The Unicorn CTO #123 - Bend It Like MongoDB

Daniel Jarjoura -

Hello friend,

Since going public in 2017, MongoDB has shown significant growth, multiplying its share value by ten to become one of the highest-valued publicly listed open-source companies. A couple of weeks ago, they shared excellent Q2 results and a positive guidance revision, making investors even more confident about their future.

So, I went through their reports to gather key takeaways for founders and investors of open-source startups. Here is what I learned:

  1. By providing tools and resources that developers love, MongoDB creates advocates who can influence the adoption of its technology within their organisations.
  2. MongoDB’s commitment to open source is a key driver of its growth. It promotes transparency and collaboration and fosters a robust developer community.
  3. With just 30% of the Global 2000 being a MongoDB customer, the company is now investing in its direct sales organisation to increase its share of large enterprises.
  4. With a Net ARR expansion rate consistently above 120%, MongoDB has realised that existing clients can grow much more than their current spend and is investing massively to support strategic account representatives compared to the rest of direct sales.

So, make a great product developers love, grow your community, wait to be big enough to target large enterprises while you focus on existing clients to grow their usage. Repeat.

P.S.: if you're a CTO or tech leader, you can join the free Unicorn CTO Slack community. We're a small group of international CTOs and tech leaders, and we often meet for virtual (or not) coffees.

Now, let's dive into last week's developer-first transactions.

💰 Market Summary - Week of September 23rd, 2024

  • 10 companies raised $269.1 million across 6 product categories in 5 countries.
  • Europe-based companies attracted 3% of the total funding vs 32% for Asia-based companies (including Israël) and 65% for US-based companies.
  • Observability is the category that attracted the highest funding.
  • 1 company was acquired.

🧩 Funding by Product Category

🌎 Funding by Region

🏢 Funding By Company

Here's a summary of last week's developer-first transactions in the requested format:

Observe, headquartered in San Mateo 🇺🇸, secured $145M in Series B funding from Evolution Equity Partners and Madrona Ventures. Observe enhances application and infrastructure monitoring with an elastic cloud architecture. (more)

Supabase, based in Singapore 🇸🇬, raised $80M in Series C funding. As an open-source alternative to Firebase, Supabase offers a comprehensive backend suite including a Postgres Database and instant APIs. Investors include Peak XV, Craft Ventures, and Coatue Management. (more)

Letta, located in San Francisco 🇺🇸, garnered $10M in Seed funding. Letta focuses on building stateful APIs for the future, starting with advanced memory management. The round included investors like Felicis Ventures and Sunflower Capital. (more)

Kestra, from Paris 🇫🇷, achieved $8M in Seed funding. Kestra is an open-source orchestration platform that simplifies scheduled and event-driven workflows. Backed by ISAI, Axeleo Capital, Alven and others. (more)

DefectDojo, based in Austin 🇺🇸, raised $7M in Seed funding. This open-source DevSecOps and vulnerability management tool allows organisations to manage security programs effectively. Investors include Iolar Ventures and Aspenwood Ventures. (more)

Bluebricks, headquartered in Tel Aviv 🇮🇱, secured $4.5M in Seed funding. Bluebricks provides DevOps teams with tools to compile, download, and deploy blueprints instantly, backed by Flint Capital and Glilot Capital Partners. (more)

Sandgarden, located in New York 🇺🇸, garnered $4.5M in Seed funding. They offer a platform for AI integrations that reduces the complexity of transitioning from AI experimentation to production. Supported by Resolute Ventures and Crane Venture Partners. (more)

Platformatic, based in San Francisco 🇺🇸, raised $4.3M in Seed funding. Platformatic enhances Node.js deployment with best practices and supports frameworks like Fastify and Next.js, funded by Rialto Ventures and Decibel Partners. (more)

Ensemble, also in San Francisco 🇺🇸, secured $3.3M in Seed funding. Ensemble AI introduces a new ML algorithm for enhanced data modelling backed by Salesforce Ventures and M13. (more)

ByteSky, located in Greater Noida 🇮🇳, raised $2.5M in Seed funding. ByteSky offers cost-effective high-performance GPU/CPU instances, backed by Samsung Ventures.

🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions

Clumio, headquartered in Santa Clara 🇺🇸, was acquired by Commvault. Clumio specialises in simplifying data protection in AWS with its secure, air-gapped SaaS solution that enables organisations to meet stringent compliance requirements, efficiently backup and restore data, and optimise cloud storage costs. Previously, Clumio raised a total of $301 million and was valued at $675 million. (more)

Thanks for reading this far! I'm excited to make this newsletter as helpful as possible and I would appreciate if you could share feedback or anything you want to find here.

Farewell,

Daniel