Introducing Hatch Apps

We started Hatch Apps 7 years ago with a big mission: To make software development accessible to all.

Today, I'm excited to introduce Hatch Apps. We're a no-code platform for teams to build mobile apps, APIs, databases, and more. We help companies save time and money on their software development by putting them in full control. Our vision is to democratize every part of the software development stack to ultimately build the go-to place for custom software.

If I'm being honest, it's been a windy road to get here.

The story of Hatch Apps started in late 2014. I dropped out of Vanderbilt University and was supporting myself by building websites and apps for companies. With every new client I worked with, I realized 3 things:

1. I never started building from scratch. I was leveraging open-source frameworks, libraries, and off-the-shelf technologies.
2. Pricing was opaque and based on how much the customer was willing to pay.
3. After deployment, clients couldn't make changes themselves and were reliant on whoever built the product.

The original idea of Hatch Apps was to solve these 3 core insights: Build an AI that would replicate the step-by-step process that developers take manually and make the whole thing one transparent price.

In late 2015 after exiting from my first company, I teamed up with my co-founder Amelia Friedman to start Hatch Apps. We got off to the races and felt a lot of momentum. Hundreds of users and potential customers started reaching out about their software development goals. Although we felt the pull of the market, we couldn't crack the code on the product or pricing. The cloud automation, mobile frameworks, and AI methodologies simply didn't exist to build the original vision for Hatch Apps. We made compromises based on the current state of technology and ultimately released a template-based mobile app builder. After that, we tried every pricing model imaginable: free, $99 / month, $199 / month, $499 / month, $12,000 / year, and the list goes on.

After years in development, we hadn't even scratched the surface on the 3 core insights we started with.

In late 2019, we closed a $2.4 million seed round from investors like Morgan Stanley, Revolution Rise of the Rest, AVG Funds, January ventures, and several angel investors. After that, the real work started.

We quietly started building our future no-code platform, chipping away at each part of the development stack. We came up with new ways to build app components, automated app generation and deployment in the cloud, and figured out how to make everything self-service. During those years, we nearly ran out of money several times while balancing customizations for existing customers with building the long term vision for the platform. We onboarded over 200 customers to a product and methodology we didn't think was optimal. Many of our buyers would convey a sentiment that kept us going: No-code is on it's way to disrupting the entire tech stack and we have an opportunity to power that revolution.

Which brings me to today. We've launched the new Hatch Apps platform that is a single comprehensive experience for customers to leverage the power of no-code. We provide a handful of no-code products out of the box, a marketplace of partners and vendors, and deals to popular software services. It's all self-service, collaborative, and extremely powerful.

We have 2 core no-code products that are available for customers in the platform today:

1. App Builder: Build an app for iOS and Android without coding. Our marquee no-code builder let's you build your app visually with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface.
2. API Builder: Build a hosted back end and API without coding. You can use the API with any app, built with Hatch Apps or not. Create a REST API with advanced user controls, schema, and permissions.
   

So why use Hatch Apps?

1. No-Code Products: We provide no-code products to build mobile apps and APIs. These products can be used with each other or without to compliment your current software development strategy.
2. Ecosystem: We've partnered with leading freelancers and agencies to provide custom services to our customers. This includes onboarding support, app management, integrations, custom development, and more. Additionally, we provide dozens of software deals that can be redeemed in the platform to save you time and money.
3. Integrations: We provide thousands of integrations out of the box to connect your mobile app or API to the apps you already use.

We have 3 key product tenants that have informed every part of the platform.

1. Collaboration: We believe that software development is inherently collaborative between multiple stakeholders. This includes product managers, designers, engineers, operations, and more. A no-code platform that a company uses for their software development strategy must be seamlessly collaborative and easy-to-use. From the Team page, Hatch Apps customers can add team members and assign detailed roles and permissions. Additionally, like Figma or Google Docs, the entire platform experience supports multiplayer collaboration.
2. Pricing: We believe that software development should have standardized pricing to bring transparency to the industry. Hatch Apps is free to start and then $25 per builder / month from there. Teams only pay for the number of people actually building with our platform and can add an unlimited number of app viewers. We also provide a transparent Enterprise plan at $75 per builder / month for companies that need additional support or security.
3. Support: We believe that customers should have exceptional customer support during their software development journey. Hatch Apps provides extensive documentation, webinars, and 24/7 in-app support.

What Apple did for computers. What Figma did for design. Hatch Apps is on a mission to do for software development.

7 years later, today is day 1.