Retool

Retool recognized a massive inefficiency in software engineering: highly paid developers were wasting massive amounts of time building ugly, basic admin panels just so the customer support team could issue a refund or update a user's email address. Retool exists exclusively to build these internal tools ten times faster. It is designed for developers, not business analysts. A developer connects Retool directly to their company's existing production database (like PostgreSQL or MongoDB) and third-party APIs (like Stripe or Zendesk). They then drag pre-built, highly polished UI components (tables, text boxes, buttons) onto a canvas. The magic happens in the connection. The developer writes actual SQL queries or JavaScript code directly inside the visual components to pull the data and execute the actions. A developer can build a fully functional "Customer Lookup" dashboard—complete with a button that executes a Stripe refund API call—in an afternoon, a project that would normally take a week of building React components from scratch.