Candu launches 🚀 the first web builder for SaaS

In software as a service (SaaS), it’s all about your product. But when you think about what different customers need, you simply can’t adapt your product enough to make everyone happy.  One size does not fit all. 

This was the issue I kept running into at InsightSquared, a sales analytics startup in Boston, as we tried to move up-market. Larger customers have more complex needs, they are less agile, and demand more, but customer success managers were more or less powerless to affect changes when it came to the product. 

In a customer-facing role, you can send emails, create decks, and schedule meetings, but you have no control over the one thing that really matters — your product! You’re reliant on the dev teams to make changes, and with their time and resources scarce, you’re often stuck in a holding pattern. “Coming next quarter!” is a phrase I’ve said far too often.

You can go down the route of training and professional services, but enterprises increasingly expect these services will be bundled into their subscriptions. In my experience running a professional services team, custom code can’t be maintained at the same level as the rest of the product.

If only the teams closest to customers had the ability to change the product in a seamless, efficient and timely manner… Hello, Candu!

The Developer Dilemma

Ask yourself: What was the last change you advocated for that made it to your product? What was the process to push it live, and how long did it take to complete?

An onboarding overhaul can take a product manager and dedicated dev team several sprints — at least two to four weeks — to complete. Then there’s the time-intensive cycle of gathering customer feedback and iterating. It’s not a complete refactoring of your backend, but it’s big enough that the work simply doesn’t get done that often.

Our use cases range from improving onboarding to creating custom content for strategic accounts. Candu will materially change the way our enterprise customers view us. — John Kodumal, LaunchDarkly CTO

A No-Code Movement

We founded Candu as the first drag and drop native web builder for SaaS, specifically for customer, product, and marketing teams who can’t (and shouldn’t) code. We’ve started to democratize  data; Candu brings UX/UI to the people who can’t code. We want the no-code movement to empower customer success managers, product managers, and marketers  to build beautiful UI without coding a line. 

No more waiting on dev teams to move code through a weeks- or even months-long release cycle. Candu lets you drag and drop your own UI components to create user experiences that fit into your UI, seamlessly. Start with one of our templates, and customize customer dashboards, onboarding checklists, product announcements, and more in minutes.

And, because you can embed Candu’s user experiences into any webpage, you don’t need to rely on clunky popups. Candu becomes a part of your page, rather than covering it up, for a seamless integration with your product’s UI.

I am so excited to send Candu out into the world — to those of you who are listening to your customers and want to say, finally, ‘Yes! I can do that for you.” Candu is our promise that you can change the one thing that defines your customers’ experience — your product.

Our team looks forward to hearing any and all feedback as you begin getting to know Candu.  

We can’t wait to see what you make.

Jonathan is the co-founder and CEO of Candu. He loves tech but can’t write a line of code. He has a dog named Ronnie, a cat named Winslow, and a husband named Luke.