflows open to the public, Retool has an incredible opportunity to start reaching a much broader swath of the developer community.
Beyond all that? The platform could be used for full-cycle product development or to more easily connect software. By plugging into other tools like Merge, companies could build out their integrations within Retool instead of building native integrations and then make them all work together more seamlessly. More developer-friendly tools working together = the developer experience of the future.
What we know for sure is that Retool is helping fundamentally transform how developers build software, and we can’t wait to see how that makes an impact on the tech industry — and the world — as a whole.
Thanks for reading — until our next adventure.
Special thanks to my friend Haley Davidson for copy help & edits and mama Schroeder for additional edits (any typos are on them 😊).
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*Disclaimer: This month’s edition of The API Economy has no direct affiliation with Circle or Retool. I am employed by Circle at the time of this writing. But, the views in this essay are my own personal opinions and don’t necessarily represent the views of Circle or Retool.