Author: Joe Neale, Partner, Technology

At VI Partners, we strongly follow the thesis that deep-tech companies are key to enabling the digitalisation of enterprises as well as traditional businesses. The idea that companies of all sizes should be able to create custom technology solutions for any process seemed like a no-brainer to us, so it was a space we were keen to explore. Patching a series of tools together is pretty common for those with engineering skills or “early adopters”, but we wondered why “regular” users seemed to be neglected.

Unlike my colleagues Olivier and Cyrill, I do not possess coding skills, beyond some questionable web design skills in another life. I can set up a Zapier macro or configure my IoT house lamps, but I work in technology and am quite obviously a geek, so those examples are the minimum of what someone in my role should be capable of doing.

According to Gartner, the ‘low-code’ space is one of the most important technology trends globally, so our Partnership has proactively been looking for a company that makes it easy for regular companies to build tools that are personalised to their own specific use-cases, without the need for huge licence fees or development teams. We struggled to find a company with clear differentiation and a moat surrounding their technology, but when we started speaking to Ninox, we realised what their thousands of happy customers were so excited about.

The fact that Ninox’s low-code platform has been built on top of a database from the ground up over many years and allows their users to create workflow tools and processes that are customised to their specific needs ticked the boxes in our hypothesis. Customers we spoke to were excited that they didn’t have to purchase an expense ERP or CRM system that did 60% of what they needed, when Ninox was able to offer close to 100% of what they needed for a fraction of the cost. The fact that people inside these organisations were able to create workflows that made their businesses more efficient with minimal technical knowledge was exciting.

The hundreds of partners in Ninox’s network, that allow customers to speed up the onboarding and customisation of the platform, was the missing piece that we had missed in multiple SaaS products looking to scale in the space. Partners love Ninox’s product, as it allows them to offer real solutions to real company problems in days, not months.

We are therefore excited to invest alongside our friends at Hi Inov, btov and IBB in Ninox’s Series B round at this inflection point in their growth story.