Sydney-based startup Upflowy raises $4M to optimize web experiences with its no-code solution – TechCrunch

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected consumers’ behaviors and purchasing patterns; data-driven decision-making is even more crucial to ensure that companies’ products or services genuinely benefit users in times of uncertainty. The demand for SaaS products that enables online transactions has dramatically increased during Covid-19, according to CEO of Upflowy Guillaume Ang.

Upflowy thinks it has the tools to help businesses generate high-performing user flow. The Australia-based startup, which just raised $4 million, has built a platform that offers drag and drop tools for A/B testing and personalization on the web and mobile apps, and the best part is businesses don’t need to know any code to engage with it. The latest funding was led by Counterpart Ventures, in addition to returning investors Tidal, Global Founders Capital, Black Nova and Antler.

Getting visitors on a website or app to sign up for sales requires significant time and cost, and as a result, many businesses struggle to achieve that, Ang told TechCrunch. To help entrepreneurs and marketers, especially startups, boost conversion rates and user flows, Ang and two other founders, Matthew Browne and Alexandre Girard, founded Upflowy in 2020. The startup says, for too long, businesses have been dependent on development or engineering teams that are consumed with improving the products and don’t have time to support marketing endeavors.

Upflowy founders (from left to right): CTO Alex Girard, CIO Matthew Browne, CEO Guillaume Ang

The startup will use a good part of the new capital to enhance its platform capabilities by leveraging data science areas like predictive personalization and developing additional features. It also wants to support the team by increasing its headcount to over 30 full-time employees. 

“After seeing low-engagement forms lead to as much as a 60% drop in conversion, translating into a huge waste of advertising spend presented a huge uplift opportunity for businesses. This is just the first step. More effectively qualifying leads to the right product and personalizing the sales approach is key to converting into sales,” Ang told TechCrunch. “Upflowy’s data visualization and A/B testing interface mean that understanding their customers’ drop-off and behavior becomes a lot clearer, paving the way for experimentation and optimization.”

Hundreds of businesses now use Upflowy, Ang said, adding that it has a range of clients from B2B tech, SaaS and healthcare to B2C companies like fashion brands and a national sports team.  

With the latest improvements in weekly user growth for the last few weeks, the startup also has seen 40% growth in its activation rates and its monthly user base has doubled, according to Ang.

“The Australian tech scene is driving innovation globally. Upflowy was born out of this growing market of talent,” Ang said in a statement. “We are already active and tested on a global stage to provide the validation of our platform. A signup flow is often the first interaction a prospective customer has with a business, and we are the first to make it easy to create and take them to live – improving the flow of information and ultimately ensuring prospects can be moved through the funnel in a smarter way.”

The COVID-19 pandemic created a catalyst to start Upflowy as a remote company from the beginning. In the early stages of 2020, being a remote-first business was a fairly new concept, but the startup has been able to source talent from all over the world, Ang said. Upflowy is due to set up a base in the U.S. this year to increase its presence in the region.

“Upflowy has managed to solve an issue that nearly every company faced,” said former managing director of APAC Optimizely Dan Ross, who invested in Upflowy. “There are currently no other tools on the market that give teams the ability to quickly create, test and iterate on full sign-up flows and feed data straight into any other platform, which are looking to convert visitors into customers.”

“Modern organizations need simple, no-code solutions that remove the friction between data collection and customer experience,” Patrick Eggen, co-founder and general partner at Counterpart Ventures, said in a statement. “The market is full of clunky solutions that rely on engineers to create web experiences, which inhibits testing and improvement. Upflowy is in the unique position to re-envision this market, enabling teams to create the web experiences that consumers need and demand.”