Buildfire is a really remarkable story. The company was founded in 2014 and has been a major player in the mobile app development space ever since. This happened during a time when mobile apps evolved greatly and eventually emerged as the key platform of today. It’s difficult to constantly adapt, and Buildfire has been able to do that.

We’re taking things over from Ian Blair, the founder, with the majority of the Buildfire team coming forward with us on this recommitment to what Buildfire can be. Not unlike our work on our first acquisition, Convox, we’ve been hard at work behind the scenes to bring the company, brand, and product into a foundation that we can build on. As operators, we know how critical that foundation is for the future.

If you’re familiar with Buildfire, you’ll see that the brand has a completely new look and feel. Shelley Tsui, who is leading up the efforts there outlined her process here, which does a great job of pulling the curtains back on how we think about foundation and building for the long-term. It also speaks to our belief that design and product are critically important in software. Over the coming weeks and months, the product will evolve as well to better deliver on the vision of what Buildfire is. We can’t wait to show what’s in the works there.

Stepping back a bit, I want to share how we’re thinking about the approach with Buildfire, which isn’t dissimilar to our ethos outlined here. The first move we’re making is shifting the business towards self-service. We see a similar opportunity in mobile applications that has been more fully-baked in website builders (like Squarespace, Webflow, etc.) Over time, you’ll see a product that truly delivers a no code native mobile application builder. We’ll also be leaning on the power of generative AI in the coming months to help streamline the app creation process, eventually striving for automated builds of new, dynamic native mobile applications.

Along with these evolutions in product and go to market, this reset with our team allowed us to transition Buildfire into a sustainably profitable business, which is where we intend to keep it, while investing in the growth of the business.

This is day one of the new Buildfire and have been having a blast on it. We’re also actively hiring at Buildfire. Feel free to take a look at open opportunities on our career page or reach out to us directly to tell us more about you and what you’re looking for at hello@curious.vc.

Stay tuned.

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