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A fresh startup is targeting the lucrative work productivity distance with an open source approach to project and noesis direction — and it has get backing from a who ’s who of investor from across the technology spectrum .
AppFlowy , as the company is call in , has raised $ 6.4 million in backing from a slew of renowned father , including Matt Mullenweg ( Automattic ) ; Steve Chen ( YouTube ) ; Tom Preston - Werner ( GitHub ) ; Bob Young ( Red Hat ) and Amr Awadallah ( Cloudera ) . The come rhythm was lead byOSS Capital .
Helping the workforce be more efficient is big business , evidenced by the like ofNotion hitting a sublime $ 10 billionvaluation off the back of remote work - driven demand for collaboration software . However , as proprietary computer software , businesses — peculiarly enterprises — might be hesitant to go all - in on a applied science they do n’t have full control of .
And this , essentially , is what AppFlowy is assay to treat with a self - hostable answer that run low some manner toward addressing security and extensibility concerns with the incumbent providers .
usable for Windows , Mac and Linux , AppFlowy includes tools for managing projects , film notes , tracking the position of case-by-case project items , viewing deadline and make document , among other things that might be familiar to those that use like virtual workspace tools .
However , AppFlowy ’s promise is all about ascendance and customizability , allowing companies to tailor their workspace with modular building closure that can be fine - tune up for specific exercise case . And because it ’s open author , AppFlowy is capable to support community contribution , which can expedite novel functionality .
But AppFlowy see itself as particularly suitable for industries with mean data privateness restrictions .
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“ Most proprietary collaboration workplace tools share a major limitation — their customers retrieve it too hard or too expensive to have 100 % ascendancy of their data , ” atomic number 27 - laminitis and CEOAnnie Anqi Wangsaid in ablog post . “ As a result , vender ignition lock - in becomes a tough junky to crack . substance abuser often feel worried when entrusting their sore data with these tools , naturally worried about their longevity . ”
To the cloud
establish two years ago byWang , a former product handler at ByteDance , and CTONathan Foo , who was antecedently a software system technologist at TikTok ’s parent company , AppFlowyarrived on GitHubunder a “ copyleft ” AGPL-3.0 permit in November 2021 and went on to lapse 30,000 “ stars ” in its first year .
With $ 6.4 million in the banking concern , the companionship is now well - finance to ramp up out the platform into a moneymaking business . AppFlowy had introduced self - hosting via Supabase ( anopen source Firebase alternative ) inearly September , serving up data point storage for those wishing to host AppFlowy in - house . But alongside its funding , the party also reveal a cloud product , designed for deployment on swarm platform such as Amazon EC2 and Azure virtual political machine .
“ Moving ahead , we will support team collaboration and endeavor offerings based on AppFlowy Cloud , ” Wang say TechCrunch .
Indeed , while self - host pass company unbridled command of their data , it also come with criminal maintenance costs and take exception that not all companies will be unforced or able-bodied to hide — which is where AppFlowy Cloud enters the fray .
With the hope of end - to - end encoding ( E2EE ) , AppFlowy hopes to court business that are hesitating about tilt on the cloud due to security concerns — however E2EE is completely optional , and some business enterprise might prefer not to spark full encoding given that it limits some of the things that exploiter can do . This includes actual - prison term collaborative editing on written document , while it might hamper integrations with certain third - party service , among other check .
“ People often want E2EE for the furthermost security measure , however , there are several reasons why some people might prefer not to opt in for E2EE , ” Wang said . “ Users prioritizing speed and carrying into action might opt out of E2EE , [ and ] the lack of recovery options [ will intend ] that only the user has the keys to decrypt . An organization might [ also ] choose not to use E2EE because of the regulative compliance , datum retentiveness insurance policy , and direction considerations . ”
It ’s also deserving noting that company can adopt a intercrossed local / cloud approach with AppFlowy , enabling them to keep their instance local and only sync to the swarm when required .
“ This approach provide a blend of offline experience and cloud connectivity , depending on user needs and preferences , ” Wang said . “ Data is used in a local environment , and can be uploaded to the cloud when exploiter want to back - up or share it . However , drug user also have the selection to synchronize continuously . ”
finally , AppFlowy Cloud will also be the company ’s ticket to monetization , though it will ab initio be offered completely for gratis .
“ We plan to adopt a freemium model for AppFlowy Cloud , which means that certain premium characteristic will not be included in the free tier , ” Wang say . “ As these feature are still under growing , there is no paywall at the bit . ”
AppFlowy ’s cloud platform is usable in private beta now , with its full public launch tout to come “ soon . ” The society also said that ’s do work on a fluid app which is schedule to launch next month , and will assist AppFlowy go full cross - political program .
