We are excited that SAP just announced its acquisition of our portfolio company AppGyver Inc. The acquisition enables SAP to enhance its product portfolio with one of the strongest professional no-code platforms ever developed. With AppGyver, users utilise visual programming to create mobile apps that look and feel like native apps, embed advanced logic, integrate to critical business data, and work seamlessly cross-platform.
OpenOcean’s journey with AppGyver’s founders, Marko Lehtimäki and Henri Vähäkainu, began in December 2013. We were quickly impressed with their deep technology skills in mobile app development, further exemplified with their large following in the development community. At this point, their Steroids libraries had received more than 100k downloads and they had gathered 20k registered users over a year for their early offering.
However, what we found most compelling was their strong and bold ambition. In addition to the team’s impressive tech credentials, what led us to our investment was their core belief that they would build the best mobile app development platform out there and that no one in the world could stop them.
This strong vision and unwavering commitment was a joy to witness over the years. Even when encountering challenges, the team always had a clear picture of what was needed to get the product right. As we at OpenOcean are product-oriented investors and have been entrepreneurs ourselves, we strongly wanted to support them in achieving their dream, throughout the ups and downs inherent in this kind of journey.
In early 2020 the sense of optimism at AppGyver was palpable. The AppGyver Composer Pro version had just launched and over the course of the year the market responded enthusiastically. Customers developed remarkable apps in rapid time, with zero lines of code and directly usable across all platforms. We could really sense the team pride and energy from launching a superior product with a solid possibility of disruption.
Naturally, investors started to circle with big investment offers. But then the board was presented with a surprising acquisition offer which was hard to resist. Sure, the money was interesting, but the decision to sell was primarily guided by the ambition of the founders. SAP represented the real possibility for the founders and team to position the product to disrupt global big businesses and the whole enterprise software market with a magnitude that most entrepreneurs can only dream about. Here and now the dream comes true!
Huge Congratulations to founders Marko and Henri. A remarkable journey and achievement that will serve as inspiration for all tech founders. Thank You to our co-investors Tommi and Marili at Karma for all their support over the years, and to Kristian Segerstråhle for his help during the critical early years.
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