The first instance of multiplayer mode for non-entertainment use can be traced all the way back to 1968 when Douglas Engelbart of Stanford demoed collaborative document editing, teleconferencing, and manipulation of on-screen elements in what has been dubbed “The Mother of All Demos“. In the 50+ years since these features have become commonplace but not truly collaborative across the average 80+ SaaS applications that an organization uses. Cord brings the true power of collaboration to SaaS applications with a single line of JavaScript. With this single line of code, SaaS application providers can instantly make their applications more collaborative by introducing features like chat, presence, annotations, integrations with task managers and Slack, screen recordings, audio messages, live cobrowsing, and video chat. Building these features internally would not only be costly but also require significant development resources.
London TechWatch caught up with Cord CEO and Cofounder Nimrod Priell to learn more about how the founding team’s time at Facebook led to the inspiration for the business, the company’s strategic plans, recent round of funding, and much, much more.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Cord, the platform that helps tools and apps become more interactive, engaging, and multiplayer, has raised $17.5 million in Series A funding. Index Ventures – which also backed collaboration-centric unicorns Figma and Notion – led the round. Other investors such as NFX and Stride participated, along with angel investors Elad Gil, Jeff Morris Jr., Charlie Songhurst, Guy Podjarny, and Matt Robinson.
Tell us about your product or service.
Cord’s API – a single line of Javascript – unlocks a wealth of features for businesses wanting to make their apps and software more richly collaborative. Offering chat, presence, annotations, integrations with task managers and Slack, screen recordings, audio messages, live co-browsing and video chat, Cord saves companies years of development time, while adding a social dimension that helps them gain a competitive advantage over their peers.
What inspired the start of Cord?
I cofounded Cord last year after leading a product team at Facebook, advising founders and CPOs of $1B+ startups and mentoring newer startups with Techstars. I witnessed firsthand the stark contrast between Facebook’s suite of connected internal tools and the disjointed nature of B2B SaaS tools newer startups rely on.
How is it different?
Cord offers a customizable collaboration solution that matches your product’s branding and UI. It offers a heavily tested, intuitive design in addition to the API. It also powers what’s called the Notification API which allows tools to message their users in relevant places or automate notifications based on triggers you define or use the Support API to provide in-context Customer Support.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
Our best markets are really B2B SaaS that’s used by teams, so we see everything from people using it in CRMs like HubSpot, CMSs like Webflow or WordPress, marketing tools like Mailchimp, BI tools like Amplitude, no-code tools like Retool, and everywhere else you work with other people you need approval, or help, or feedback from.
Right now, it’s more heavily taken up by teams that are from early-stage startups to scale up, we do see use amongst Typeform’s enterprise clients so some very big multibillion-dollar tech companies and consumer brands that are Typeform users or a big motion picture studio who uses Cord in their BI tools.
What’s your business model?
We are a paid service that’s not priced by user. Our plans have fixed prices. We believe the price of collaboration shouldn’t grow as your product does. So as your users start welcoming their teammates to collaborate with them in your product, Cord’s price stays the same. In fact, if you have over 10,000 users, you will get a bulk discount from the start.
What are your post-COVID office plans?
We have a Shoreditch-based office that people can return to with the proper cautionary protocols. We value time spent together in person!
What was the funding process like?
We ended up being very fortunate and the fundraising went better than expected.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
The main downside is that we had to disappoint a lot of exceptionally talented and close supporters that we couldn’t fit into this round.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
This is a good quote on this: Commenting on Cord’s raise in a statement, Jan Hammer, partner at Index Ventures, predicted resistance to this trend will nonetheless be futile.
“The growth of remote working, combined with a proliferation of software-as-a-service tools, means that teams lose time moving back and forth between productivity and communications applications, such as Slack. Cord allows users to stay within the app that best supports their workflow but still get the benefits of collaboration. We like that Cord adds to existing apps – it’s not yet another solution customers will have to adopt, it’s a solution inside what they’re already used to. Eventually, we believe SaaS tools will ship with Cord straight out of the box.”
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
More product development, including by hiring engineers, designers, and product managers.
What advice can you offer companies in London that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
We’ve been very fortunate to have started building a product that supports remote work just before the pandemic hit, but obviously, other companies were in industries that were severely hit by this black swan disaster, or just in different phases of the hype cycle of their respective markets. The optimistic side is that there are more financing options than ever before for companies with paying clients, with everything from invoice factoring solutions like BlueVine’s, quick SMB lending like iwoca, and revenue-based financing like Hum Capital. And if you’re a tech company with PMF there’s no time like now to raise because the VC markets are filled with cash looking for investment like no other time in history, and many moved to investing globally so there are more options than ever. But even if these aren’t possible for your company then at least in software, today it’s possible to do a lot more than ever for very little spend, with community-based marketing, no-code tools like Retool, and remote teams that can be very cost-effective. Success can come for anyone from smart, quick iteration – and persistence matters. I truly hope we’ll see a resurgence across all market categories – except perhaps PCR testing – soon.
We’ve been very fortunate to have started building a product that supports remote work just before the pandemic hit, but obviously, other companies were in industries that were severely hit by this black swan disaster, or just in different phases of the hype cycle of their respective markets. The optimistic side is that there are more financing options than ever before for companies with paying clients, with everything from invoice factoring solutions like BlueVine’s, quick SMB lending like iwoca, and revenue-based financing like Hum Capital. And if you’re a tech company with PMF there’s no time like now to raise because the VC markets are filled with cash looking for investment like no other time in history, and many moved to investing globally so there are more options than ever. But even if these aren’t possible for your company then at least in software, today it’s possible to do a lot more than ever for very little spend, with community-based marketing, no-code tools like Retool, and remote teams that can be very cost-effective. Success can come for anyone from smart, quick iteration – and persistence matters. I truly hope we’ll see a resurgence across all market categories – except perhaps PCR testing – soon.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Most web products will become a multiplayer experience in the coming year. We already see it happening: Figma reached 4 million users in 4 years and decimated Adobe, Invision, and Sketch to become the dominant prototyping design app — in major part thanks to its built-in collaboration. If Figma is the ‘Google Docs of design,’ we empower every product to become the Google Docs of their respective industries.
What is your favourite restaurant in London?
We love sitting down together for a nice pasta dish at Padella, right by our office.
