No/low code and dev tools (2023)

1. Rise of the LLMiddlemen

   The treadmill of new GenAI-powered chatbots have created opportunities for so-called picks and shovels startups, which in this case, specialise in helping you create new things with large language models (LLMs) — the tech that underpins ChatGPT.

   London- and San Francisco-based startup Klu raised $1.7m in October to help companies get value out of GenAI models. There’s also London-based Playfetch — recently founded by ex-Meta employees — which has created a tool for “collaborative prompt creation” sessions between colleagues.

   France’s Dust, meanwhile, is focused on building AI-powered products for enterprise clients. The company, which raised a $5m seed round led by Sequoia in June, told Sifted it’s already working with six “design partners” to develop new applications for GenAI in the workplace.

2. AI codes too (but not super well)

   Will computers soon be able to programme themselves? AI advances are making low/no code more powerful. OpenAI’s mega AI system can write code when prompted with English.

   Reviews on the quality of its current capabilities vary. “The promise of these large models has been way ahead of the delivery,” Diffblue CEO Matthew Lodge told Sifted recently. His Oxford University spinout — from the same lab that gave birth to DeepMind — is finding success writing code for financial giants like JP Morgan, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Amazon Web Services and Cisco.

3. When off-the-shelf won’t do

   Low/no-code tools are built to work for the majority but open source credentials are the USP for the handful of low-code companies in Europe, with the promise of tailored results — this is a particularly appealing pitch for businesses with niche use cases that aren’t well supported by off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all SaaS.

   Dutch company Baserow, for instance, pitches itself as an open source Airtable alternative that helps people build databases with minimal technical knowhow. It raised a €5m seed round in July 2022 from investors including Seedcamp, Inkef and Firstminute Capital. Berlin’s open source n8n — with backers including Eventbrite cofounder Kevin Hartz and Supercell cofounder Ilkka Paananen — raised a $12m Series A in April 2021.

4. Low/no code won’t replace boffins

   Coders are still few and far between so demand a high price. Does all this new software represent an opportunity to reduce company costs? Well, while the ranks of citizen developers are growing, you still can’t easily shortcut the journey from computer science dropout to programming superhero.

   Low/no-code tools are clever at streamlining lots of things but we still need guidance from smart humans: SaaS tools can’t replace software developers’ mental workflow, yet.

Who early stage startups are up against