By Jane Lanhee Lee
(Reuters) – Bubble, a New York based startup that allows non-coders to design and create web applications, said on Tuesday it raised $100 million in a funding round led by private equity firm Insight Partners.
Technology applications for people with little programming experience — known as “no-code” or “low-code” in Silicon Valley — have attracted fresh funding during the pandemic to help overcome a bottleneck created by a surge in e-commerce and the digitization of businesses amid a shortage of coders.
Emmanuel Straschnov, Bubble co-founder, said he and his partner started the company in New York in 2012 as the city was seeing a jump in tech startups but entrepreneurs with expertise in different industries with good ideas were struggling to find programmers to help them launch their companies.
Bubble’s platform allows entrepreneurs to build web applications like Airbnb or Twitter without relying on engineers, he said.
Today it has more than 1 million users worldwide and has tripled its revenue in the past year, the company said.
Straschnov declined to disclose the company’s latest valuation. He said the funding would be used to hire more engineers and launch “boot camps” to teach students and others how to use Bubble.
(Reporting By Jane Lanhee Lee; editing by Richard Pullin)