Sweden’s Starhive bags €2.7M: Co-founder and CEO Tommy Nordahl on simplifying app building, growth plans, and more

Stockholm-based Starhive, a no-code app builder, announced on Friday that it has raised $3M (approximately €2.7M) in a seed funding round led by Nordic venture capital firm node.vc, with node Partners Andy Johnston & Henrik Tellving joining the board.

“This funding allows us to propel both the company and our products further than ever before,” adds Mathias Edblom, Starhive Co-Founder and CPO.

Fund utilisation

The Swedish company will use the funds to drive international expansion, scale its operations, and develop its platform to serve organisations in enterprise service, asset management, and project management spaces.

Talking about the expansion plans in the Netherlands to Silicon Canals, Tommy Nordahl, co-founder and CEO of Starhive, says, “We are looking to onboard a couple of strong solution partners in the Netherlands, with whom we will work to introduce Starhive to customers in the region.”

“This represents part of the diversification of our focus to include more of Northern and Central Europe, including the Netherlands, which we are reaching out to through targeted advertising campaigns,” adds Nordahl.

Currently, the company has 23 employees, including 11 former employees from Mindville. 

Additionally, Starhive is hiring a Head of Sales and our first Business Development Representative to accelerate the growth of our customer base.

“In the near future, we’ll also strengthen our marketing team with content marketers,” says Nordahl.

The story behind establishing Starhive

Tommy Nordahl and Mathias Edblom founded Starhive in 2022 to enable non-developers to build business applications for any purpose in hours without needing expertise in technical knowledge.

“Mathias and I met in 2006 when we were both consultants, during an assignment at a financial institution where they developed a savings product. We soon became friends and have been discussing ways to increase organisational productivity ever since,” he says.

“Over the years, we noticed that customers consistently complained about business data being spread around in different systems and legacy software needing to be more flexible for their unique needs. That’s when we realised there must be a better way,” continues Nordahl.

The founding duo brings 40+ years of combined industry experience, having also co-founded Mindville in 2012, an IT asset and configuration management company acquired by Atlassian in 2020.

“During our time at Mindville, we learned lessons talking to hundreds of customers. We were particularly interested in knowing how they wanted things to work in the future. Some aspects kept coming up, such as freedom and flexibility, as well as decreasing the amount of domain-specific software tools. All these lessons motivated us to create a platform like Starhive,” explains Nordahl.

Allows non-developers to build business applications

Starhive provides businesses with tools to streamline processes, reduce software costs, and replace disparate solutions with a unified platform.

“Even before we started Starhive, we realised that creating a unified solution to manage all kinds of business data with all the necessary heavy-lifting capabilities would take considerable effort,” he adds.

Through the platform, users can create apps, including an onboarding app for new employees, an e-commerce management system, a collaborative marketing space for shared projects, and much more.

“We’re now at a stage where it can solve real business problems, and we’re now entering into the next phase where we can allow customers to create any kind of application for their unique needs, all of them powered by our robust data platform,” states Nordahl.

88% growth in sign-ups in Q3

By using Starhive’s unique data platform, businesses can eliminate manual processes, cut costs on multiple SaaS tools, and avoid maintaining custom-coded software.

Disclosing the user’s feedback, Nordahl says, “The response has been great so far. Users trialing our platform find it very flexible and powerful. Sign-ups have grown 88 per cent this quarter compared to last quarter. We have only started marketing in the last few months, so we expect solid growth going forward.”

Revenue projections, business models, and more!

Nordahl believes in product-led growth and is looking to create a system that generates revenue without the need for sales interactions while also engaging in traditional outbound sales activities.

“One significant revenue stream will come from our newly launched solution partner program, where solution partners will act as resellers of Starhive and assist customers with implementation,” adds Nordahl.

The Swedish startup aims to onboard at least 20 new customer organisations during the remainder of the fiscal year.

The investor

node.vc is a Stockholm-based early-stage venture capital firm that invests in groundbreaking technology startups across the Nordics.

Andy Johnston, Partner at node.vc says, “We at node are thrilled to be joining Starhive at this pivotal stage in the company’s journey. Starhive’s powerful data management capabilities combined with its no-code app development approach is a game-changer for businesses seeking to optimise their operations, and Starhive’s founding team has the ambition and driving force to take the company to great heights.”