Interested that the project started as a REST API generator for any MySQL database [1], and then in a year was transformed to what can be seen today from what I gather following the git log.
We open sourced two API solutions before NocoDB : - A no-code REST APIs generator for any MySQL DB. ~200,000 Docker pulls. This was a hobby project & had no GUI. - A low-code REST-GraphQL APIs generator for any database with GUI. Used by 100s of companies. Including fortune 500s & publicly trading companies.
The thing that surprised us the most was that even non-developers started using our API products & rooting for us. Whilst everybody loved instant API access to databases, it was slow-and-painful for them to build UI and collaborate with their teams. This made us to radically recombine the power of our 2 API products then transform them into something better.