INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
It actually has had a page on its website for some time stating it intends to go public on November 18, 2020
Today, the company announced a huge $268 million Series E on a tidy $2.75 billion valuation.Investors include Adage Capital Management,
Alkeon Capital, Altimeter Capital, Capital Group, Coatue Management, D1 Capital Partners, Franklin Templeton, Light Street Capital, Tiger
and Two Sigma Investments.The company seems to be primed and ready for that eventual IPO
Last year, GitLab co-founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij said that his CFO Paul Machle told him he wanted to begin planning to go public, and he
would need two years in advance to prepare the company
Sijbrandij told TechCrunch.He said that he considered it a done deal and put the date on the GitLab Strategy page, a page that outlines the
It turned out that he was a bit too quick on the draw
Machle had checked the date in the interim and realized that it was a Monday, which is not traditionally a great day to go out, so they
decided to do it two days later
$268 million, it gives the company considerable runway ahead of that planned event, but Sijbrandij says it also gives him flexibility in how
to take the company public
You can do an IPO or direct listing
We wanted to preserve the optionality of doing a direct listing next year
he explained.Sijbrandij says that the company made a deliberate decision to be transparent early on
negative impact on the community and the number of contributions
Transparency was a way to combat that, and it seems to be working.He reports that the community contributes 200 improvements to the GitLab
ambition is to stay an independent company
It has been on a steady growth trajectory ever since, hauling in more than $426 million
