Hi HN,
We’re Retool (https://retool.com), a fast way of building internal tools. We launched on HN around three years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17725966). Here’s a 3 minute demo video: https://d3399nw8s4ngfo.cloudfront.net/videos/intro-to-retool.mp4.
You can think of Retool as something like Visual Basic, but in the cloud. The idea is that there are lots of internal applications that businesses need, and today, build from scratch (probably via React). But while React is great for many things (our landing page is built in React, our product is built in React, etc.), it’s possible that it might be overkill for building a simple form that POSTs data back to your API. (Who _wants_ to worry about debouncing the submit button, handling errors from the backend, and authenticating and authorizing the users?!)
Instead of building from scratch, Retool gives you the best components for internal apps (e.g. a `JSON Schema Form` component: https://docs.retool.com/docs/working-with-json-schema-form, which consumes JSON from your backend and auto-generates a form, so you can change your form programmatically), a drag-and-drop interface for assembling your UI, a FRP-like state management system (you can refer to any component and its properties, within {{ }}, wherein you can also write sandboxed JS), as well as a bunch of admin features (authentication via an SSO provider, authorization via groups synced from your SSO provider, and audit logs) that all internal applications should have.
A surprising amount of software engineering resources go into internal applications! If you think about it, almost all the engineers at “traditional” companies (e.g. Disney, PitneyBowes, Mercedes Benz, Bosch, Progressive, or NBC; all paying customers of Retool) are working on internal applications. It’d probably be fair to say a majority of all software in the world is internal-facing. And our goal is to get all that software, built (faster, and in a more delightful way) with Retool.
We’re hiring for many roles, but particularly interested in engineers, engineering managers, engineering directors, and engineers who enjoy talking with customers (whether pre or post-sales). Retool is a highly technical product, and we especially like engineers in non-engineering-specific roles. (For example, one candidate who came in via HN was an engineer, and now works on sales at Retool. In the first quarter of this year, he closed $1M of contracts by himself.)
Today, we’re cash flow-positive, and are around 80 employees. We’ve grown approximately 3x in the past year (both in terms of revenue and employees), and expect to grow approximately 3x again next year. In 3 years’ time, we expect both revenue and headcount to grow approximately 10x from today.
The network at Retool is also fairly strong — our lead investors in the Series B were Sequoia, along with Elad Gil, Nat Friedman, as well as John and Patrick Collison. Other investors include the founders of Github, Gusto, Segment, PagerDuty, Plaid, etc.
I think there’s a unique opportunity to join Retool now — we’ve found product-market fit, are cash-flow positive (and growing quickly), but are still a small team with a lot of ambiguity and therefore autonomy. Because the company itself is growing very rapidly, you’ll have a front-row seat into what building a rapidly scaling startup looks like. You’ll also get to have a very significant impact today (since we’re so small, and big believers in enabling people), but also grow into a larger impact as the company itself grows.
We think the market for custom enterprise apps is huge. And we think that Retool has a promising shot at capturing much of it. We have a product that works, that customers mostly like (although we have so much work to do, still), and whose usage is growing rapidly. And we’d love to potentially work with you!
We’ve made multiple hires from HN in the past, so we’re posting here. But if you know any friends who are interested, feel free to tell them to reach out as well. Please email me at david AT retool with “HN” in the subject line.
Thanks!
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28373610
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