Belfast’s Budibase raises $7m in seed funding for its low-code platform

14 Nov 2022

Budibase co-founders Joe Johnston and Mike Shanks. Image: Budibase

Budibase plans to use the funding to build out its team and continue its goal of enabling companies to develop their own internal tools.

Belfast-headquartered Budibase has raised $7m in additional seed funding led by SignalFire – the US-based VC firm that has invested in companies such as Grammarly, Lime and Clubhouse.

Techstart NI and Angular Ventures have also backed Budibase, along with a number of tech industry figures. It brings the start-up’s total funding to date to $9.25m.

Founded in 2020, Budibase is developing a low-code, open-source platform that enables companies to quickly and conveniently develop their own tools internally.

Joe Johnston, head of growth at Budibase, wrote in a blogpost last week that it is the company’s mission “to help every company on the planet build their own tools”.

He founded the company along with CEO Mike Shanks and CTO Martin McKeaveney. All have backgrounds in software and tech.

Budibase has just seen its monthly active user base surpass 20,000, which Johnston said was a “fantastic validation of the product and community” the team has built.

It now counts companies such as Google, Tesla, Disney, Louis Vuitton, P&G and Netflix among its users.

“Since November 2021, 50,000 companies— from start-ups to enterprises — use Budibase to develop internal tools and automate workflows,” Johnston wrote.

“Budibase’s platform and development experience are becoming the standard for high-performing IT teams, and the strong Budibase community is a hub for builders.”

The company will use the fresh funding to build out its team and its product. It plans to build a go-to-market and sales team, and is hiring for several roles at the moment.

Johnston pointed out that “platforms like Budibase have become even more critical amidst layoffs and tight budgets in a market like this”.

In the past number of weeks, major tech companies from Meta to Stripe and Twitter have announced headcount cuts, affecting workers all over the world and in Ireland.

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Blathnaid O’Dea is Careers reporter at Silicon Republic

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