Andy Golden, Patricia Diaz and Charlie Moss, from left, with Skuid, talk during the Spirit of Innovation Awards luncheon and expo Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016 at the Chattanooga Convention Center.Next month will be a busy one for the Chattanooga-based software development firm Skuid as it moves into new digs in downtown Chattanooga and pitches its app software at major tech conferences from Nashville to London.
Skuid, which derives its name from the acronym Scalable Kits for User Interface Design, has been chosen as a finalist for the Best Cloud Application in the TechXLR8 awards to be presented on June 14 in London. A week later, Skuid will pick up a bronze "Stevie" Award at the 15th Annual American Business Awards in New York City after being voted one of the top "New Products of the Year."
While traveling the globe to pitch the software business, company founder Ken McElrath and the 90 or so other employees of Skuid in Chattanooga will move into three floors of the Liberty Tower next month. Ellie Hildebrand, public relations manager for Skuid, said the company anticipates moving into the Liberty Tower building on Chestnut Street in downtown Chattanooga during the second week of June.
Since its founding in Chattanooga in 2013, Skuid has quickly grown into a leading cloud UX platform that equips users with the tools to develop custom applications without writing a single line of code. Originally developed to aid users of the popular cloud computing software program Salesforce, Skuid has diversified its app capabilities and attracted more than $32 million of venture capital. The company now employs 159 employees at its headquarters in Chattanooga and offices in San Francisco, London and Zurich, Switzerland.
McElrath said the technology offers users a better, faster and more affordable development solution that aligns all key components of business intelligence.
'"Our customers want to innovate faster," McElrath said. "Companies can build dashboards and assemble entire enterprise apps in a more agile way in less than half the time required by traditional methods.'
Skuid currently services over 5 million users across 32 countries. Earlier this year, the startup secured a $25 million round of funding, including $22.5 million came from Iconiq Capital, a global multi-family office and merchant bank for a group of influential families including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
"This round of funding will help us help our customers to accelerate innovation, delivering more human-centered applications to more companies that need them in much less than half the time required by traditional methods," McElrath said when the financing was secured earlier this spring.
The TechXLR8 awards where Skuid will compete next month are a part of London Tech Week. The awards showcase both research and development and solution providers leading the way in 5G, virtual and augmented reality, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, connected automotive, and artificial intelligence.
The Stevie Awards competition in New York involved more than 10,000 entries from organizations in more than 60 nations. More than 190 professionals worldwide including industry analysts, journalists, and other industry experts participated in the judging process to select this year's Stevie Award winners.
"Each year the judges find the quality and variety of the nominations to be greater than the year before," said Michael Gallagher, president and founder of the Stevie Awards.
Also next month, McElrath will appear on a panel at Tennessee's top entrepreneurial conference, 36/86, June 4-7 in Nashville, to discuss Skuid and the state's startup culture.
Earlier this year, Skuid also was recognized by Entrepreneur magazine as the fourth best business in the country for Top Company Cultures for medium-sized businesses. Entrepreneur, in partnership with CultureIQ, a culture-management software and service provider, developed the list to recognize businesses "that have successfully instilled a high-performance culture in their workplace."
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfree press.com or at 423-757-6340.