Ignite Business Software Development for All
How we’ll use our Series B investment to contribute to better hybrid work
The year 2022 is shaping up to be our best one yet at Coherent. This morning we announced that we’ve secured a Series B funding round of $75 million, led by Maverick Capital, including Maverick Ventures, with participation from Owl Rock, a Blue Owl division, GreatPoint Ventures, and existing investors Cathay Innovation and Franklin Templeton. This news warrants a moment to reflect on where we’ve been—and where we’re going. It’s time to get more ambitious about the impact we can have in the world. And if you’re reading this, you’re a part of our story.
Whether you’re a team member, partner, customer, investor, or champion – thank you. If you’re just getting to know us, buckle up and enjoy the ride!
What’s in a number?
Recognizing the significance of this milestone, we intend to be good stewards of this incredible investment. More on how we will use the funding later, but before we get to that, there’s an important number we need to consider.
This is the number of people we have the potential to reach. Did you realize more than 750 million people use Microsoft Excel? With our solution, they can all become no-code programmers. Coherent Spark’s lightning-fast Excel-to-API (formula-to-code) conversion is the most efficient way individuals and teams can work together to build business software. With it, we can help businesses unleash their logic and, in turn, unleash the full potential of their teams.
Did you realize more than 750 million people use Microsoft Excel? With our solution, they can all become no-code programmers.
A Coherent approach to no-code
Our mission is all about people. This is a pivotal moment when the business world is on the cusp of a no-code revolution, driven largely by the makeup of their teams (shortage of developers, for example). We are uniquely positioned to help accelerate that change by empowering coders and non-coders alike and equipping them with the tools to gain their competitive advantage.
For non-coders, the idea of building and connecting software will rock their world. If you count yourself in this group, maybe you’ve built rules and formulas in Excel, but did you ever think you could deploy what you built—without the assistance of the ever-in-demand developers in your company? If you’re a developer who has ever had to write code based on an Excel file, what could it mean for you to check that off your list, simply by giving your business partners access to new SaaS technology?
The Coherent approach will serve business and IT teams, entrepreneurs and academics—anyone who is navigating today’s hybrid-work world with higher expectations placed on them daily. This powerful tool that ignites software development can make you more productive and simplify your workflows. It’s easy to learn in about a couple of hours and makes work that used to drag on for weeks doable in a matter of minutes.
The impact? When you’re developing an innovation and seeing your efforts come to fruition in mere moments, work doesn’t feel like a grind. This new way of working feels like an accomplishment, because it is. That’s the vision that fires up our team.
The moments that mattered
Throughout our evolution as a company, we’ve prevailed through tough times. Despite the pandemic and other seismic world events over the past few years, Coherent has continually met and overcome challenges, growing into a global platform fast becoming the standard for business logic management. We call it ubiquitous because we’re virtually everywhere, with Coherent Spark now used on six continents. This all started because our relentless team and customers who believed there was a better way.
In terms of finding a culture fit with our venture partners—it sounds cliché, but when you know, you know.
Paradoxically, we knew we had something special when we started to feel resistance. Catching the attention of naysayers can really put a company to the test. As we listened to the detractors, we realized we weren’t hearing any objections to the value of our technology. Instead, we were hearing disbelief. Critics thought Spark sounded too good to be true. We leaned into that, and we made it our mission to surprise and delight them.
Another key moment was when we knew we had found the right investors. In meetings with these partners, our shared excitement about what we could do with Spark was palpable and set the tone for a successful future. Our business is as much about culture as it is about technology. In terms of finding a culture fit with our venture partners—it sounds cliché, but when you know, you know.
How we’ll Spark change
We couldn’t be more excited about the opportunities ahead, including the growth that will come from tackling new challenges. As Spark becomes an indispensable component of any tech stack, the use cases abound. Here’s how we’ll make an impact with our Series B investment starting today:
- Expand into new industries and new markets, while deepening our stronghold in North America and Asia Pacific
- Grow product, engineering, sales, customer success & enablement teams (we’re hiring!)
- Onboard more partners
- Add more out-of-the box connectors with leading enterprise and SaaS solutions
We’ll do all this with a singular mission: to ignite the building of business software for coders and non-coders alike. We are incredibly proud about what we do: we believe that helping people build their intellectual capital and innovations and see it come to life in moments can erase the lines between work and play. A career should light you up, not burn you out, and we can ignite that Spark.
Thank you for taking the leap and believing in us, colleagues, customers, partners, investors, and friends! We couldn’t have done it without you. #wearecoherent #youaretoo
Check out the full release here.
John Brisco
CEO & Co-founder
John is the leader and co-founder of Coherent. Every day, he works with teams, customers and partners across the world to help unleash business logic into APIs via Coherent’s world-class and unique software. Here’s his full profile.
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Ready to transform your business?
Give us your spreadsheet business logic of any complexity and we’ll show you how Coherent Spark can transform it into an API in seconds. Contact us today for a demo.
