A complete and open DevOps platform, delivered as a single application.
YC Winter 2015 · Accepted · Read the original on getintoyc.com →
GitLab applied in 2015 doing about $1M in revenue, growing 60% a month, with 100,000 organizations and 600+ contributors — run by eight people. The application mentions turning down a $10M acquisition offer “because we want to grow this into a large company.”
They did. GitLab IPO'd on the Nasdaq in October 2021 at an ~$11B valuation. It now does about $955M in revenue (fiscal 2026, up 26%) and just authorized a $400M buyback — though the stock has cooled to roughly a $4.5B market cap, well under its first day. Still all-remote, the way it started. Co-founder Sid Sijbrandij stepped down as CEO in December 2024 to treat cancer and became executive chair; co-founder Dmitriy Zaporozhets left in 2021 when his self-set ten-year plan ran out.
The whole bet is in the application: serve the on-premise market GitHub ignored, let open source do the marketing, charge for the enterprise edition. Read it knowing they'd turn down $10M on the way to an $11B IPO.