Valve cofounder spins up Hatch no-code web creation platform

03.10.2023 - 13:33 / venturebeat.com

Hatch, a consumer software firm founded by veterans of Valve and Picnik, has launched its no-code creative web development platform.

The Hatch platform is aimed at empowering tech-curious creators with one-click interactivity and animation. It removes the technical barriers of coding, allowing anyone to use a webpage as a limitless creative medium.

The company was started by Michael Harrington, cofounder of gaming giant Valve, and Darrin Massena, who cofounded Picnik in 2005 with Harrington.

“A webpage has the creative potential of a painter’s palette and the constructive power to solve a problem,” said Massena, cofounder of Hatch. “At Hatch, we are removing the technical barriers of coding, so anyone can use a webpage as a limitless creative medium. Anyone can build a new connected experience for themselves, their business, or their community.”

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Hatch provides simple tools and a dedicated web space for users to create unique websites, games, portfolios, digital art, interactive stories, and more, regardless of their technical expertise. Users can publish their creations publicly or keep them private for sharing with friends and family.

Additionally, users can choose to make their projects “remixable,” allowing other users to duplicate and modify the content, fostering a collaborative creator community.

Harrington said that it’s easy to tag your website creations as available for remixing. It’s easy to share how artwork is displayed or how to make something interactive. Someone else can take the template and then remix with their own work, he said.

“Anybody can share what they’ve done in a remixable form,” Massena said. “It’s not open source, but it’s more like a creative person’s open source, where you can pull in what other people have done and then take your riff on the idea or take parts of it.”

So far, the Hatch tools are available on the open web, not as an app on iOS or Android or other platforms. They figured most serious creation tools focus on the desktop web experience. But they will consider other platforms down the road. So far there is no ability to collaborate with anyone else, aside from remixing.

Hatch offers both free and paid versions of its publishing tools, which include drag-and-drop kits, one-click interactive effects, responsive physics, dynamic gravity, and more. Unlike many existing no-code platforms, Hatch does not rely on grids or boxes, enabling creators to freely drag, drop, trigger, and animate text or visual elements anywhere on their webpages.

Harrington said the company