GitLab has become the latest member of the Unicorn club after announcing a $100m round of funding led by ICONIQ Capital. This latest round, a series D brings the total capital raise for GitLab to $145m over 3 years. According to the company it also raised their market valuation to over the magical $1B mark.
Some of GitLab’s success in raising this latest round of capital can be attributed to a raising tide lifting all boats. Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub for $7.5B continues to make ripples in the software developer tools space. But while they share Git in their name, GitLab is not just another Git or GitHub imitator. No, GitLab has a far more ambitious mission. They actually want to be a one stop shop for a complete end to end DevOps solution. Using GitLab you can replace 6 to 9 different DevOps related tools. Or at least that is the vision.
I have always thought this was a tall order that would require a different way of building software to succeed. GitLab’s CEO Sid Sijbrandij thinks he has found this new method. Using open source, GitLab has an army of software contributors that donate their software to GitLab everyday. With monthly releases you can see the results of this philosophy with constant progress on all fronts at once.
While Sid realizes that every component or area of GitLab may not be best of breed today, it is his vision that it will be. So what does $100m buy you today to recognize this vision? Well you can hear it right from the horse’s unicorn’s mouth. I sat down with Sid to discuss the raise, the future of GitLab and the market in general.
I have had the pleasure of interviewing Sid before. He has some very good ideas on where the market is and where it is heading. Below is our conversation, enjoy!