Silicon Valley based Coghead is announcing an $8 million Series B round of financing this afternoon, adding to the $3.2 million raised previously from El Dorado Ventures in March 2006. New investors American Capital and SAP Ventures invested in this round, and El Dorado participated as well.
We covered Coghead on its launch in October 2005. We have previously reviewed a number of apps in this space (sometimes referred to as the ‘online access’ space, a reference to Microsoft Access) including Dabble DB, Zoho Creator and WyaWorks. Also see our related post, Five Ways to Mix, Rip, and Mash Your Data. The premise of these web applications is that they allow non-programmers to easily build record-driven web-based applications.
The primary use of these products is to create business applications that deal with everything from task tracking through to purchase orders. What is special about CogHead is that users building applications with the product require less technical skills because the process is all drag-and-drop and visual.
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Congratulations to the coghead team. $8 mill should go a long way towards their goals.
Wow. They have over 11.2 million dollars in venture capital and they are still in private beta.
I haven’t been able to try out their products, but judging from the description and their site, aren’t they similar to http://www.quickbase.com ?
These guys must have some really serious tech beyond that shown in their beta. This could be rather exciting, because based on the beta I’d have been surprised at the first round, let alone this.
Teglo is another competitor in this space.
I think SAP investing in Coghead is quite interesting. There must be something cool there to warrant an $8 investment. I am not in the beta, but am gonna sign up and check it out.
I’m glad to hear it for Coghead… I think there is a ton of room to grow in this space - and for the future comments I don’t think any of these platforms are trying to replace coders… just let coders focus on coding. Thanks for the wyaworks mention… We are currently attempting a simpler approach now by allowing users to create simple widgets they need right from their AJAX desktop and use the bulilt in capability to distribute them… so far we have just released our Google Home Page widget/gadget builder… be interested in getting some feedback from those who want to try it. URL to add to your google page: http://www.wyaworks.com/google/google.jsp
Rishi, actually Coghead is in public beta and we now have over 16,000 people signed up. See http://www.cogblog.com/cogblog....._upda.html . Feel free to give it a try.
Paul, Coghead is shutting doors now. What about the existing users and their apps. Though, there might be no support, Would you just atleast let the platform be alive? if yes then how long?
I am coghead developer. I convinced many people to use this platform. Now since coghead is planning to close doors, I would look like a fool to them.
Please say that the platform will be alive, just to run the existing apps.
I am currently using Coghead to build a sophisticated private capital system to facilitate the interaction between Investors, Companies and Exchanges in the private capital markets. The system requires access control, security, complex formulas, transaction processing, rapid development and deployment. I have build prototypes on 4 of the competitors in the ‘on demand web application development’ space for Business Analysts. The system combines a drag and drop environment to build forms and workflow engine for those forms. Interestingly, because there is no programming in a classic sense the system schema reveals itself through the UI through the taxonomy that is based on the language of the business analyst (not traditional programming langauges). This last point has significant implications for companies that need to adhere to Sarbanes-Oxley. There is little distinction between documenting the system and building the system. Because of the design of the system the business description reveals itself through the implementation.
Coghead met my requirements in terms of performance, scalability, maintaing data integrity in a rapid development cycle. Of the systems that I evaluated, Coghead was the only that could meet the requirements. I have cofounded two internet companies: Andromedia and Round1, and based on knowledge of those two companies, I will say that Coghead will transform the price structure of companies that rely on the Internet for their business.
I had a friend in 1984 working for IBM on a project to create an engine for building software without writing code. It never went anywhere but it sure sounded great.
23 years later and the dream hasn’t died. Maybe I am cynical, but how many hundreds of attempts have been made without one of these approaches ever working? I guess Access came closer than any other. It is easy to do the simple stuff and it demos well. Invariably, someone says, ‘that’s great, but can you make it do X’ and the coding starts.
Good luck Coghead, I sincerely hope you succeed.
Very cool!
I also agree with Calvin (post#5). Indeed, a VERY interesting observation.
Sounds interesting. Paul’s comment is spot on and I’m skeptical about any platform that enables fairly advanced software to be written without writing actual code, but I’ll reserve judgement and we’ll see what Coghead can deliver. If I had to choose, I’d certainly rather invest in the pursuit of this “dream” than a Web 2.0 startup that can’t give tell you its business model.
Regarding Calvin’s post: it’s not unusual for the investment arms of major companies like SAP to invest in “interesting” companies/technologies. In some ways, it’s a hedge. There might be synergies between the companies if the startup is successful, and if the technology has the potential to either be of benefit to the investor or have an impact on the investor’s business, it makes a lot of sense to be directly involved with the company. Taking a minority stake for an amount that is peanuts to SAP is a great way to at least keep the company’s eyes and ears open within the markets it is involved in. At this point I wouldn’t take SAP’s investment to mean much more than there’s something worth taking a small risk on. It does not necessarily mean that SAP believes that the Coghead is going to take over the world or reinvent the way applications are written.
As an Intuit/QuickBase employee I’m glad to hear about Coghead’s funding. I think it’s a real validation of the space we’re in and I’m looking forward to Coghead getting out of beta. They are the first company to enter the exact space we are in and I think it will help spur innovation for both of us.
To the skepticism about the ability to create a simple platform to build real business applications I can say that we have 150k paid subscribers running on customized business apps for managing projects, sales, training classes, customer records, etc. I know people have tried this before, but I do think the time is now to re-invent business application development.
Bill,
I agree, the company I’m at are working on a very similar product with a few twists. We are still 6-+ months away from a real beta. I think there is allot of room to innovate in this space.
Bill,
I’m beta-testing Coghead and find that it has great potential. Kind of the same way I felt about Quickbase about 4 years ago. Unfortunately at that time, Intuit made the decision to cater to businesses that are able to afford $250 or more per month and have ignored the small businesses (under 10 employees).
I’m not complaining, as I have found other vendors (DabbleDB, Coghead, Smartsheet, Zoho, Google Doc’s, and others). But I am curious, why did Intuit raise the cost of entry to such a high amount? Seems to me you guys have lost many opportunities in this market due to your pricing strategy.
Wes
With regard to Paul Freet’s comment…
You can do a lot with Access without programming. A non-technical person can be productive with it.
The genius of Access is that it is also provides an environment where serious development can be done.
Having both in one box is, in my opinion, an amazing achievment.
I’ve delivered a lot of custom business solutions using Access. I can take advantage of the “quick and easy” features and also code to my heart’s content when it is called for.
I think that having similar functionality in a web-based environment would be HUGE-HUGE. Maybe that explains SAP’s interest.