(Special edition) Superblocks Investment Memo

In this special edition, we’ll share our bite-size investment memo on a company we have previously featured that just made its first fundraising announcement.

Superblocks was previously featured in our 29th edition on July 9th.

(Image by Superblocks)

Below are some of the reasons why we’re interested in what they are building and why we believe they could go big 🚀

The exploding software usage by businesses

The number of software apps used by large businesses across all industries globally climbed by 68% from 2015-2019, reaching an average of 129 apps per company by the end of 2018. According to research released by Okta, nearly 10% of firms already have more than 200 apps in their enterprise information technology systems. Smaller businesses tend to have fewer apps, but the average number is also growing—it increased from 53 in 2015 to 73 last year.

In addition, Gartner mentioned in their published survey that global spending on corporate software is anticipated to increase 8.5% for the year 2019 to reach $431 billion, while total spending on IT is anticipated to increase by 3.2% to $3.8 trillion in 2019

Prioritize the focus on developer efficiency

Teams are forced to work smarter with fewer resources due to a developer shortage and recent market turbulence. Because of this, there is now a higher emphasis on developer efficiency, increasing demand for Superblocks, where users have created thousands of apps, workflows, and jobs.

Solving the epicenter of the software category - internal tool. 

Superblocks focuses on internal software, the largest type of software, to help developers. Today, developers create and manage internal software solutions for almost all businesses, both in and outside the technology sector. 

According to Forrester and Gartner, up to half of all code is produced for internal apps, and businesses worldwide are estimated to spend more than $120 billion annually on custom software. This market is only expanding in an increasingly software-enabled world.

Why do businesses spend so much money? The lifeblood of business operations is now internal apps. They assist in managing everything, including CRM, analytics, and employee onboarding. 

But "tools" still have a bad image among most software developers since they bring less efficiency and less productivity among engineers as engineers want to spend time building impactful products not focused toward internal employee use. The task is still mission-critical and burdens development teams. Naturally, the resulting applications are frequently fragile and challenging to maintain.