Among the entrepreneurs making a mark in 2026, we have selected the founder of Softr, Mariam Hakobyan, who did not enter no-code out of ideology, but out of engineering weariness. Before co-founding Softr, she spent over a decade building software products and then leading technical teams. She notes that from one company to another, teams are constantly rewriting the same building blocks: authentication, payments, customer portals, internal tools, administration interfaces. A considerable expenditure of energy for rarely differentiating components.
This is what structures Softr’s thesis: if software must not disappear behind no-code, it must be made more accessible, quicker to assemble, more directly useful to businesses. Where some tools are simple but limited, and others powerful but complex, Softr seeks to occupy an intermediate position in order to allow non-technical users to create web applications, portals, marketplaces, member areas or internal tools from pre-designed blocks, particularly connected to Airtable.
His point of view is that engineers must remain focused on what is specific, complex, differentiating, the rest can be industrialized. Especially since no-code is not primarily intended for developers, but for all other profiles (marketing, operations, entrepreneurs, freelancers) who have software needs but are never a priority in technical roadmaps.
Softr was therefore born in 2019 with its co-founder Artur Mkrtchyan, the first version was launched in August 2020, in a context where the pandemic is accelerating the digitalization of small businesses and the search for tools that are quick to deploy. The platform quickly gained visibility in the no-code community, winning the 2021 Golden Kitty Award for “Product of the Year” on Product Hunt. After an initial fundraising of $2.2 million, Softr then completed a Series A of $13.5 million.
An engineer trained in mathematics in Yerevan, developer since 2007, former manager of predominantly male technical teams, mother of two children, Mariam Hakobyan embodies a less stereotypical figure of the tech founder.
She does not claim a place in the ecosystem but builds a product whose very purpose is to broaden access to software creation, and this is precisely what makes her a personality to follow.
Softr is not just one no-code tool among others, it is a solution for industrializing ordinary software uses without impoverishing them. And Mariam Hakobyan carries through this project a thesis that has become central in tech, which is that tomorrow, value will not come only from those who know how to code, but from those who will be able to quickly transform business knowledge into a usable product.
