Skuid is all about keeping it simple.
Developing a simple, user-friendly interface to run what would otherwise be complex business software was key for Skuid, one of Chattanooga's most successful startup companies.
The company, whose name is an acronym for Scalable Kit for User Interface Design, was founded in 2013 "on the simple belief that enterprise apps should stop asking people to behave like machines. Instead, apps should behave more like the humans who use them, so everyone can thrive in the digital world."
More than 5.2 million users ranging from Fortune 100 companies to small businesses and nonprofits across 32 countries agree.
Which is why Skuid has grown from five employees when CEO Ken McElrath founded it in 2013 to a Skuid "skuad" that has mushroomed to more than 160 employees including its headquarters in Chattanooga and offices in San Francisco Bay Area, London and Zurich.
McElrath moved to Chattanooga from Phoenix about eight years ago. His sons attended Covenant College, and he wanted to move business operations to the East Coast, so Chattanooga was a good fit.
Skuid spokeswoman Ellie Hildebrand said EPB's high-speed Internet and reliability is "mission critical," and the company wouldn't have been able to get where it is without those assets.
Even with its rapid growth, Skuid leaders hope to keep its headquarters in Chattanooga rather than move to the Bay Area or a larger city.
"We're staying in Chattanooga for a combination of compelling reasons. Chattanooga has the Gig, a reasonable cost of living and a much better qualify of life for our people," McElrath says. "We're working now with community leaders to creatively figure out how to meet the needs of our rocketing growth."
As it has grown ever larger, Skuid has moved to four different Chattanooga locations: the Plow Building, the Southern Saddlery Building, the Republic Plaza and now the Liberty Tower, a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certified office building at 611 Chestnut St. downtown, where Skuid has leased the sixth, seventh and eighth floors.
At 36,921 square feet, Skuid says the new offices will provide enough room for the company's near-term growth.
The space has spectacular, 360-degree views of the Scenic City. And its interior befits a start-up tech company. Unique features include a large kitchen and café space called "The Reef," designated rooms for nursing mothers, family restrooms, collaboration rooms with such names as "The Fishbowl" and "The Aquarium," and creative "design-thinking" areas.
Skuid's new digs are furnished with adjustable sit-stand desks, sound-proof phone booths, a sound studio and lots of casual seating.
No code-writing required
Skuid lets customers join disparate data sources from almost any enterprise software platform to create applications without having to write any code.
"Enterprise software, even in the cloud, has become so fragmented," McElrath says. "Our customers have been struggling to defrag their data sources to create truly useful apps, while leaving their data where it rests."
Company literature says that customers can create bespoke apps "at blazing speed," because Skuid allows them to point and click to connect to data from any source - including salesforce.com, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft - then easily assemble applications, portals and sites with a set of drag-and-drop user-interface components.
Skuid now includes Amazon Web Services as a preferred cloud infrastructure provider, adding to its longstanding partnership with Salesforce.
"There's demand all over the world," McElrath says. "Because we're a cloud platform, we can basically sell to anyone in the world."
Among Skuid's customers: Intuit, Open Gate Consulting and GE Oil & Gas (a subsidiary of General Electric).
"It's great to see a local tech startup like Skuid achieve product/market fit and be able to scale their operations, not only nationally, but now internationally," said Charlie Brock, CEO of Launch Tennessee.
McElrath launched Skuid in 2013. The Pennsylvania native, who has an MFA degree, started in the technology world as a designer.
"I've just been involved in technology and software at a very deep level," the 54-year-old said. "Eventually, that led to some good opportunities with several startups." His credits includes Cazabba and Skoodat.
Developing Skuid's product grew naturally, McElrath said.
During earlier involvement with technology, he and colleagues "realized there were huge limitations with enterprise software," he said. "It was really necessity that drove us to build this platform for ourselves. We realized that everybody wanted this ability."
Venture capital flows in
Setting a high mark for a round of venture funding for a Chattanooga startup, Skuid recently raised $25 million in new financing from a pair of West Coast groups.
Skuid plans to use the new funding to bolster research and development as well as sales and marketing efforts, Hildebrand said.
"We're moving full steam ahead," she said.
McElrath said Skuid's customers want to innovate faster.
"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," he said.
Some $22.5 million of the new funding came from Iconiq Capital, a global multi-family office and merchant bank for a group of influential families including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, according to Skuid.
Also, $2.5 million came from the firm K1 Investment Management, which had earlier invested in Skuid.
Hildebrand said the new financing surpasses the more than $13.5 million Chattanooga-based moving company Bellhops earlier attracted in new capital, the prior startup record.
Ken Hays, CEO of Chattanooga's Enterprise Center, termed Skuid's new funding "pretty awesome."
"It's great stories and successes like this that make us keep chugging," he said. "You take 10 of these and you've got huge success."
Hasan Askari, managing partner at K1, said it has been "humbled to be a part of Skuid's journey."
"They've gone from a bootstrapped startup that had early traction with Fortune 500 customers to a true industry leader," he said. "The team is pioneering a new era of enterprise app development."
(Mike Pare and Mitra Malek contributed to this report.)