RETOOL

David Hsu and Anthony Guo started Retool in 2017 and went through Y Combinator that year. The insight was that every company spends a huge amount of engineering time building internal tools, like admin panels, dashboards and data entry forms, that are boring, repetitive and unique to each company.

Most of those tools look the same: a table, some forms, a few buttons connected to a database. Retool lets you build that part by dragging components and writing minimal code, then customize the rest with JavaScript.

Retool lets companies build internal tools (dashboards, admin panels, CRUD apps) by dragging and dropping pre-built components and connecting them to databases and APIs. Instead of engineers spending weeks building an internal admin panel, they can build one in Retool in hours.

Pricing is per-user SaaS — free tier, Team at $10/user/month, Business and Enterprise tiers for larger organizations. Thousands of companies use Retool, including Amazon, DoorDash and Brex.

Since 2025 it has also charged for AI usage, such as prompting credits and agent hours.

Retool (drag-and-drop internal tool builder), Retool Mobile, Retool Workflows (automation), Retool Database (built-in PostgreSQL), and since 2025 AI app generation from a prompt and Retool Agents, which run AI agents inside a company's own systems.

Bottom-up adoption. An engineer builds one internal tool in Retool, their team loves it, and suddenly the whole company is buying licenses.

Retool also targets startups early (generous free tier) knowing that startups grow into enterprises. They invest heavily in templates, tutorials, and documentation to reduce the time from signup to first working tool.

The "low-code" stigma. Developers historically look down on low-code tools as toys.

Retool had to convince engineers that using it was not beneath them — it was actually smart. The other challenge: once companies build enough internal tools in Retool, they become dependent on the platform.

Enterprise buyers worry about vendor lock-in. Retool has addressed this partly by releasing self-hosted options.

Retool went through Y Combinator in 2017 and has been famously stingy about raising money. Sequoia Capital led its Series A in 2019 and has led every major round since.

Angels include Stripe's John and Patrick Collison, Nat Friedman and Elad Gil. In July 2022 it raised $45 million at a $3.2 billion valuation.

In total it has raised about $141 million, a small amount for a company of its size.