Many workers today are still stuck doing a lot of manual tasks, copying and pasting data into spreadsheets, sending the same emails every morning and generally lacking any kind of automation because they lack coding skills. Parabola wants to change that with a simple drag and drop workflow and today the startup announced an $ 8 million Series A investment.
Matrix Partners led the round with the participation of Thrive Capital and various individual investors. Ilya Sukhar of Matrix will join Parabola's board of directors under the terms of the agreement. The company has now raised $ 10.2 million, including a $ 2.2 million seed round in 2018.
At the same time, the company also announced a new Shopify connector. As COVID has imposed a dramatic increase in online shopping, Parabola has seen a corresponding increase in demand for its workflow automation services from ecommerce providers, and they've added features to support it.
Company founder and CEO Alex Yaseen sees the tool as a way to bring programming-like automation to anyone who deals with data tasks on a regular basis, particularly in a spreadsheet. "We are a drag and drop productivity tool and we like to say that we bring the power of programming to everyone," Yaseen told ProWellTech.
They do this by providing a library of predefined steps that you can drag and drop onto a workflow canvas. Each of these steps helps you automate what was previously a manual repetitive data task in Excel or Google Sheets.
Lead investor Sukhar says that while low code is becoming more popular right now, he and Yaseen have always seen it as a way to bring programmatic productivity improvement skills to a much broader set of users and to focus on e-commerce in particular.
"The real trick is finding the right user group, the right abstraction, the right niche to start with and that's where I think this comes back to the heart of e-commerce. I think that's what's super exciting about it. Parabola's approach and what thrilled me, "he said.
As eCommerce in general increases during the pandemic, Yaseen says he has seen a corresponding increase in platform usage over the past couple of months, as retail companies move online or increase their online presence and need to find ways to more automate their internal processes to keep up.
Although the company is still in the early stages of development with around 20 employees, it is actively hiring and trying to build a diverse workforce as it does. Yaseen sees this tied to the company's overall mission to bring programming-level expertise to a larger group of people who don't know how to code and need a diverse group of workers who reflect society at large to build it effectively.
"We speak of it as an authentic fundamental value and I think we have done a good job so far. I think we have a lot of room for improvement, as does the tech sector as a whole, but we're pushing very hard, "he said.
The company wants to use the money from this round to continue refining the platform's design to make it even easier for non-technical users. "This round is very useful for design and product work to make it more and more comfortable for these users who are now really familiar with their spreadsheet activities. [...] and we are increasingly working towards a less and less technical user, as we make products easier and more accessible, "he said.