Dapta just closed a $1M round to spearhead US expansion
By Riley Kaminer
Code has run through Nicolas Rojas’s veins since the ripe age of 13. Growing up in Colombia, he already began to take on freelance projects at around 14 or 15. “That gave me a lot of confidence to start building products on my own,” he told Refresh Miami.
One thing led to another, and soon enough Nico was running his own dev shop at age 17. Now, around a decade on, the bootstrapped company is still thriving – with 100 full-time employees. It also enabled Rojas to understand firsthand one of the biggest struggles in the industry: building APIs.
“As more SaaS comes along, there is more and more need for APIs,” noted Rojas. The problem is that developing these APIs can be a tricky, time-consuming process.
That is, until Rojas’s solution came along in the form of Miami startup Dapta, which has developed a low-code, AI-assisted platform that enables companies to build their own APIs. Since launching in February, Dapta has already served 500 companies.
“We’re doing two million API calls per month,” Rojas shared. “This consumption has grown 1,500% in the past four months.” This rapid growth has not gone unnoticed by investors.
Funding raised
Dapta just closed a pre-seed round of $1 million from Paramo Partners, Fen Ventures, Kuiper VC, Invariantes Fund, LatinLeap, and 500 Startups – plus a flock of angels.
Rojas signaled that the majority of this funding will go into product development. “This is a pure tech product, so the first step is to build some awesome tech.” In particular, the eight-person Dapta team plans to focus on the efficiency, security, and overall performance of the platform.
Beyond that, Dapta will deploy these funds to spearhead its go-to-market strategy. While the company already has clients across the Americas, this campaign will primarily focus on the US market.
Initially, Dapta has focused on serving three major verticals in particularly dire need of some API help: financial services, online retail, and healthcare. Theoretically though, Dapta’s platform is industry agnostic.
The Miami move
Rojas moved to Miami a year ago but quickly felt at home here, having visited the city extensively throughout his entire career.
“I wouldn’t have been able to close this funding round if I hadn’t been here,” Rojas said. “Being in Miami opens a lot of opportunities for companies like ours.”
And hopefully this is just the beginning. Looking forward, Rojas is excited to explore the power of AI to make creating APIs even easier. “The dynamics of writing code are changing very rapidly,” he said, noting that the way we create software will continue to change.
“APIs are at the core of this tech change. As the gateway to data, they’re the key ingredient on this AI acceleration – and they’ll only become more important in the future.”
“There will be some exciting times ahead reshaping the way we interact with software, and Dapta is at the forefront of that.”
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