Bubble

Bubble is a visual programming language that makes code obsolete. Anyone can now build software without technical training.

Computer literacy is one of the most important issues of the decade. As automation replaces many tasks, people that will not be able to create these automation processes in the future will have a harder and harder time to find a job and make a living. Many think that the solution is to teach everyone how to code, we think instead we should reinvent how software is built, and do this via a visual interface, similarly to what we've done with using software in the early 90s with Windows and Macintosh. 

That is what Bubble does: it's a visual, point-and-click development environment, that empowers everyone to build software, websites and apps. The level of complexity can be similar to Airbnb, or even Facebook. It takes a few hours to learn, and then you can build, launch and run a web-based solution in a few days (a user cloned Twitter in a week). Technically speaking, Bubble is a new level of abstraction on top of code, that makes it accessible to everyone. Once an app is built, there is no need to maintain servers, Bubble takes care of it automatically. In other words, business people have now the power to create the product they need themselves, without relying on engineers. Bubble was started in 2012 (it takes some time to come with the right product for this problem), and we now have more than 150,000 users, and have grown without external funding to more than $1m in sales last year.

How will Bubble change the world? Basically in three different ways.

1. Bubble enables probably 100x more people to build software, as the complexity is similar to Microsoft Office. This will make building IT systems considerably cheaper, and will enable much more startups, projects, especially in areas that aren't close to major financial centers (NYC, SF). Today, most of our US-based users are in the Midwest.
2. Bubble is a platform that teaches computer science concepts, without getting into the tedious aspects of writing code, that can be tough to many kids. There is a huge potential using Bubble as the next step after MIT Scratch.
3. When everyone uses Bubble, engineers stop reinventing the wheel, and instead focus on new, important technical challenges. Today, many engineers are working on well-funded startups that innovate with their business model, design, branding, but not their tech (food delivery startups are a great example). If Bubble becomes a new standard, engineers will not be needed for this, but instead will focus on new features, engineering problems, etc. God knows how it will impact the world.

Bubble offer way more control than all visual programming platform. We do not have templates, and users can design what they want, pixel by pixel, and action by action. We have built the elementary bricks that are needed to build business applications and use advanced technologies to optimize performance, regardless of what users have built.

Bubble is the only visual platform that has proved its reliability at scale. Two customers got admitted to YCombinator, other have raised millions of dollars.

Technology is central to Bubble, as it is a new programming language, and visual editor and a cloud platform. We designed our own web framework and have developed a complete stack, from back to front end.

Our goal is to become the reference for web application development. Right now, only people looking at low-code / no-code platforms look at Bubble, we want developers to leverage our super fast development environment so that they only focus on adding the missing bricks they need to deploy their app (if any).

Our goal in the 3 to 5 years is to become an enterprise solution. While we start with individuals, we eventually will need to convert larger organizations like enterprises and government to become a new standard.

The impact on work will be gigantic. Everyone will be able to build their own solutions and contribute to the economy and make a living.

Our marketing strategy is mostly community-driven. We currently have a strong community of users that gather informally often (and online via our forum forum.bubble.is - There is a meetup in Boston...).

We are going to keep pushing for these offline gathering as this is the best way for us to convert new users. The level of skepticism around visual, code-free programming is high, and social validation is very important.

We have about 150,000 users, that have built 100k apps. Apps hosted on Bubble reach on average more than 10,000,000 page views every month. More than 2000 businesses use us for their IT operations, and save thousand of dollars on building a tech team or outsourcing.

Our goal is 4x in a year, so 600,000 users. This growth rate is what we've seen so far.

In 3 year, we hope to pass a tipping point and reach a critical size that will lead to much higher adoption, as the network effect via our plugin marketplace is quite important. We hope to be at 10m users then.

We'll server them by scaling our current team. We can handle 150k users with 6 people, we will need to add a few people to server a larger user bas.

Our team has a unique combination of technical talent and non-engineers. One of the challenges of building something like Bubble is that most engineers would usually not use a tool like Bubble, so people that build the tool aren't using it. The team that will succeed building an intuitive way to build software will need both skills.

Our business model is Software-as-a-service. Our software is free to use, but hosting apps with a custom domain requires a monthly fee.

Bubble has been sustainable and profitable from the beginning. We have never taken outside investment, and have been able to grow the team organically though proceeds from our customers.

We are applying to Solve as our technology is now ready for a massive adoption, and we need help getting to reach more people. Solve will help us getting more visible, but also will provide a validation from a renown institution, which is now needed. Many thinks that what we're trying to do is impossible and won't work. We know it does, but getting Solve to endorse it will make this clear to everyone.

Skepticism is the biggest barrier to our growth. As many have promised what we're offering in the past, and failed to deliver (people still teach code in schools...), people don't believe us when we say we have a solution that works. That's where Solve can come in and help: provide us with validation of a higher education institutions and thought leaders.