Clickslide, the cloud-based platform that allows users to test APIs has closed a seed round to fund future product development.
The investment has come from Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund and three angel investors, and the amount is undisclosed.
In particular, Clickslide has been working on the development of its product Clickslide Abacus. This is a platform that allows software to be connected to a programmable interface for the testing of APIs against live mobile applications.
“We started out as IT consultants and we were seeing pain from our clients, wanting to reach out and touch the content and move it around or do things with what was often very complex databases,” Gabriel Ortiz, Chief Executive Officer of ClickSlide told The Next Web.
“So we thought maybe the best way to go about it was to derive some sort of general way to access that data and connect that to a GUI. From that came what we were calling “programmable software” – which basically means that you can program software without code. You can program it as you might program a clock or a VCR,” he explained.
So far the company is not giving too much away. Its current Web presence is a LaunchRock holding page where visitors can sign up with their email address for more information.
The service can produce a live application connected to any REST, SOAP and XML -RPC APIs and live testing of APIs against mobile applications can be used to test API viability at hackathons.
“We’re making it as fluent as possible across the stacks for people across enterprise to access application development at a level they are comfortable with and be able to contribute. We call it a human-first approach to software development”, says Ortiz.
“The cool thing that developers will be able to do with the product is that they get to create software with it and moving forward we will be creating automated processes for everyone in the stack,” he continues. “So that’s everything from click to edit interface for design down to a way to connect the database right to an application that’s been built with a very simple to use code base that we are developing right now. That will be HTML based – but that’s all I can give away right now,” he adds rather mysteriously.
Interestingly Clickslide has set up camp on Roosevelt Island. It’s a smart place to be as the Roosevelt Island Tech Initiative is in development to create a centre for high-tech excellence.
“We’ve come here early, we’re the first startup on the Island,” says Ortiz. “We arrived when the plans were announced. I think there is a lot of potential here. For the most part it’s very beautiful here and very quiet which is perfect for the kind of thinking we need to do.”
Ortiz is also optimistic about Roosevelt Island becoming an East Coast answer to the West Coast’s well known tech hubs. “I think as far as a tech space goes, it’s going to be something like a Silicon Island here. Manhattan used to be the future, New York used to be a new city, it’s becoming an old city now. Roosevelt Island is very much an untouched island east of Manhattan Island and it could become the future”.
Hopefully once plans for the area become a reality, there will be a thriving community and by that point, Clickslide will have launched Abacus and moved its business along to the next level. Being surrounded by other inspiring businesses and research is something the team is looking forward to.
For now with funding in its pocket and a new product on the way, it will be interesting to see how Clickslide and Abacus fares in 2013.
Image Credit: Minuk / Flickr
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