With Acquisition of Helix Software from QSA Toolworks, Big Giant Donut Bets Big on No- Code App Development’s Appeal to a New Generation

Big Giant Donut Inc. (BGD) announced its acquisition of QSAToolworks’ Helix programming system. As a No-Code database programming solution founded in 1983, Helix is the epitome of a technology launched decades ahead of its time. Recently, the Low-Code/No-Code software market has exploded, with a wide range of products now available that serve countless industries. But when it comes to flexibility, scalability, and ease of use, nearly all these products fall short of what Helix has offered for nearly 40 years.

Dana Barnard, founder of Big Giant Donut, has used Helix to power four different multi-million-dollar manufacturing and technology companies over the past 30 years. An advocate and current user of the software, he was drawn to the empowerment Helix offered his businesses. “With our small businesses, we are always battling against much larger competitors. The ability to quickly build and easily adjust a robust, multi-user, database system has been a major competitive advantage in our many businesses and ventures,” says Barnard, “Helix has been a big part of our ‘secret sauce’ and frankly, Helix has made us a lot of money.”

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The time to share that secret sauce with today’s entrepreneurs has come. A year or so ago, as QSAToolWorks’ Gil Numeroff recalls, “Dana and I had a long conversation in which he asked a lot of questions about the QSA team and the future of Helix. Near the end of our discussion, I told him that maybe it was time for him to buy the company! We were searching for the right partner for the future we had envisioned for Helix. After considerable discussion, we’d concluded that Dana Barnard, as a successful entrepreneur and long-time Helix user, was the right person for the job,” Numeroff said.

Already BGD has gathered capital to create a new corporate platform for Helix and will spend the next 18-24 months modernizing the software. With the addition of a new browser-based client, Helix will finally allow users on any platform to access a Helix Server. With a rewritten rapid-application-development-engine or RADE, Helix will transition to an SQL-based back-end. Helix will also receive major security upgrades to meet new, heightened data security standards such as CMMC. And BGD will explore options for new Helix add-ons that allow the software to drive mobile apps, communicate and sync with other Helix collections on a network, make automatic backups, communicate via Twilio, and more.

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The graphical, drag-and-drop, no-code software was originally programmed by Larry Atkin, among others. Atkin said once that beneath all the technical capabilities and program power, Helix has always aimed to be fun to use. As BGD takes on the upgrade, keeping things fun is a goal that guides them. But, as Barnard says, “The fun factor in designing and building new custom apps with Helix is very important to our clients but, when there are critical operational needs, an app is only fun to the owner if it is also stable.” So reliability will inform every upgrade Helix receives.

“Despite the current dominance of a few giant, global companies, I believe the future belongs to fast, creative, bold, and unique companies,” says Barnard, “And they deserve systems that mirror their attributes. We are looking forward to introducing a new Helix to a whole new generation.”

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