Dutch Y Combinator participant GitLab just announced an investment of 1.5 million dollar by Khosla Ventures, 500 Startups, Crunchfund, Sound Ventures (including Ashton Kutcher) and Liquid 2 Ventures (of former NFL-quarterback Joe Montana).
Gitlab, founded in 2011 by Sytse Sijbrandij and Dmitriy Zaporozhets, involves a community that works together to create open source collaboration tools. GitLab is a Rails application providing Git repository management with access controls, code reviews, issue tracking, activity feeds, wikis and continuous integration.
The startup managed to get into the Winter 2015 class of renowned American accelerator Y Combinator.
The startup remained bootstrapped for a long time, just like it’s big competitor GitHub used to be (before raising US$100m from Andreessen Horowitz). But is getting bigger and bigger.
Giants
GitLab has grown to a team of over 10 people, building a software version control system, superior to that of giants GitHub – at least according to the startup itself.
The Utrecht challenger distinguishes itself by offering tighter security, use of internal servers and unlimited open-source access to its solutions. It monetises through a freemium model, offering a superior solution to clients willing to pay for it.
By now the startup has managed to win over clients at over 100,000 organisations. Their list of connected organisation is gold plated and includes names like NASA, Nasdaq and Alibaba.