Generative AI may be dominating the headlines, but Boston-based Creatio is making news of its own with the success of its “no code” customer relationship management (CRM) platform and app-building tools. The 10-year-old software company recently announced a significant milestone, raising $200 million at a valuation of $1.2 billion in a round led by Sapphire Ventures with contributions from StepStone Group, Volition Capital, and Horizon Capital.
“Our sole purpose is to bring a lot of innovations to the enterprise, no-code market,” said Andie Dovgan, Chief Growth Officer at Creatio, during a videoconference interview with VentureBeat conducted ahead of the announcement. Creatio plans to utilize the new funding to enhance its product offerings, expand into new markets, and acquire more customers.
| Investor | Contribution |
|---|---|
| Sapphire Ventures | Lead |
| StepStone Group | Participant |
| Volition Capital | Participant |
| Horizon Capital | Participant |
“We are very focused on enterprise-level automation,” Dovgan stated. “We’re going to increase the number of strategic components, those smaller building blocks for different industries like financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing.”
In a press release, Sapphire Ventures managing director Rajeev Dham highlighted the unique value of Creatio’s platform. “Creatio’s true AI-powered No-Code platform – built on a unique, composable architecture – offers exceptional flexibility and usability that empowers enterprise customers to swiftly build, deploy, and personalize applications for a variety of use cases across CRM, case management, and workflow automation.”
Sean Cantwell, Managing Partner at Volition Capital, added, “We couldn’t be more impressed with the company’s growth and the impact that Creatio’s platform brings to its customer community. Creatio addresses the complexity and inflexibility of traditional software vendors and enables organizations to seamlessly replace legacy technologies, delivering market-leading ROI [return-on-investment].”
The “no-code” movement began in the 1970s but gained significant momentum in the early 2000s thanks to major brands like Shopify. This approach allows users or engineers to create new applications without writing code. Instead, it uses visual interfaces and drag-and-drop tools, enabling those without technical skills to develop software. No-code platforms streamline development by allowing users to configure applications using pre-built templates and components, with coding happening automatically on the backend.
- Accessibility: Enables non-technical users to create applications.
- Efficiency: Accelerates development processes.
- Customization: Allows personalized configurations.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Reduces the need for extensive developer resources.
- Flexibility: Adapts to various business needs and industries.
Founded in 2014 under the name “bpm’online”, Creatio offers a CRM that competes with industry giants like Salesforce. Over time, CRMs have evolved to integrate with other major software programs that salespeople and other customer-facing roles rely on, such as email, calendars, transcription services, presentation builders, and marketing suites. CRMs have added the ability for users to connect their accounts to these third-party services and offered in-house “app stores” and building programs to extend their utility.
Creatio’s pitch is straightforward yet powerful: provide non-technical users with the tools to customize their CRMs with the apps and automations that best suit their specific roles and workstyles while adhering to company policies, standards, security needs, and brand values.
Since its inception and rebranding to Creatio in 2019, the company has achieved substantial success, operating with 700 business partners across 100 countries. Its customers include major Fortune 500 brands such as AMD, Coca Cola, and others.
“The target segment starts from $100 million in [annual] revenue and above,” said Dovgan. “We see a lot of traction with mid-sized enterprises from $1 billion up to $10 billion. That’s where the bulk of our business is coming from. We have customers that are much larger than that, but also much smaller than that, as well.”
- Small Enterprises: Annual revenue < $100 million
- Mid-sized Enterprises: Annual revenue $100 million – $1 billion
- Large Enterprises: Annual revenue $1 billion – $10 billion
- Fortune 500 Companies: Including brands like AMD and Coca Cola
Why do companies choose Creatio over larger rivals such as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics 365, or even peers such as Hubspot? “A lot of our customers think about no-code and Creatio as their secret sauce to gain a market advantage by being disruptive and being able to automate workflows and run applications much quicker than the competition,” Dovgan explained.
Having operated and progressed through a decade of technological changes, Creatio is no stranger to adaptation and innovation. The company is now embracing the rapid rise of generative AI. In May, Creatio unveiled a connector for its CRM to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It also launched Creatio Copilot and Copilot studio — the former a chatbot assistant that allows users to query data within their CRM, and the latter enabling users to build CRM apps using natural language, selecting AI models from leaders such as OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 or Meta’s Llama family.
“We see AI and no-code being a new era in the enterprise software,” Dovgan told VentureBeat. “It gives you so much more consolidation and a stronger time to market and time to value because you can put out applications really quickly, at speed and scale.”
Now, with fresh funding and the endorsement of leading VCs and investors, Creatio believes its greatest chapter of growth lies ahead. “We feel like there’s incredible potential for us to evangelize Creatio across the globe,” Dovgan said. “We’ve been attending 150 field events around the globe in the enterprise sector, and we’re definitely going to do more of that.”
- Product Enhancements: Continued improvement of the no-code CRM platform.
- Market Expansion: Targeting new geographic and industry markets.
- Customer Acquisition: Growing the customer base, particularly in the mid-sized enterprise segment.
- Field Events: Increasing global presence through more field events and industry participation.
With a solid foundation and a clear vision, Creatio is poised to lead the no-code revolution in the enterprise software market, empowering businesses to innovate and thrive in an increasingly digital world.
Featured Image courtesy of DALL-E by ChatGPT