The company’s response to the war

• GitLab was founded by Kharkiv developer Dmytro Zaporozhets and initially developed as a company in Ukraine. Later it entered the international market. The company successfully developed and raised investments. And in October 2021 it went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Following the IPO, Zaporozhets resigned from the management at GitLab. Now it has a distributed team and offices in different countries in the world.
• On March 11, 2022, the company announced that it has stopped operations in the Russian and Belarus markets, but will continue to work with existing customers. “As a company, we are deeply saddened by the unprovoked and unjustified Russian military takeover of Ukraine, the horrific incidents of violence against an independent nation and people, and its dire impact on the entire region, including our team members, their families and friends,” company’s CEO Sid Sijbrandij said back then.

The company is still working with Russian businesses that help its military

At the same time, Russian businesses continue to hold purchase tenders of GitLab services. At least one business, which is also a supplier for the Russian military industry, are among the company’s Russian clients.

• In particular, we are talking about the company Laboratory 50. It cooperates with enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Russia. Among its projects are combat control systems for frigates, platforms for stands and training simulators for the Russian army personnel. You can read more about these projects here.
• At least one of its products, the Mono software package for Astra Linux Special Edition, is made by GitLab. It has a repository on this platform, updates were released regularly (even after the start of the war). It also has a compliance certificate from the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation No. 5490 dated 24.11.21. Meaning, it can be used by enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Russia.
• Furthermore, some data from Russian websites about state tenders indicates that state institutions and commercial enterprises are looking for specialists who can work with GitLab. For example, look at the tender from one of the Tatarstan banks (a Russian republic), announced in May of this year. Here is the purchase tender of GitLab Premium from the state-owned enterprise Atomenergoproekt, announced at the beginning of March 2022 (this enterprise is part of the state corporation Rosatom).

The AIN.Capital’s editorial office emphasizes that due to the numerous war crimes that Russian troops have committed and are committing on the territory of Ukraine, GitLab’s management should make the decision to completely withdraw from the Russian and Belarusian markets.

On October 14, 2021, GitLab became a publicly traded company on Nasdaq. Now the company is worth more than $18.4 billion. Zaporozhets is the owner of a 2.5% stake in the company, which equals $450 million.

At the start of the business, Zaporozhets told GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij that he wanted to commit ten years to the company. Coincidentally, ten years later, in October 2021, the company went public.

“Today, I want to share with the GitLab community that I am stepping away from my position as an Engineering Fellow at GitLab Inc. I have fulfilled my 10-year vision, and I feel that I can step away with so much pride in what GitLab has become and so much faith in where GitLab is headed,” he writes.

Dmitry also talks about how the company has changed over this time and how his role in it has changed accordingly:

“I came to work at GitLab full time in 2013. A team member recently asked me what my job title was when I started working at GitLab full time. The answer: it was Dmitriy. I didn’t have a formal title in the beginning.

My first official title with the company was Chief Technology Officer. Quite a lot happened during that time. I wrote a lot of code, merged a lot of merge requests. I still have the highest number of commits in the main repository. I worked closely with the first front-end developer and the first UX designer, and we were building everything from scratch.

By October of 2018, the company grew to the size when the CTO couldn’t write the code anymore. I transitioned into my role as Engineering Fellow and worked on several new features in the product.

It has been an amazing experience to be a part of GitLab’s evolution into The DevOps Platform. From the simple source control software to the platform that helps you deliver better software faster. I am very glad to have been a part of GitLab’s growth […]. It was an honor to be in New York City last month to help Sid ring the opening bell at Nasdaq and see GitLab become a publicly traded company.”

“It has been an incredible 10 years since you started the project. Thank you for creating GitLab, making it open source, joining me on this journey and caring for GitLab for the last 10 years. It was an amazing experience to ring the opening bell with you at Nasdaq and I’m excited to continue to build upon what we’ve created thus far and lead GitLab through its next phase. While you are leaving your position as Engineering Fellow, I know that we will still keep in touch, and your legacy will live on through the company and the wider community,” writes Sid Sijbrandij, Co-founder and CEO of GitLab.

Who is the richest in the IT industry

• 8th place in Top 100 richest Ukrainians in 2021 is taken by the co-founder of the UK-based fintech startup Revolut, Vlad Yatsenko. His net worth is estimated by NV at $1.277B. In July of 2021, Revolut raised $800M, and its valuation increased sixfold: from $5.5B in 2020 to $33B.
• 14th spot is occupied by the founder of the aerospace firm Firefly Aerospace, Max Polyakov, with a fortune of about $540M. In May of 2021, Firefly Aerospace raised nearly $200M, and its valuation went way beyond $1B.

According to AIN.UA’s estimates, the ranking takes just one of Polyakov’s assets, Firefly Aerospace, into account. It was valued at more than $1B even before its launch. The worth of his other aerospace companies and all the IT businesses are not factored in.

• 17th place is held by the owner of Rozetka Vladyslav Chechotkin. According to NV, Chechotkin’s net worth is $472M.

The share of Vladyslav Chechotkin is often miscalculated, with the total attributed to Chechotkin alone. But this includes shares of two entrepreneurs, Vladyslav and Iryna Chechotkin, who own the company that the stake in Rozetka belongs to. Thus, according to AIN.UA’s own calculations, the figure of $472M reported by Novoye Vremya is in the range of $359M to $526M but should be attributed to both stakeholders.

• Spots 23, 24, and 25 are taken by Alex Shevchenko, Dmytro Lider, and Max Lytvyn, the co-founders of Grammarly, an online spelling and grammar checker. NV estimates each one’s net worth at $386M.

In calculating the wealth of the co-founders of Grammarly, the valuation of the company at $2.3B should be factored in, as cited by PitchBook and confirmed by the American Forbes magazine. Considering that the latest round took place back in 2019 (the co-founders’ shares have remained the same) and their cumulative share being 76%, the valuation of the fortunes of Alex Shevchenko, Dmytro Lider, and Max Lytvyn, according to AIN.UA, should be about $582M each, which is $196M more than cited by Novoye Vremya.

• The founder and CEO of Ajax Systems, Aleksandr Konotopskyi, is in 26th place, with a net worth of about $380M.
• No. 30 is occupied by one of the co-founders of GitLab company, Dmytro Zaporozhets, with a fortune of approximately $375M. On October 14, 2021, Gitlab went public on Nasdaq. Today its shares are listed on the market at $113.75 per share, and its total capitalization exceeds $15B. Dmytro Zaporozhets owns 2.5% of the firm’s stock, hence his high position in the ranking.
• 37th spot is taken by the founder of People.ai, Oleg Rogynskyy. NV estimates his net worth at $279M. In August of 2021, People.ai raised $100M as part of a new investment round and was valued at $1.1B. As such, the company became a unicorn. Besides, Oleg Rogynskyy has mentioned that, given the current size of the company, it is time to think about an IPO.
• 42nd and 51st positions are held by the co-founders of the IT company SoftServe Taras Kytsmey ($245M) and Yaroslav Lyubinets ($199M). Taras Vervega ($167M), Yuriy Vasylyk ($131M), and Oleh Denys ($130M) are ranked 63rd, 77th, and 78th, respectively.
• 48th place in Top 100 richest Ukrainians in 2021 is taken by the founder and director of Terrasoft company, Katherine Kostereva, with a net worth of $207M, according to NV.

The calculations by AIN.UA show that the value of Katherine Kostereva’s share is significantly lower. At the time of leaving Terrasoft, Alexander Popov owned a 44.75% stake, valued at $51M. Based on the information that he and Kostereva had equal shares, hers should be valued at $51M too, instead of the $207M cited in the NV ranking.

• Oleksandr Kosovan, CEO and founder of MacPaw, is ranked 52nd. His net worth is estimated at $196M.
• Spots 53, 98, 99, and 100 are taken by the co-founders of Fintech Band, the developers of monobank Dmytro Dubilet with $196M, Oleg Gorokhovskyi — $100M, Yevheniya Kryvenko (Yatsenko) — $100M, and Mykhaylo Rogalskiy — $100M.

Who else has made it into the Top 100 richest Ukrainians in 2021

• 22nd place is occupied by the director general and co-owner of Fozzy Group, Volodymyr Kostelman. His fortune is estimated at $388M. Beside him, the ranking also features Roman Chyhir ($175M) and Oleh Sotnykov ($175M), ranked 58th and 59th, respectively. Fozzy Group also has an IT subdivision, and recently, they have tested a service to compete with zakaz.ua.
• The net worth of $346M has earned 32nd place to Stepan Chernovetskyi, head of the investment company Chernovetskyi Investment Group having some IT projects in its portfolio.
• No. 39 and No. 40 are taken by the co-founders of Nova Poshta, Volodymyr Popereshnyuk and Viacheslav Klymov, with a fortune of about $273M each.
• The developer Vasyl Khmelnytsky with a net worth of $223M is ranked 43rd. His main asset is UFuture Investment Group.
• 91st spot is occupied by the owner of the multistore Comfy, Stanislav Ronis. His net worth is estimated at $111M.

The richest five

At the top of the ranking, like in the last year, comes Rinat Akhmetov, whose fortune is valued at $11.5B (to put this into context: last year, Akhmetov’s wealth was estimated at nearly just half as much, $6.6m). The top 5 also include Viktor Pinchuk ($2.6B), Vadym Novynskyi ($2.44B), Petro Poroshenko ($1.52B), and Kostyantyn Zhevago ($1.497B).

• The total number of the company’s shares is 143,534,821. Thus, at a price of $107 per share, the capitalization of the company amounts to $15.35 billion. And Zaporozhets fortune, based on his 2.5% stake, is now estimated at $384 million.
• On the first day of trading, the highest price per share was $106.70, and the lowest — $93.11.
• To recap, after the first day of the IPO, the shares of GitLab closed their first day of trading at $103.89, up 35%. And before the IPO, the company expected the price per share to be around $66-$69.

Previously, AIN.UA published an interview with Dmytro Zaporozhets about the founding of the company:

According to the NASDAQ platform, as of October 14, the highest price per share was $106.70, and the lowest — $93.11. At the beginning of trading, the company’s shares cost $77. And before the IPO, the company expected the price per share to be around $66-$69.

The trading started on October 14 at 7:00 pm Kyiv time. An hour later, prices per share had risen to $94-$95. During the IPO, the company sold 8.42 million shares and raised about $801 million, Reuters reports. According to CNBC, the company’s capitalization equals 64 of its annual revenues.

The company now employs about 1,350 people in 65 countries around the world. According to many media and AIN.UA’s sources, GitLab gave ESOs to its employees. So, some of them also became quite wealthy people after the IPO.

According to CNBC, before the IPO, the shareholder breakdown was as follows:

• Sid Sijbrandij — 19%
• Khosla Ventures — 14%
• ICONIQ — 12%
• August Capital — 11%
• GV (formerly Google Ventures) — under 7%
• Dmytro Zaporozhets — about 5%

According to these figures, Zaporozhets is not yet a billionaire but owns a stake worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Back in 2019, GitLab representatives said they planned to go public in 2020. However, the pandemic disrupted their plans, and the offering was postponed for more than a year.

The founder of the startup is Dmytro Zaporozhets from Kharkiv. He joined GitLab in 2011, having a full-time job. Zaporozhets decided to create an alternative to GitHub, which could be installed on his server because the analogs were too expensive. In 2013, a second funder, Dutch entrepreneur Sid Sijbrandij, joined the startup. From that moment, they started working on GitLab full-time.

• According to the latest figures, GitLab’s valuation last year was about $6 billion.
• The company raised the target price range for its initial public offering, lifting its aimed valuation to nearly $10 billion. Initially, it was reported that the company would sell its shares between $55 and $60 each. However, due to high demand, the company raised the price to $66-$69 per share.
• The IPO will raise $717.6 million at the top end of the new range.
• The exact date of the IPO has not yet been announced. The offering will take place on the NASDAQ exchange.

The founder of the startup is Dmytro Zaporozhets from Kharkiv. He joined GitLab in 2011, having a full-time job. Zaporozhets decided to create an alternative to GitHub, which could be installed on his server because the analogs were too expensive. In 2013, a second funder, Dutch entrepreneur Sid Sijbrandij, joined the startup. From that moment, they started working on GitLab full-time.

• The company plans to list under the ticker GTLB on the American stock exchange NASDAQ, where shares of many technology companies are traded.
• The documents that the company provided with the application contain data on the financial achievements of GitLab, which the company has not disclosed before. GitLab’s revenue in the last quarter was $58 million, the loss — about $40 million. As CNBC reports, the revenue for the year could exceed $200 million.

In 2019, startup GitLab raised $268 million, its valuation rose to $2.7 billion. According to CNBC, the company’s valuation rose to $6 billion in 2020. In total, GitLab has raised over $400 million in investments since its inception.

Investments in GitLab

• 2015: $1.5 million, Seed round. Investors: 500 Startups, Crunchfund, Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Khosla Ventures.
• 2015: $4 million, Series A round. Investor: Khosla Ventures.
• 2016: $20 million, Series B round. Investors: August Capital, Khosla Ventures, and Y Combinator.
• 2017: $20 million, Series C round. Investors: GV (formerly known as Google Ventures).
• 2018: $110 million Series D round at a $1.1 billion valuation. Investors: Iconiq Capital, GV, and Khosla Ventures.
• 2019: $268 million at a valuation of $2.7 billion.

Back in 2019, GitLab representatives said they planned to go public in 2020. However, the pandemic disrupted the plans, and the offering was postponed for more than a year.

The founder of the startup is Dmytro Zaporozhets from Kharkiv. He joined GitLab in 2011, having a full-time job. Zaporozhets decided to create an alternative to GitHub, which could be installed on his server because the analogs were too expensive. In 2013, a second funder, Dutch entrepreneur Sid Sijbrandij, joined the startup. From that moment, they started working on GitLab full-time.

One of the characteristics of the company is that it works completely remotely. Moreover, this is how the company developed from the very beginning, not during the pandemic. We previously told how GitLab managed to build and organize remote work for 1,500 people.

Despite the international team, the founder of the company Dmytro Zaporozhets, in an interview with AIN.UA, said that he sees GitLab as a Ukrainian startup. His fortune is already estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars.

As reported by TechCrunch, Gitlab aims to bring more machine learning capabilities to its platform, and  it will integrate UnReview’s capabilities into its own code review workflow. 

UnReview implementation will help to automate the selection of code reviewers

GitLab launched its original code review components last year. As Wayne Haber, GitLab’s director of Engineering, said, that was still a very manual process. 

“Our primary focus for the second half of this year in bringing on UnReview is to help automate the selection of code reviewers. It’s a very interesting problem to solve, even we at GitLab occasionally end up picking the wrong reviewers based off of what people know,” DeSanto noted.

Even with the new system, teams still retain full control over which reviewers will be assigned to a merge request, but the tool will automatically and transparently rank potential reviewers based on who the system believes is best suited to this task.

About GitLab and UnReview

UnReview is an advanced recommendation system that automatically identifies and then suggests suitable code reviewers. GitLab is a DevOps collaboration platform, namely a code repository management system for Git. The company’s main competitor on the market is GitHub. GitLab has raised a total of $426 million in investments from Khosla Ventures, Google Ventures, Y Combinator and Iconiq Capital. The company is now valued at $2.7 billion.

• A total of 429 companies registered in the United States made Inc.’s 2021 Best Workplaces list. In particular, the magazine highlighted employers who were able to organize workplaces for the effective work of employees during the coronavirus pandemic and forced remote work. The list features companies in 24 fields, including IT, advertising, logistics, and others.
• The list includes Grammarly, a company developing an AI-powered English writing assistant. In 2009, it was created by Alex Shevchenko and Maxim Litvinov from Kyiv. In 2017, Grammarly raised $110 million during its first funding round. Then, in 2019, it secured another $90 million in the second round and became a unicorn. Grammarly’s total valuation exceeds $1 billion. Today, the company employs over 400 people in Kyiv, San Francisco, New York, and Vancouver.

“Our employees are ethical, adaptable, gritty, empathetic, and remarkable. These core values connect a global team, enable effective collaboration and push us to grow personally and professionally. Team members are encouraged to take ownership of their roles by seeking opportunities for education, expanding their impact through knowledge sharing and peer coaching and taking accountability for work they proactively deem beneficial to the organization. As a community, we stay connected with global offsites, monthly team and office events, birthday and anniversary celebrations, and holiday parties,” Grammarly commented to Inc.

• The list also features GitLab, a DevOps platform that enables product development, QA, security, and operations teams to work concurrently on the same project. Dmytro Zaporozhets from Kharkiv has been working on GitLab since 2011. In 2013, a second founder, Dutch entrepreneur Sid Sijbrandij, joined the startup. Even though the company has no offices, the number of employees exceeds 1,300 worldwide. As of 2021, the total amount raised is over $420 million. In 2019, GitLab was valued at $2.7 billion.

“As the world’s largest all-remote company, GitLab has blazed a trail for other businesses adapting to remote work during the pandemic and has advised more than 50 organizations on how to maintain a sense of culture, connection, and collaboration. We expect every employee to be a leader, no matter their job title or seniority. Our people managers help guide employees with career development, but each individual has the autonomy to determine their daily schedule, where to work, and their time off. We care about the results of our employees’ work, not when or where they’re doing it,” GitLab representatives told Inc.

• Besides, Inc. listed the Belarus-based company PandaDoc, which announced the opening of an office in Ukraine in September 2020. Now the company is looking for employees to join the Kyiv team.

To recap, previously, the list of the best employers was compiled by the American Forbes. It featured the Ukrainian companies GitLab and Allset. Click here for more information.

It is important to note that this ranking is a selection of startups. That is why there is no Google or Nike there. The list was compiled by evaluating 2,500 American businesses with at least 50 employees, and Forbes editors paid attention to employer reputation, employee satisfaction with the workplace, and employee growth. Click here for the full methodology.

The list includes two companies from Ukraine:

• GitLab — No. 52
• Allset — No. 220

Both startups were in the last year ranking as well.

Also, Sila Nanotechnologies, founded by a native of Ukraine, Gene Berdichevsky, is ranked 353rd.

The list of the top ten is as follows:

1. Hiya
2. Bestow
3. Unite Us
4. Curology
5. Petal
6. Dispatch
7. Human Interest
8. Faire
9. Dataiku
10. Well Health

CB Insights ranks companies based on total disclosed equity funding and only considers VC-backed tech companies that have raised an equity round since 2015. During this time, startups from Europe managed to raise almost $117 billion in investments.

Who holds the top spot in Ukraine

As in 2020, the company airSlate (formerly known as PDFfiller) has been recognized as leading by investment amount in Ukraine. In 2019, it received $30 million in investments, and this is the figure that CB Insights has factored in the infographics. After the publication of the ranking, another $40 million round was reported. According to the company’s representatives, $80 million has been invested in airSlate overall.

However, AIN.UA estimates that the leader in terms of the number of investments in Ukraine is the startup GitLab. The company’s product is a DevOps collaboration platform, or, more precisely, a code repository management system for Git. In 2019 alone, the company raised $268 million in a Series E round and was valued at $2.7 billion. With this investment included, GitLab has raised a total of $426 million.

The second top-funded Ukrainian startup is Grammarly. In November 2019, the company raised $90 million. In total, Grammarly has secured $200 million of investments so far. According to TechCrunch, the company has officially become a unicorn – this information was confirmed to AIN.UA’s editors in Grammarly. More details about the company can be found here. And while GitLab has no development team here, Grammarly has a fairly big one.

Other results

• The top-funded startup in Europe is Sweden-based Klarna, which offers a “buy now, pay later” e-commerce solution. The company has raised nearly $1.8 billion.
• The top 3 most well-funded startups also include a UK-based food delivery service Deliveroo ($1.5B) and used car marketplace Auto1 Group in Germany ($961M).
• Eight of the 37 companies featured on the map are unicorns. Some of them operate in Ukraine: Bolt ($4.3B) and Glovo ($1B), Deezer ($1.4B).
• Collectively, the startups on the map have raised nearly $9B in disclosed equity funding.

The ranking includes two companies founded by the Ukrainians: GitLab is No. 35 on this list, and Allset – No. 263.

About the companies

GitLab

GitLab is a collaboration and DevOps platform. The startup’s main competitor is GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft since 2018.

The startup was founded by Kharkiv citizen Dmitriy Zaporozhets in 2011. In 2013, the second founder, the Dutch entrepreneur Sid Sijbrandij, joined the startup. From that moment on, they started working on GitLab fulltime.

The company has about 100,000 corporate clients, including Ask Media Group, Charter Communication, Delta Air Lines, Goldman Sachs, Ticketmaster, Nvidia, etc. The company employs over 800 people from 55 countries.

In September 2019, GitLab raised a $268 million Series E round. The company was evaluated at $2.7 billion. Among the investors were Goldman Sachs, Iconiq Capital, Y Combinator, and Continuity Fund. Together with the new round, GitLab raised a total of $426 million.

Previously, in an interview with AIN.UA, Dmitriy Zaporozhets commented on the geographical identity of the company as follows:

“One founder is from Ukraine, so it is partly a Ukrainian startup. Another founder is from the Netherlands – so it is partly a Dutch startup. Later, investors from California came, so, now, it is partly an American startup as well. On this basis, I believe that GitLab can be called a Ukrainian startup.”

Allset

Allset is a service for booking of tables in restaurants, which also allows you to pre-order a meal and pay via a mobile application.

Allset was founded by Ukrainians Stas Matvienko and Anna Polischuk in 2015. Before the rebranding in 2016, the application was called Settle.

The company has two offices: in San Francisco and Kyiv. The development team is in Ukraine, and application tests take place in the U.S. The company has about 50 employees.

The company has raised a total of $8.35 million in investments, including from Andreessen Horowitz, Vaizra Investments, Compound, FJ Labs, and the Ukrainian SMRK VC Fund, founded by Oleksandr Kosovan, also known for CleanMyMac.

How the block works

The rule concerns a location and residing in the country, but not an origin. GitLab has no offices, so developers can work from home or anywhere else in the world.

Those employees who want to move to Russia or China will not be able to retain a position related to personal data access.

The change does not affect any of the current GitLab employees. The company will not fire anyone and will continue to hire people in these countries whose work will not be related to personal data.

“The main concern of Gitlab is the possible pressure from the authorities of Russia and China.”

This was reported in a post by Eric Johnson, vice president of GitLab Engineering. The policy update was noticed by Ukrainian Dmytro Veselov.

Does it concern Ukraine

Initially, Johnson’s text mentioned blocking by country of residence for Ukraine as well. However, not because of government pressure, but the frequency of cyberattacks.

As other discussion threads show, the situation was also discussed by Dmitriy Zaporozhets, the Ukrainian co-founder of GitLab. He asked for evidence that Ukraine is in the top 5 countries for cybercrime sources.

In the edited version of the post about blocking, Ukraine is no longer mentioned. GitLab employees can visit the country and work from Ukraine without fear of losing access or jobs.

Investors include Goldman Sachs, Iconiq Capital, Y Combinator, and Continuity Fund. The total amount of investments, raised by GitLab including this round, is $426 million.

History of GitLab

The co-founder of the startup is Kharkiv citizen Dmitriy Zaporozhets. He started GitLab in 2011 having a full-time job. Zaporozhets decided to create an alternative to GitHub, which could be installed on a server since the analogs were too expensive.

In 2013, the second founder, the Dutch entrepreneur Sid Sijbrandij, joined the startup. From that moment, they have started working on GitLab full time.

By the beginning of 2015, the project had grown to 10 people, and by the autumn of the same year – to 50. At that time, GitLab attracted the first investment, $1.5 million, largely thanks to the program in the Y Combinator accelerator. Then the company grew exponentially.

Now GitLab is a collaboration and DevOps platform. The main competitor of the startup is GitHub, which has been owned by Microsoft since 2018. GitLab plans to build an all-in-one platform which will satisfy all the needs of developers and eliminate the need to integrate various services like Jira, GitHub, New Relic and BlackDuck.

Currently, GitLab has around 100,000 corporate clients, including Ask Media Group, Charter Communication, Delta Air Lines, Goldman Sachs, Ticketmaster, Nvidia and others. The company employs more than 800 people from 55 countries.

Dmitriy Zaporozhets in his interview with AIN.UA said the following about the origin on GitLab:

One founder is from Ukraine, so it is partly a Ukrainian startup. Another founder is from the Netherlands, so it is partly a Dutch startup. Later, investors from California came – now it is partly an American startup. Based on this, I believe that GitLab can be called a Ukrainian startup.

Investments in GitLab:

• 2015: $1.5 million, Seed Round. Investors: 500 Startups, Crunchfund, Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Khosla Ventures.
• 2015: $4 million, Series A round. Investor: Khosla Ventures.
• 2016: $20 million, Series B round. Investors: August Capital, Khosla Ventures, and Y Combinator.
• 2017: $20 million, Series C round . Investor is GV (formerly known as Google Ventures).
• 2018: $110 million and valued at $1.1 billion, Series D round. Investors: Iconiq Capital, GV, and Khosla Ventures.
• 2019: $268 million at valuation of $2.7 billion.

Future plans:

Now GitLab has 222 available vacancies, which the company plans to fill as soon as possible. In addition, the startup is planning an IPO: according to the plan, the listing should take place on November 18, 2020.

The startup analyzes up to 20 different metrics about the business to display its own index, taking into account funding, recruitment rates, and other indicators. According to the GrowJo algorithm, the higher the final rating is the more chance of successful development the company has.

A list of 10,000 companies is available for free. The list includes only companies with registration in the US and Canada, Western Europe, India, and Australia. The top place was taken by Lime, an American service that provides electric scooters for rent.

AIN.UA editors prepared a list of companies with Ukrainian roots or offices in Ukraine. The list is not exhaustive and is subject to updates:

• Verbit.ai (29^th place), an Israeli company that develops a service for transcribing and creating subtitles. Verbit has an R&D center in Ukraine.
• GitLab (158^th place), a service that hosts git repositories, and the main competitor of GitHub. In October 2018, GitLab raised $100 million and was valued at $1 billion. Dmitry Zaporozhets, co-founder of the project, in the interview to AIN.UA, said that the company “can be called a Ukrainian startup”.
• 3DLook (545^th place), a Ukrainian AR startup that works on the technology of scanning the human body by a photo. Last year 3DLook attracted $1 million from U. Ventures and 500 Startups.
• People.ai (772^nd place), a startup with Ukrainian roots, which develops AI platform for sales departments. In total, it attracted $37 million.
• DreamTeam (1,242^nd place), a platform and payment gateway for esports and gaming, founded by Alexander Kokhanovskyy. In September 2018, DreamTeam received $5 million from Mangrove Capital Partners.
• OSF Global Services (3,457^th place), a system integrator with offices in Lviv, Odesa, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Chernivtsi.
• PDFfiller.com (4,112^th place), a service for electronic document management with revenue of $10 million in 2016. Over 500 employees work in the company’s Kyiv office.
• Wirex (4,474^th place), a UK-based company with an R&D office in Kyiv.
• Playwing (4,578^th place), a Game Studio with an office in London and a branch in Kharkiv. The company is owned by Ubisoft, Guillemot Corporation and Longtail Studios.
• Valtech (5,593^rd place), a global digital agency with 5 offices in Ukraine. The offices are located in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Chernihiv, and Chernivtsi.
• Digicode (6,116^th place), an American outsourcing developer with offices in Kyiv and Poltava.

Photo: Lviv IT Arena

Sid Sijbrandij, the co-founder and CEO noted that this is a special deal. He said that the engineers of Goldman Sachs asked about this investment, they love the service and see it as the future.  The startup will spend the raised funds to keep the leading positions in its categories. To do this, the startup plans to double its staff in 2019.

The principal amount of the round was raised by GitLab in September of this year. That time Iconiq Capital fund, GV and Khosla Ventures invested $100 million in the startup.

Earlier AIN.UA published an interview with Dmitriy Zaporozhets, and also told how GitLab achieved the value of $1 billion.

Photo: IT Arena

Is Ukraine your permanent place of residence?

Yes, I live in Kharkiv. In Ukraine, besides me, there are two more people in the company.

How many people are there in the company?

Now there are 352 people total.

You have no offices, all people work remotely, right?

That’s right: there are no offices, everyone works remotely.

Based on the fact that you actually have no office, people work all over the world and this is 350 people, the main question of the last days is: what country’s company are you?

[Laughs]

Since we have employees in more than 45 countries, we consider ourselves a global company.

Legally, we are also represented in different countries, because in each location, where there are more than 2-3 people, we open a small company in order to pay everyone a salary and there were no problems with that.

When you raised $100 million, you probably saw what was happening on Ukrainian Facebook and local media: many investors indicated that you are not a Ukrainian company. What is your opinion on this?

I myself completely ignored all these conversations, since this is a kind of empty words – everyone has its own pros and cons.

My opinion is the following: one founder is from Ukraine, so it is partly a Ukrainian startup. Another founder is from the Netherlands, so it is partly a Dutch startup. Later, investors from California came – now it is partly an American startup. Based on this, I believe that GitLab can be called a Ukrainian startup.

Have any Ukrainian foundations tried to invest in your project?

No, any of them tried. I talked to a couple of people at the very beginning, however, we did not find a common language. Then I wrote on Twitter, however, did not find support there either.

Well, theoretically: if local funds offered you investments, would you accept?

Sure, why not.

How much money are we talking about, meaning the sum of the initial investment: hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars?

It was just about any money at all. I am an engineer, I wrote a product. I needed not just money, but people with money that would help scale up the project, work on the business part.

The problem was also that six years ago I did not have any networking at all, I did not know anyone and really did not understand where to look for money. Now my social circle is completely different. In addition, I was making an opensource product, it scared away many investors. All of it summed up together, and at first it was difficult to find investments.

And later, when you attracted some investments, did Ukrainian funds start coming to you? GitLab has become a big and visible startup.

Not until the last moment: quite recently someone contacted us, however, as you see, it did not get any further.

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When did you start your partnership with Sid Sijbrandij from the Netherlands?

In words, it was in 2013, but officially all the documents were signed in 2014.

Did you split the company equally?

I cannot comment on this question.

How do investors react on a fact that you have no offices? Were there any issues about it when raising funds?

No, there were no problems. They see that due to the absence of rental fees, we can save up funds. Renting an office somewhere in California can cost several millions and we don’t have these expenses. And since there are no offices, we are free to hire people all over the world.

It is also worth noting that despite the absence of offices, we have a full-fledged structure of a large company: we have managers in various areas, whether those are legal or financial issues, or any other. And when the task arises – for example, the search for investments – this is done by a specific person, whose responsibility is to work with investors. We are building a full-fledged big company with a clear structure.

GitLab raised investments almost every year – do you participate in communication with investors?

Practically no, these are other people’s tasks. My area of responsibility is the technical direction.

The raised $100 million is the last round, right? Is IPO going next?

According to the current plan, in 2020 the company will really be ready to enter the stock exchange. Now this is our next step, other rounds are not planned yet.

Do you have a rough estimate on which you are planning an IPO?

Yes, there is such an assessment, it is being adapted all the time, depending on various factors. Obviously, this will be above $1 billion since we are actively engaged in product development and business capitalization now. For example, we plan to grow up to 500 employees, invest in marketing, etc. I can’t say the exact figure.

How are you looking for people? What are the criteria?

Obviously, this should be a high-level specialist. At the same time, we try to hire people from places where the cost of living is not too high. This allows us not to overpay on salaries: even in one country, payment can strongly depend on geography, as in the USA. This helps to optimize our costs, same as absence of offices.

Why don’t you hire in Ukraine?

It’s simple: people do not apply. I would love to hire more here. We always have open positions, and even if a person did not succeed once, it is worth trying again. We do not have such tendency that now we are hiring in the USA only, then in Africa, then Asia. It all depends on the level of specialists and Ukrainians have the same chances as everyone else.

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Does GitLab give employees stock options?

Yes, absolutely everyone. Everyone in our company has the right to a stock option, regardless of the country of residence. We have reserved a part of the shares of the company for it. As usual, in order to get your part at your disposal, you need to work in the company for some time – with us this is a year. After the first 12 months, a person receives a small share – about 25%. A year later, and so on, until he gets all his 100%. If desired, the employee can leave in a year, but then he/she will receive only a small part.

The fact that we are giving shares is, by the way, not a secret – there is even a page on the site about it.

Is the payroll budget the largest part of the company’s expenses?

Yes, although we also spend a lot on infrastructure maintenance.

After Microsoft bought GitHub, there was information that GitLab had grown a lot. Is this trend preserved?

Yes, indeed, the hashtag #movingtogitlab helped us a lot – users actively switched to us. More important is the fact that many world media outlets told us about it, this increased brand awareness. The Microsoft and GitHub deal was somewhat blurred the latter’s brand, which also played into our hands. Therefore, I would note that after the jump in transitions, we did not lose generally in the influx of new users.

Were you offered to sell the company before?

I can’t comment on this information.

Are you considering an option of a direct sale of the company, but not an IPO?

It would be wrong to say no. Everything depends on the amount that we can be potentially offered. Now we are considering an IPO option, since this will allow us to preserve the brand, the structure of the company, our rules of operation, but we will get resources for even more active development. This would not be possible in case of a company takeover. Therefore, this option is not a priority.

It should be reminded that the Company develops the platform for collaboration and DevOps. The key competitor of the Company is a company with similar name – GitHub. In July of 2018 GitHub acquired Microsoft. Thereafter GitLab told about tenfold growth of the number of repositories on the website.

GitLab is going to spend their investments on building a platform “all in one”. This will enable satisfying the developers’ needs and eliminating the need to integrate diverse services like Jira, GitHub, New Relic and BlackDuck. The Company expects to become “the best in the class” in each category of software for DevOps.

According to TechCrunch, the funds received will help the Company to develop the product and prepare for IPO. It is scheduled for 2020.

GitLab was founded in 2014 by Dmitriy Zaporozhets, a Ukrainian citizen, and Sid Sibrangy, a Dutchman. A detailed story of the Company’s birth and formation of the service was earlier posted by AIN.UA. For today, the Company has over 350 employees all over the world and 77 opened vacancies.

For seven years of operation the startup underwent training at Y Combinator, attracted such clients as NASA, CERN, Alibaba, SpaceX, IBM, Expedi, and such investors as GV (formerly Google Ventures), Khosla Ventures and Ashton Kutcher’s fund.

Dmytro Zaporozhets have been interested in software engineering since he was a student of Kharkiv National Automobile and Highway University, majoring in computer-aided diagnosis of motor transport. Entering this higher institution, Dmytro expected that once he would work for design bureau. However, being a third-year student, he realized that they didn’t design Mercedes in Ukraine, as well as that his career prospects are limited to car service. He enjoyed understanding the motor vehicle construction and layout, but not the prospects of lifelong career at auto services company.

At the same, time Dmytro was fascinated by computers and spent most of his spare time on games. He even thought about career of game developer. He learnt С, wrote a copy of two levels of Mario for Windows and began studying software engineering at STEP Computer Academy. Although Dmytro has not graduated the Academy, he became interested in web programming, learnt PHP and HTML, and further – Ruby. In 2011 Dmytro has already been employed by Sphere Software and often applied GitHub in his work.

Today we are all accustomed to GitHub as well as to the fact that it is all right to keep major part of business in a cloud, but at that time the attitude was a little bit different: not all clients were ready to host their products in the cloud, therefore the company applied self-hosted solutions. The problem was that the company had to deal with the 10-year-old self-hosted tools (e.g., GitWeb). They were forced to beg for allotting repository in GitHub within the organization. While working on the project Dmytro and his team encountered the same problem.

“We had no alternative, but GitHub FireWall Edition, which costed starting from $5,000 per year for 20 users. So, we came up with an idea to create an analogue of GitHub, which could be installed on our server. It should be something simple with basic functions: code review, issue tracker, project delivery, adding users with keys to the projects.” Dmytro tells us. He and his colleague Valeriy Sizov commenced working on the project on weekends and in the evenings. The first version of GitLab was released in October of 2011.

Malicious fox

At the beginning the team did not concealed that they were making something similar to GitHub. However, they selected such a name by pure accident: Dmytro and Valery were looking for cheap domains with a short name including git-part. They considered such options as GitHost, GitCode and similar names and found the domain GitLabhq.com for sale, which costed $12 (at that time the projects in the area of hq, for instance, Basecamphq.com, were popular), and the issue with the domain was solved.

GitLab was developed as open source project. Their community included a designer, who drew options for logo. The founders chose a picture with tanuki (a creature from Japanese mythology – werewolf-beast, similar to fox or raccoon, symbolizing well-being). However, in 2015 they decided to change the logo, because the users sent negative feedback stating the icon had unkind look.

“People complained: I work with GitLab 8 hours a day, and this fox on the logo angrily stares at me.” Dmytro Zaporozhets loughs. This time they have found a designer, who specialized in “fox” logos and GitLab’s logo became neutrally abstract.

Business commenced with tweet

Since 2011 a community has begun to develop around GitLab, businessmen also became their users. The Company, where Dmytro Zaporozhets worked as a developer at that time, also started using his service. Sid Sijbrandij (his name is Sitse, but when he moved to the USA, he decided that it would be easier for investors to communicate with Sid), Dutch entrepreneur, was one of the project contributors. In summer of 2012 Dmytro Zaporozhets got a letter, where Sid expressed gratitude for the review and informed that he was going to build SaaS-business based on the service on GitLab.com domain. GitLab operated according to open source license (the MIT license) and it was not contrary to its founders’ interests.

By the end of the year Dmytro Zaporozhets tried to monetize GitLab using donations, but it did not work properly: in the best month the project gathered $100. They also tried to provide support on a paid basis. Although, to earn this way it would complicate the process of installation and updates. By the end of 2012 he still worked full-time, treating GitLab as a hobby. At this moment he realized that he needed to choose: job or his project.

Dmytro tells us, “My heart was in GitLab, but I had financial problems. I wrote in Twitter that I was tired and wished to work on GitLab full time. In a certain time I got a letter from Sid, where he offered me a salary for working on GitLab and helping him with his company. In January of 2013 I started fully to devote my time to the project. Since that time I have been living between two countries: Ukraine and Netherlands.”

In 2014 GitLab has been registered as a company. By 2015 the project has increased to 10 people and by autumn of the same year, after the first seed-round – by 50 people. It is interesting that, unlike multiple Ukrainian projects with Ukrainian cofounders, GitLab does not have any development or R&D office in Ukraine. IT specialists are hired all over the world, from Europe to the USA and Brazil – totally in 39 countries of the world.

The employees work remotely, but a few times a year they meet on summits – half-working and half-entertaining meetings of the entire team. In order to make socialization of the widely disseminated team easier, it became a common practice in GitLab to take virtual coffee breaks: video calls, during which the employees spend their time resting and communicating – similarly as if they were in the office with a cup of coffee.

To lose the first client and to find a business model

GitLab began with self-hosted market. The team saw that many companies started using open source version of GitLab, installing it on their servers. Therefore, GitLab decided that they can sell consulting services, provide assistance in the area of adjustment and customization. The companies-clients often requested to add a couple of functions. This gave birth to the idea of corporate edition “open source version plus a few popular tricks” (something like LDAP authorization protocol). Thus, in summer of 2013 they announced GitLab Enterprise Edition. Since the launch of corporate version the team has realized that it is highly-demanded and this product (and not the consulting and support) became the core business of the company. At the same time, GitLab lost their first client. The reason lied in marketing.

That client was the company, which used GitLab’s service, but further their TOP management decided to transfer the entire company to a single soft. As far as no one knew about GitLab at that moment, the decision was made for the benefit of another service, which was more widely known. According to Dmytro, GitLab always grew in the companies “from the bottom”: a developer installed it on the company’s server, attracted other developers of the department and, in such a manner, a number of users within a company organically increased from the bottom to top. When this number became noticeable, someone from engineering department or bookkeeping contacted GitLab and they bought Enterprise-version, but not this time.

Dmytro states, “It had a strong influence on us. We understood: no matter how good GitLab was, it’s all in vain if nobody knows about our existence. If in future the companies move to single platforms for code hosting and review, we will continue loosing clients and will not be able to grow.”

If there is any place where they could manage to teach the team to grow rapidly and capture the market, it is Silicon Valley.

Y Combinator

Sid proposed to send application to Y Combinator (it was filled in like this). At the beginning the startup encountered fierce competition – they selected literally 1-2% of all submitted applications. Nevertheless, the founders of GitLab were noticed and invited to the interview.

After a few interviews two cofounders were admitted to the program. Although the open core model of GitLab is not very popular among Y Combinator’ projects, a positive role has been played by the developed community (about 800 contributors at that moment) and availability of major clients. Dmytro and Sid have settled in Mountain View that is a 10-minute drive from the incubator. Due to the legendary expensiveness of housing estate in California, they decided to invite a few other employees of GitLab to reside and work together. As a result, eight people resided in a house – almost the whole team of the project at that moment.

Program lasted three months. Every company – participant had to choose the key metrics-numbers that the success is calculated by, to measure it every two weeks and explain such measurements to mentors from Y Combinator. Initially the team chose a number of downloads, but further they replaced it by financial indicators, despite of the fact that mentors considered that it was a bad practice to change metrics in the course of training. However, at that moment, revenue was more important for GitLab that the number of downloads: in contrast to the latter the revenue demonstrates not only the growth of the amount of clients, but also the internal growth of every client. At that time the basic version of GitLab Enterprise Edition costed $39 per user during a year — it was cheap in comparison with the competitors’ prices.

Dmytro says, “Y Combinator facilitated selection of our focus and approach: you have a number, you focus on it and know your numbers. They continuously pushed us forward: better earlier than later, and it doesn’t matter which way. When everyone around you is an entrepreneur and creates crazy things, you need to grow and you are filled with absolutely different mindset –higher, faster and stronger.”

A special value for startups – participants is a demo day at the end of the training, when the TOP investors are invited and a team is allotted 50 minutes for pitch. According to the cofounders, after the demo day all participants received more or less adequate investment offers.

Too much money

It is owing to Y Combinator that the team raised the first round of investments: in July of 2015 they raised $1.5 million from the major funds – 500 Startups, Crunchfund, Sound Ventures of Ashton Kutcher, Liquid 2 Ventures and Khosla Ventures. In September of the same year the startup raised $20 million more from Y Combinator and, finally, this year – $20 million from venture department of Google as a lead-investor. The total amount of the raised investment is estimated as в $45 million, taking into account the fact that the founders haven’t lost control of the project. Dmytro believes, “If it’s ok with your idea of project, its implementation and numbers, the investors from Silicon Valley are quite active and they will be the first to approach you, as incredible as it may sound. All this is a consequence of Y Combinator’s demo day – they have an immense and very effective network.”

Investment contributed to expansion of the team: since spring of 2016 till summer of 2016 the team has increased from 10 to 93 employees. At the moment more than 200 employees work for the company. The clients of the project exceed 100,000 organizations, including NASA, CERN, Alibaba, SpaceX, IBM, Ticketmaster, ING, NASDAQ, Sony, VMWare and Intel. Sid Sijbrandij tells us, “It happened because these companies and organizations themselves were looking for open source solutions. They did not even contact us, but just started using our service.”

I.e., even such kinds of companies encountered GitLab “from the bottom”: initially, ordinary developers commenced using the service, then their teams were attracted and thereby user base progressively increased. However, this time, in contrast to 2013, TechCrunch and Fortune wrote about GitLab, and Forbes considered Dmytro to be among the best 30 IT entrepreneurs of 2016 – the project became well-known.

GitLab grew in terms of revenue and structurally extended: they created new PR and marketing departments, sales team, security and infrastructure departments. Dmytro Zaporozhets says, “Now the market knows about GitLab as alternative software for the enterprise. So, the problem that we had faced in 2014, was eliminated.”

Due to a remarkable growth of project users (more than 3 million projects and 2 million users), they have problems with scaling: if the service hosts repository files for 100 terabytes, not all file systems are able to sustain such load. It means that they need to update the service and build up server base. This is also a reason for uptime improvement: from 99.5 to 99.9. Nevertheless, the biggest challenge is the product.

Dmytro Zaporozhets summarizes, “Our idea is that the developer should come to the office in the morning, open GitLab and have no need in other products. We have to ensure that all undertakings, from chat to deploy, take place on our platforms. We would like to encompass a full range of development and operations, from issue tracker, planning, road maps, development and management to packaging in containers, release, and monitoring. We have exceeded the framework of competition with GitHub long time ago. Our goal for 2018 is to complete DevOps.”