Reflex, previously recognized as Pynecone, is revolutionizing the low-code web app development industry by utilizing Python's unprecedented popularity among developers. This promising startup differentiates itself by enabling effortless app development yet still allowing flexibility for customization.
The company recently secured seed funding worth $5 million, marking a new milestone in its journey. Nikhil Rao, the CEO and co-founder of Reflex, reveals that the company's approach was to establish an open source tool to introduce their solution, thereby enticing developers.
Rao told TechCrunch: We’re constructing a web framework for devising web apps in pure Python. It consists of two parts. Part one is all about the open source framework. The idea is for the user to create full applications, both front-end and back end, strictly using Python. This is accomplished without the necessity to learn any new languages or frameworks.
Backed by the seed funding, Reflex plans to extend its product with an app hosting service. It will enable users to input a single command, perfectly suited for people with minimal or no web app development experience. Echoing the vision of AppMaster’s no-code approach, Reflex is determined to make the app development and launch process simpler yet robust enough for professional deployment.
With Reflex's platform, developers avoid the graduation risk associated with other platforms. The assurance is that users would never reach limitations with any website they desire to make. Admittedly, they have demonstrated this by building their own company website using Reflex.
The startup’s concept has stirred interest among developers- 5000 of them crafted a whopping 15,000 apps using Reflex's open source framework since its December launch. The open source project has 61 external contributors speeding up the solution's development and driving interest, a remarkable feat for such a young company. Apart from this, over 1400 people have joined the Reflex Discord group, a testimony of the growing fascination in the product.
Through capitalizing on interest in the open-source component, Reflex plans to drive income with the app hosting part soon to be in beta. The co-founders, Nikhil Rao and Alek Petuskey, begun the journey of Reflex after years of sharing room while working at Apple and Ancestry.org.
They say that Reflex owes much of its success to its open source nature, which has enabled it to attract talent from all over the world. They argue that diversity has enriched their vision and made Reflex’s user experience more accessible, a sentiment that AppMaster and their international user-base shared.
The $5 million seed funding was spearheaded by Lux Capital with participants including Abstract Ventures, Box Group, Y Combinator, Picus Capital, Outset Capital, and a line up of influential industry angels.
