Securing $8M in seed funding with a No-Code MVP

HERE’s founders had a tantalizing dream – empowering investors to buy and sell shares of high-quality vacation rental properties in the US. However, selling investors on their big dream was easier said than done.

Being a small but budding startup, HERE didn’t have a full-fledged product team. To acquire funding and expand their operations, they needed to validate their idea. As such, HERE was still in the validation stage when they approached us to build their app.

With our expertise in No-Code and a fast working pace, we helped them take their product to market in just 10 weeks. Slotting in as their remote product team, we were involved with everything from strategy and design to development and implementation.

While HERE has since altered its business model entirely, our project still reflects the fact that startups can build products out fast with a No-Code team like ours.

Scaling to tens of thousands of concurrent users

Allowing users to invest in properties at $100 per share, HERE wanted to reduce the barrier to entry for retail investors interested in real estate. With this in mind, we needed to create an app that could accommodate tens of thousands of users at once.

Many lean teams fail to meet such challenges But as Caleb Olthoff, the head of product at HERE, said, our team was able to “adapt to the constant change and ever-increasing growth” that were intrinsic to this platform.

Developing the product

Here’s how we worked alongside the HERE team to bring their product to life using Bubble:

Stretching our design skills to their fullest extent, we created a brand for HERE that merged the style of a vacation marketplace with the practicality of a fintech app.

Then, to comply with SEC standards, we built the HERE app to account for the entire investor flow, starting with KYC. We also needed to keep track of share allocation and portfolios for each user.

Finally, our development team needed to focus on scalability and performance within the app. We’re talking about the type of scalability that’s required to have million-dollar properties sell out in under 30 minutes. At these peaks, HERE saw dozens of thousands of concurrent users.

We were constantly pushing the limits of what was possible in Bubble. However, as Caleb testified, we persevered through the hiccups and continued to deliver product-driven solutions as their demands increased.

Real estate investing for the masses

After we released the initial product, it didn’t take long for both retail and private investors to notice. In the months following their release, HERE sold out more than 10 properties and amassed a 5-figure user database. A few months later, HERE secured 7 million dollars in seed funding.

It showed Caleb that given an experienced team like ours, working with Bubble wasn’t limiting at all. We maintained our technical partnership in the years that followed.

For a startup that needed to get to market quickly, and with limited resources to spend on a development team, our No-Code team was the perfect fit.