Chameleon, a startup that provides minimal, code-free tools designed to help software companies customize the look and feel of their apps, announced today that it has raised $13 million. A Series A funding round led by Matrix Partners from True Ventures, the proceeds — which bring Chameleon’s total to $14.8 million — will be used to expand the platform and grow from a headcount of 30 employees to around 45 by the end of next year. year, according to CEO Pulkit Agrawal.
A recent interesting shift in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry is toward “consumer” business models, Agrawal told me in an interview. Month-to-month payments from end users are replacing annual corporate contracts sold to executives – a recent study found that more than 50% of SaaS companies now use usage-based pricing. In practice, this means that the decision-making power is increasingly in the hands of the individual user, which creates problems for software providers by not having a way to involve these users.
“It’s important. [vendors] They can capture users’ attention and help them find ‘aha’ moments, so they recognize value and continue to strengthen their engagement, Agrawal said in an email. “But dedicating a single product and engineering team to this initiative risks core feature building, leading to a void of functional value without any means — and that’s where Chameleon fills the void.”
Agrawal founded Chameleon in 2015 with former Salesforce engineer Brian Norton, who he met while working at a mobile app startup in San Francisco. When the pair saw the long-term impact on user onboarding, they convinced a Y Combinator-backed company to build their user onboarding experience. Shortly thereafter, Agrawal and Norton began commercializing the solution, found a paying customer, and Chameleon was born.
Image Credits: Chameleon.io
CaptainA platform enables software development teams to create and test in-product experiences, including banners, tooltips, modals, procedures, and checklists. Devs can use Chameleon — along with HubSpot and Salesforce’s analytics tools — to trigger other in-app services, from Tyform surveys to Zendesk chat sessions.
“I am the chameleonIt is useful for people who build software and care about using it,” argued Agrawal. “Typically, this is digital product teams in large companies. Sometimes they’re building applications where they need to communicate different features and value propositions within a product to internal and external users, and Chamlon can be used there as well.”
Chameleon recently launched HelpBar, which offers a “spotlight search” experience within apps where users can search across the company’s help articles, developer documentation and blog posts. Also new this year are microsurveys, single-question in-product surveys whose data can be fed into existing analytics tools.
Chameleon’s services overlap somewhat with competitors in the low-code and no-code development space. For example, CommandBar, which received $19 million in funding in April, is developing a search bar that devs can use to power natural language searches in their apps. Meanwhile, WorkOS, which raised $80 million in June, lets developers quickly add enterprise features like single sign-on (SSO) and directory synchronization.
Agrawal also sees Pendo and Apkus as major competitors. But San Francisco-based Chameleon’s business has remained strong as of late, despite the headwinds; Chameleon currently has approximately 300 customers.
“Cooling and cost-saving measures will lead companies to use flexible revenue models, including self-service and product-led growth, which will lead to an increase in demand for chameleon,” Agrawal said. “Captain It is a deep product adoption platform that enables modern SaaS companies to personalize and customize their user experience and improve behavioral discovery and user engagement.
