Dynaboard

Dynaboard is a low-code integrated development environment for building web applications, combining a drag-and-drop builder with a code-first UI framework and generative AI assistance. Users connect spreadsheets, databases, SaaS applications and APIs directly — the company states there are no separate ETL steps or pipelines — and assemble applications from an accessibility-focused component system that includes buttons, charts, data tables, dropdowns, forms, iterators, media, navigation bars and sign-in widgets. Developers can write TypeScript on the client (executed in a sandboxed virtual machine) and ECMAScript 2020-compatible code on the server with a built-in key/value store, add inline React for custom reusable components, and customize appearance with CSS or pre-built themes.

The platform supports real-time multiplayer editing of both code and UI powered by CRDTs, with live previews and no pull requests in between, plus multi-environment deployment, automatic versioning, rollbacks and one-click deployment to a public URL or custom domain. Applications can be secured using any OIDC-compliant provider — including Google, GitHub, Microsoft, Facebook and Okta — or Dynaboard's own one-time PIN authentication. Documented resource connectors span AWS S3, Airtable, Amplitude, BigQuery, Firebase, Google Sheets, GraphQL, MongoDB, MySQL, Notion, OpenAPI, PostgreSQL, REST API, SendGrid, Python and TypeScript servers, WebSocket, webhook endpoints and Web3 clients. Cron jobs and Git sync are listed as coming soon. Templates cover custom CMS, business intelligence dashboards, admin panels, customer portals, approval flows and embeddable dynamic widgets, and are offered with open source code.

In May 2023 the company launched Dynaboard AI, a suite covering natural-language UI generation, code generation (TypeScript/JavaScript, SQL and CSS) and code refactoring, made available without a waitlist. The AI features are context-aware of an application's pages, functions, components and database schema, and can generate charts, dropdowns and filters from connected PostgreSQL, MySQL or BigQuery databases.

Founding story

Dynaboard was developed by Alex Kern, a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree who founded his first company, Distributed Systems, while studying computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also started Cal Hacks, described as the world's largest collegiate hackathon. He sold Distributed Systems to Coinbase in 2018 and went on to architect Coinbase's core crypto systems, work the company says unlocked billions of dollars in AUM and enabled asset staking. Kern has written that he learned to code with Geocities, Dreamweaver and the Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP stack, and built Dynaboard around the belief that web development had lost the simplicity and single-tool flow state of that era.

Business model

Dynaboard offers a hosted development platform with a free tier for building. At the time of its 2022 seed announcement, the company described a pricing model that makes all application builders free and charges only for monthly active internal and external users, positioned as an alternative to seat-based tool builders and multi-dimensional IaaS pricing. Shared workspaces are described as including unlimited editors. Documentation includes account management and billing setup.

Usage-based pricing charged on monthly active internal and external application users, with application builders/editors free.

Traction

An early blog post about Dynaboard reached #2 on Hacker News and thousands of prospective users joined the private beta waitlist. The company said it was expanding its private beta in mid-2022 with general availability planned for that year, and released Dynaboard AI generally without a waitlist in May 2023.

Latest developments

Dynaboard's website displays a notice that Dynaboard is joining Figma. Its most recently documented product release is Dynaboard AI (May 2023), adding AI UI generation, code generation and code refactoring across the editor.