Why Gitlab became a billion dollar company?

Git is a popular version control system. Software developers write code and the files change over time. Git stores this information and makes it easy to manage large software development projects. Github and Gitlab solve this problem with contrasting philosophies. With development and operations coming together, both expand beyond version control covering the software development and DevOps life cycle. 

2013 – Launched open-source community & enterprise editions 

2014 – Founded Gitlab around the open-source Gitlab project

2015 – Alibaba, IBM and SpaceX as notable customers

2016 – Adopted the open-core business model

2018 – Made a move from Microsoft Azure to Google cloud

2019 – Total money raised $413.5M; valuation at $2.7B

Open-source led business model

The core functionality is available under the open-source MIT license while the additional features under the proprietary license. Gitlab provides both community and enterprise editions. More than 100,000 enterprises currently use Gitlab on-premises. These enterprises and individual open-source contributors hack on, contribute back to become Gitlab better every single day 

Developer-centric products

Software is eating the world. Most enterprises are using software to run the company’s operations and build the core product that they offer to their customers. Developer-centric products are attracting capital as developers are becoming important buyers in an enterprise.

Software that is essential to increase developer productivity is becoming ever-important and Gitlab does precisely that.