Miami-based 8base will double its product development, sales, and engineering teams after securing $10.6 million from investors.
The company, a low-code development platform, is hiring and investing in product development to scale the business. 8base's software makes it possible for companies to build digital products – like APIs, cloud-based hosting and security – in a matter of weeks, all without a large team of software engineers.
"The goal is to make software development 100 times easier than it is today," founder and CEO Albert Santalo told Miami Inno.
The series A funding was led by Colorado-based Foundry Group, with Firebrand Ventures, MongoDB Ventures and Techstars among the investors who participated. Santalo said 8base, which currently has about 40 employees, plans to boost that number to 80 over the next year. The startup has been fully remote since the Covid-19 pandemic and has employees based across the U.S.
“We’ll continue to hire strategically where talent is, but hiring in South Florida is always a plus," he said.
Santalo is also the founder of Miami health care technology firm CareCloud. That company was acquired by New Jersey health care IT company MTBC (Nasdaq: MTBC) in 2020 in a deal valued at $36 million.
His experience developing software for CareCloud inspired the creation of 8base's low-code platform, he said. As engineer, he realized the process was inefficient. And as a founder, he was spending millions of dollars on developers working on projects better suited to automation.
And there's plenty of demand: Santalo reports 8base has grown "by triple digits" every year since its founding – all without venture capital backing. He expects the business will grow in excess of 100% in 2022, as well. He declined to specify 8base's revenue, but said it was in "the millions."
A national shortage of software engineers could make 8base even more essential, Santalo said. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. will have a 1.2 million shortage of software engineers by 2026, a big problem for digital-first businesses that rely on that talent.
"With 8base, nontechnical founders and executives can bring their visions to life without having to hire an army engineers," he said.
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