Plant An App Deal Memo (Closing Date: 2021–02–13)

Developer friendly/developer first no-code/low-code app. Great sales and the question is whether they can scale it to where businesses are starting to self onboard and pay.

Want to see the complete rich format deal memo? Read the original post at: https://muhanzhang.com/Plant-An-App

Deal Abstract

Developer friendly/developer first no-code/low-code app. Great sales and the question is whether they can scale it to where businesses are starting to self onboard and pay.

Financials

1. Fundraising Target? $400000
2. Fundraised So Far? $349792
3. Pre-Money Valuation? $9000000
4. Previous Year’s Annual Revenue: $375000
5. Previous Year’s Annual Net Income (+ Profitable, — Burning Cash): $-14557

Six Calacanis Criteria

1. A startup that is based in SV? False, St. Louis, MO
2. Has at least 2 founders? False, One
3. Has product in the market? True, Apparently generated $375k in 2020
4. 6 months of continuous user growth or 6 months of revenue? True, ‘$375K ARR and 48 paying customers’
5. Notable investors? True, 500 Startups
6. Post-funding, will have 18 months of runway? True, Very low burn

Seven Thiel Tests

1. Engineering? 3, Interesting engineering, definitely if it’s more open than Bubble
2. Timing? 3, Yup, today is no-code/low-code Cambrian explosion
3. Monopoly? 3, Solid revenue
4. People? 2, Good people and have the ability to sell to business
5. Distribution? 4, Great, possibly one of their strongest characteristics
6. Durability? 3, If they get to subscription and make it mission critical, the durability is high
7. Secret? 3, Building low-code/no-code is more about helping developers instead of eliminating them

What Has to Go Right

1. Product has to genuinely be able to integrate developers; 2. This new close of low-code engineer has to be relatively attainable to a good amount of people; 3. People have to trust something like Plant An App and not want to eventually go to free, open source frameworks for their apps (which have no charge.)

What Could Go Wrong

1. Even right now, asking business people to do logic is not easy (I’ve played around with Bubble,) 2. Beyond the sales advantage, what is the tech advantage?; 3. Stuff like Airtable coming in and eating up the no-code/low-code app (like what this dealbase is powered off of)

Muhan’s Bonus Notes

Very, very cool. I’m a big fan of Bubble and the like, but in my experience, they still need logic for developers so far.

So, did I invest?

1. Subscribe to https://muhanzhang.com/ to see my final investment decisions, keep track of my portfolio, and receive ongoing updates on my journey to investing in 50 startups as an unaccredited investor.
2. Read the rich format deal memo here: https://muhanzhang.com/Plant-An-App
3. Want me to cover your startup? Submit your ‘Request for Startup’ (RFS) submission here: https://airtable.com/shrzNK8tguH8qEUF6

Other thoughts, questions, comments, or concerns? Write me at mail@muhanzhang.com and let me know.