Retool

Retool was built on a simple idea: why should building internal tools take months when it should take minutes? Founded in 2017 in San Francisco by a team who saw how painfully slow enterprises were moving, Retool lets anyone spin up internal software—from admin dashboards to operational tools—using a visual interface that connects to every data source imaginable. Now they're going full AI, letting users describe what they want in plain language and watch the app get built. That's the future they've been building toward for years.

The Retool play is elegant: every company needs internal tools, literally every single one, and legacy options either require hiring expensive engineers or suffering through clunky enterprise software that doesn't fit. Retool plugs into your databases, APIs, vector stores, and LLMs, lets you drag-and-drop your way to a working app, and gives you something production-ready in hours instead of quarters. They're doing for internal tools what web builders did for websites—democratizing something that used to require specialized skills.

The team runs deep: Kelsey McKeon leads the charge, Will Harris and Rebecca Dodd are key figures in the mix, and they've quietly become the backbone for thousands of teams at companies that don't want to admit they're running critical operations on spreadsheets held together with duct tape. Retool raised significant funding over the years and became the default choice for anyone who needs to move fast inside a company.

If your team is still building internal tools the hard way, you're wasting time Retool can give you back.