We asked Ataeum founder and CEO, Rohit Patel, about building an app that connects entrepreneurs and allows them to run startups in an automated, low-cost way. The Ataeum team includes Juliane Stephan, Co-founder and Head of Operations, Olga Kanzheleva, Co-founder and Head of Product and Engineering, Michael P. Martin, Co-founder and General Counsel, and Lorenzo Suffritti, Co-founder and Software Engineer. They chose Bubble because the no-code platform offered all of the features to build a powerful web-app at a lower cost.
Tell us about your app and what it does.
Ataeum is an all-in-one platform to find co-founders and run startups in an automated and low-cost way geared towards part-time entrepreneurs. Ataeum's innovative work-based weekly smart vesting for co-founders minimizes uncertainty and conflicts, and facilitates fair ownership based on the amount of work done. Ataeum platform creates and manages a joint venture to enable you to run your startup in a lightweight and automated way. In contrast to the usual startup founding, you don’t have to worry about things like incorporation, bylaws, stock options, state qualifications, bank accounts etc. until you make revenues or decide to incorporate.
You can also find an Intro video to Ataeum here: https://youtu.be/UehxF5zJzlY
How does your app work?
Ataeum is a fairly sophisticated app where users can take a lot of actions:
- Start their startup and form a joint venture (contracting is built in with integration with ZohoSign API)
- Shape their business idea by going through the inbuilt MVP flow
- Onboard their co-founders on the joint venture and share equity
- The app has smart-vesting built in where units vest based on startup participants' work done
- Start discussions, up-vote them, and comment on others' discussions
- Dend each other messages using the in-built messaging system
- Set level of privacy for both their own profiles and that of the startups
- Sign confidentiality agreements with other users on-platform to discuss their startup
Here is an excellent video that showcases all the features of the app that we've built. Feel free to use the video in the blog as it really showcases what you can build with Bubble: https://youtu.be/QmzkMM8T_a0
Tell us a little about your background and how you discovered no-code tools like Bubble.
We were originally looking for a simple no-code solution that would allow us to create a few marketing pages to test interest from the market before we went ahead and coded the app. That's when we came across Bubble, and realized that it was so much more powerful than we had imagined a no-code solution could be. One hour into the Bubble tutorial and it was clear to us that what we had found was going to really help us in the future.
Why did you build your app on Bubble?
Once we had validated our idea in the market, it was now time to build the app. We scoped it out as best as we could and got to estimating the time and cost of building it with code vs with Bubble, and it was no competition. But it was only after building the app with Bubble that we realized this was such an amazing decision. That's because our final app is nothing like what we had originally thought we wanted to build.
There were a lot of functionality changes and overall it is far more complex than what we started with. That's the main benefit of Bubble, that we could do all of these explorations and modifications in a very time and cost effective way and get to where we needed to be, but didn't really know when we started. I think we would have ended up building a far inferior product because of cost constraints if it wasn't for Bubble.
What have been your milestones or successes so far?
On 7/24 we finally opened up our invite-only alpha to a select few users. We have about 50-60 users right now using the app and testing it out and it has been a great success with a largely smooth and expected user experience so far.
What are your next steps or future plans for your app?
We are currently accepting sign-ups for our upcoming beta release in September and users can go to ataeum.com/?s=ZNZ to sign-up. This is when the app will get out of the invite-only phase and will be open to a broader audience. Our app is fundamentally designed to help aspiring entrepreneurs with the business side of entrepreneurship, and so in some sense we think this could be a great catalyst for the bubble community to build their startups using bubble by lowering the barriers on the business side of things.
Learn more about Ataeum: LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
About Bubble
Bubble is a leader in the no-code movement. Bubble offers a powerful point-and-click web editor and cloud hosting platform that allows users to build fully customizable web applications and workflows, ranging from simple prototypes to complex marketplaces, SaaS products, and more. Over 500,000 users are currently building and launching businesses on Bubble - many have gone on to participate in top accelerator programs, such as Y Combinator, and even raise $365M in venture funding. Bubble is more than just a product. We are a strong community of builders and entrepreneurs that are united by the belief that everyone should be able to create technology.
Do you want your app featured by Bubble? Reach out to us and tell us about your app. In addition to this series, we sometimes select our best apps to showcase on our website.
