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Theneo - Create Stunning API Documentation In Seconds

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This week’s Startup feature is theneo.io. Theneo is the Devtool transforming the way software engineers build and maintain their API documentation.

Company & Team Introduction

Theneo is the AI-powered developer tool that makes building and maintaining API documentation faster and easier than ever. Building visually appealing and well-thought-out documentation is no easy feat. Theneo wants to bring top-quality documentation to the masses, enabling any company to easily create documentation as beautiful as Stripe. The company was founded in 2021 by Ana Robakidze, an experienced software engineer from Georgia who most recently led the engineering team at NY-based Clientela. Theneo’s team is based in San Francisco, California, and they’ve quickly scaled their team size to ~20 employees.

Product Overview

Theneo is betting big on the power of AI to revolutionize the API documentation landscape. To capitalize on this wave of AI innovation, the company is building its own proprietary API-specific AI language model to help developers streamline the tedious documentation process. Some key features of Theneo’s platform include its easy-to-use “drag and drop” interface, a collaborative editor so the whole team can contribute, SEO management tools, custom domains, ChatGPT Search, an API playground to test different variables and make sure their APIs work correctly, automatic change log that records any API version changes since the last release, developer portals, API logs, analytics, etc. Theneo plays nicely with any type of API, whether REST, GraphQL, SOAP, or Async and works with your existing API technology stack, including Postman, VS Code, BitBucket, etc. Companies simply upload their API collection manually or automatically to Theneo; the tool will generate descriptions and summaries explaining the API; then, customers easily design their documentation to match their company colours/branding before publishing. After publishing, Theneos API Explorer helps companies grow their API adoption by allowing users to test endpoints, getting live results and valuable feedback. The company also has automation features, so any changes made to the documentation will be automatically deployed, whether on GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket, etc., so your team can say goodbye to outdated documentation.

Total Addressable Market

Theneo is fighting for a piece of the enormous API management market. In 2022, the total addressable market for API Management was as large as 4.28B. The market is also experiencing blistering growth, with estimates for the API management market to grow at a 27.6% CAGR through 2030, creating a 23.66B future opportunity for Theneo.

Business Model & The Numbers

Theneo utilizes a 4-tier self-serve freemium subscription model. The company has a free tier to attract new customers and grow with them, giving companies up to 5 public and 10 private projects, 100 AI-powered search results for users, and 2000 credits for their TheneoAI docs builder. To have unlimited projects, AI-powered search results, TheneoAI, and additional features like advanced user and section management, custom domain, SEO, branding, and a company developer hub/landing page, companies must upgrade to its $120/month “Business” plan. For companies needing more advanced features and security, Theneo’s “Growth” plan starts at $400/month. It offers features such as custom CSS, analytics, 20 developer hubs/landing pages, and advanced security, including IP whitelisting. Large enterprise customers with complex requirements like custom automation, integrations, user roles and permissions, SSO, unlimited developer portals, and the ability to self-host are best suited for the “Enterprise” plan and must contact the company for pricing.

Traction

Growth has been robust for Theneo thus far, with over 8000 companies using the product already. Clients span across a diverse number of industries, including highly regulated verticals like government agencies and agriculture to high-tech verticals like fintech, with customers such as Uome, Kikliko, and Instantly AI. The company was awarded first place honours in the Web Summit’s 2022 PITCH startup competition, where they went head-to-head pitching Theneo live on stage against 105 of the most innovative startups worldwide. Theneo customers have seen incredible results, with clients seeing massive surges in API adoption of up to 300% and huge operational efficiency gains, reducing customer and developer onboarding times by as much as 67% with the help of Theneo.

Competitors

The size and high-growth nature of the API management market opportunity have brought plenty of competition into Theneo’s territory. Here are some of the main competitive threats for Theneo:

SwaggerUI - SwaggerUI was started in 2011 by Tony Tam and focuses solely on REST APIs. They are the market's largest open-source player, offering tools such as SwaggerEditor, SwaggerUI, and Swagger CodeGen. The company bundles these products together as a hosted solution called SwaggerHub, which provides a free trial, an $84/month “Team” plan for additional features, and an enterprise plan for advanced security and priority support. Theneo offers a much more polished product that is easier to use and maintain from both a company and customer perspective. SwaggerHub is used by over 40k organizations that have built over 200k projects on their platform.

ReadMe - ReadMe is another major competitive threat to Theneo. Started in 2014 by Gregory Koberger, the company has built up an impressive list of clients, including Stripe, Box, and Coinbase. The main difference between ReadMe and Theneo is each company’s strategy/goals. Theneo’s platform was built for anyone to create stunning API documentation with as little time and maintenance required as possible and uses novel technology like AI to make the process even more efficient. In contrast, ReadMe is more focused on making APIs easy to use, debug, etc., not making great-looking docs. ReadMe graduated from the winter 2015 YCombinator batch and has been very capital-efficient with the money they've raised. The company has only raised 2 founding rounds: a 1.4M seed round and a 9M series A in 2019 from many of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, including Accel and Y Combinator, which the company stated was profitable at the time.

Funding

Theneo has raised 2 rounds of funding since its founding in late 2021, including a 1.5M pre-seed round with participation from Byld Ventures and distinguished accelerator YCombinator, which Theneo graduated from in 2022. The company’s promising early growth has attracted strategic investment interest from some of the biggest developer tool companies in the world. In December 2023, Theneo announced they had raised an undisclosed amount from some of the largest technology companies and investors in the industry, raising from the likes of Atlassian Ventures, Negma Ventures, Merus Capital, Diaspora Ventures, and follow-on investment from YCombinator.

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