UPDATED 15:12 EST / MARCH 13 2017

CLOUD

Zuckerberg-backed fund leads $25M funding of code-free development startup Skuid

Large organizations often struggle to find readymade software that fully meets their needs, so they have to invest time and effort into building custom applications. It’s a major hassle that a Chattanooga, Tennessee-based startup called Skuid Inc. has spent the past three years trying to reduce.

The company entered the spotlight today after securing a $25 million Series B funding round led by ICONIQ Capital, a fund backed by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and Jack Dorsey. It previously contributed to a $50 million investment in Belgian data governance specialist Collibra NV. The firm was joined by K1 Investment Management LLC, which led Skuid’s Series A raise back in 2014 and took the opportunity to increase its stake this time.

The investment will help Skuid attract more organizations to its “no-code” development platform. The service cuts the amount of time that it takes companies build a custom application by removing the need for the internal development team to create everything from scratch. Instead, its service enables the business users who require the tool in question to put it together on their own in a graphical environment.

Skuid’s interface consists of two main parts: a console for managing the data that is needed for a project and a user experience workbench. The latter makes it possible to create an application front end using a drag-and-drop command. If more advanced customization is required, it can make the individual components available to a company’s development team through a programming interface.

Skuid said its platform can accommodate a wide range of use cases. Accounting giant Intuit Inc., for example, used the service to create a full-blown sales automation tool that helps its representatives manage deal information. Ken McElrath, the founder and chief executive of Skuid, said in an interview with TechCrunch that the next step for his team will be adding a voice interface capable of fetching data in response to natural-language commands.

Image: Skuid

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