More than 20 founders of companies like Snyk, Sumo Logic, Fastly, LaunchDarkly, GitHub, and Datadog invest in Heavybit to capitalize on growing demand for developer platforms
Heavybit, the leading investor in developer-first startups, has closed Heavybit Holdings IV, L.P., an $80 million early-stage fund to increase its check size and portfolio support as the demand for developer-focused software experiences hyper growth.
“I’m thrilled to participate in the fund because I’m investing back into my own community”
Over 40 founders and early executives central to the DevOps, CI/CD, Jamstack, and serverless software movements personally invested in the fund, a move that speaks to the firm’s success with technical teams.
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“Heavybit was critical to my startup journey, and it’s my privilege to give back by sharing my knowledge with other founders and now investing in the latest fund,” said Guy Podjarny, serial entrepreneur and founder of developer security platform and Heavybit alum Snyk. “Heavybit’s culture is important and unique, offering technical founders a safe space to discuss successes and failures openly and to help us grow and avoid costly mistakes. Having this caliber of community in a VC partner is a force multiplier for developer-oriented startups.”
“I’m thrilled to participate in the fund because I’m investing back into my own community,” said Simon Wistow, co-founder of edge cloud platform Fastly. “This group of founders are building the best tools for developers, and Heavybit’s global community and staff deeply understand the kind of support and go-to-market execution needed for this type of company.”
Other successful dev tool company founders that invested in the fund include Edith Harbaugh, LaunchDarkly co-founder and CEO, Sumo Logic co-founder and CTO Christian Beedgen, and Datadog co-founder and CTO Alexis Lê-Quôc.
Gartner forecasts that businesses will spend $100B more on enterprise software in 2023 than they did in 2022. In light of recent economic and global events, teams are forced to take action to balance increased IT demand and dwindling IT staff. This puts the need for better developer tooling and infrastructure – including managed cloud services, data management and security – at the forefront.
“The APIs and tools that developers use are incredibly valuable but it’s hard to build products that developers love and it’s even harder to turn those products into successful businesses,” said Tom Drummond, Managing Partner. “We created Heavybit to help founders do just that. Our latest early-stage fund, fund IV, will allow us to help even more founders in even more ways.”
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Since launching in 2013, Heavybit has specialized in scaling early-stage developer and software infrastructure companies. The firm has invested in teams in 35 cities across 15 countries, and its community has grown to over 40,000 members. Heavybit’s portfolio companies have raised approximately $4 billion in aggregate financing with the portfolio collectively valued at over $30 billion.
The firm’s expertise and structured program in developer-first go-to-market has become even more critical to technical founders in an uncertain economy. To date, Heavybit Holdings IV, L.P. has invested in 10 early-stage companies. With today’s announcement, the team is expanding the size and scope of its investments and its portfolio support:
- The latest fund will invest in startups that are redefining how teams build, deploy, secure, and scale mission-critical software. The fund will primarily lead Pre-Seed and Seed rounds with typical check size ranges from $500,000 to $3 million depending on company stage and valuation. As part of the investment, the firm’s 141 globally distributed portfolio company founders receive weekly support from Partners, staff, and 650+ domain-specific advisors;
- Heavybit has doubled its team to expand portfolio support including adding Chef cofounder and DevOps pioneer Jesse Robbins as General Partner, LaunchDarkly’s former Director of Corporate Marketing Andrea Echstenkamper as VP Marketing, and VC Finance veteran Susie Singh as Director of Finance.
