Heyflow, a Hamburg, Germany-based startup touting “no-code” tools for easily building interactive “clickflows” to boost customer conversions, has bagged a $6 million seed. The round was led by Project A Ventures, with participation from Atlantic Labs and several unnamed angel investors.
Heyflow competes with a growing number of no-code/low-code tools which aim to simplify customer interactions using customizable templates and/or drag-and-drop interfaces that let non-techie users easily build conversational and/or graphical flows to gather info from visitors to a website or app.
Its pitch (and, indeed, that of many others’) is that interactive flows are a better conversion tool than more static calls to action.
Combine that with a drag-and-drop customer interaction flow builder and Heyflow’s nudge to its customers is there’s no excuse for not sporting a more engaging digital experience around user acquisition and onboarding.
There is no shortage of competition in this space, though. Competing approaches include the likes of Airkit (low-code, template-based digital customer experience builder); Landbot and Intercom (customer service chatbots); and Typeform (less tedious forms), to name a few.
Heyflow says its special sauce is that it’s a true no-code play — which it argues makes it best suited to the target user base of marketers, product managers and business owners while also allowing for engineers to build custom code atop its so-called clickflows. (“Unlike Airkit, we see this rather as an expansion into organizations and not as an entry,” it suggests.)
It also reckons chatbot interfaces — while having their place — are better suited to customer support rather than its target zone of customer conversion, not being “optimized for converting traffic into signups, leads and sales,” as it puts it.
While on Heyflow versus Typeform, it suggests its product is more customizable — and also flags that it bakes in analytics and tracking, touting that as another detail which helps its customers build “truly differentiated experiences.”
The 2020-founded startup sells its SaaS as a subscription — not freemium but there is a free trial period of the basic version, which normally costs €33 per month (rising to €151 per month for a Pro Plus version).
The promise of being able to integrate these “engaging clickflows” without needing to type a single line of code means Heyflow can and is (mostly) being used as a standalone solution, per the startup — which says that gives customers access to “more complex layout-ing functionality” (such as nested containers).
But the team confirmed it can also be integrated into a website by copying and pasting a few lines of code.
The founders are Dustin Jaacks (ex-Google) and Amir Bohnenkamp (previously Medwing, BCG Digital Ventures).
Since Heyflow soft-launched its product in January this year they say they’ve seen “rapid growth,” acquiring “hundreds” of paying customers — from small organizations to insurance companies in more than 15 countries.
The seed raise will go on supporting go-to-market and product development efforts, it adds.
“We were able to convert our first customers pre-product. So from day one, we are developing the product with our customers which means building and selling for us go hand in hand. The new funding will therefore be equally invested into product and growth following a vertical approach, starting with the industries that are currently driving most growth for us,” Heyflow tells TechCrunch, adding that the markets and sectors currently driving their growth are: insurance, financial services, recruiting, marketing and advertising (with use cases including: onboarding and signup flows; lead generation flows; and customer retention flows).
Commenting on the seed round in a supporting statement, Dr. Anton Waitz, general partner at Project A, added: “No-code platforms are seeing very strong momentum, as they offer great opportunities for smaller companies without significant engineering capacity. Amir and Dustin are driven by their mission to build a highly intuitive drag-and-drop product that helps their users to better acquire, convert and onboard customers. Heyflow has seen enthusiastic first demand in the market — and we strongly believe it can become a clear leader in the space.”