8base secures $10.6M to accelerate the growth of its low-code platform

Founder Albert Santalo plans to triple the size of 8base’s 60-person team within the next 12 months.

Miami-based low-code development platform 8base today announced a $10.6M Series A capital raise. The oversubscribed round was led by Foundry Group with participation from MongoDB Ventures, Techstars, Firebrand Ventures, 11 Tribes Ventures, Argonautic Ventures, LAGO Innovation Fund, and Strawberry Creek Ventures, an Alumni Ventures.

8base offers a platform that enables developers to build JavaScript applications 10X-50X more quickly than traditional development processes. 

Albert Santalo, 8base’s founder and CEO, told Refresh Miami that this funding will enable the company to pivot from bootstrapping mode to growth mode.

“We are doubling down on product development,” said Santalo. He noted that the 8base team is currently working on enhancing their front end development tools. Another feature in the pipeline is expanding the range of cloud services users can tap into through 8base. For the rapidly-expanding company, the list goes on: “The work never ends from a product development perspective for us,” said Santalo.

To further unlock 8base’s growth potential, Santalo plans to triple the size of his team within the next 12 months. Currently, 8base has 60 employees around the world, roughly a quarter of which are based in South Florida. While the company will be hiring across the board, Santalo said that there will be a particular emphasis on marketing, product, and design roles.

Saving developers’ time ultimately results in cost savings for businesses. This is particularly critical in a time where the market for top technical talent is tighter than ever. 8base stands apart in its focus on building consumer-facing products, while many of its competitors are engineered for internal business apps.

Furthermore, Santalo brought up the all-too-common issue with low-code and no-code platforms whereby an MVP works well at first but does not scale. “That sort of defeats the purpose, since you then have to rewrite the application from scratch the hard way. With 8base, you don’t have to do that. You write it quickly and then you iterate to the complexity and scale that you need to get to without ever having to rewrite.”

Santalo, who has been involved in the Miami tech scene since 1986 and has successfully built two venture-backed businesses prior to 8base, said the needs of our local tech community were front of mind when developing the startup.

“8base was largely built to solve some of the problems that Miami companies have always had: Not enough engineers, lots of great non-technical founders with no ability to bring their products to life, not having a ton of capital, et cetera,” he explained.

“To use 8base, you don’t need much in terms of developer talent, and you don’t need much in terms of money. And so nothing makes me more proud than to be bringing this innovation to life in this community — and helping the people in this community pursue their dreams.”

To keep the Miami tech momentum going, Santalo advocates for builders to focus on developing tech around our largest industries, such as tourism, hospitality, property and finance. “Miami should be about innovation and leveraging core technologies to build applications for things that are well suited to our experiences and our geography.”

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Riley Kaminer