Company: Lucidchart
What it does: A visual workspace that allows people to collaborate on diagrams and data visualization.
Total raised: $114 million
Valuation: n/a
Karl Sun, co-founder and CEO of Lucidchart, says he didn't originally have plans to start a company, but he stumbled into it.
His company develops a visual workspace that allows people to collaborate on diagrams and data visualization. Originally, Lucidchart started off as just a diagramming application, where people used it to make charts for presentations and reports.
But now it's also a tool to help people visualize complicated systems and processes they may encounter at work. For example, developers may use it to map out the applications they deployed on cloud computing services or to monitor how much bandwidth they're using.
"Whether you're in marketing or PR or sales or engineering, the number of applications and tools you use is exponentially larger than before," Sun said. "It's hard to understand and grapple with all you're working with. Our goal is to help you see and understand the system that you're working with and see and understand the data in those systems."
After serving in various roles at Google, including in business development, patents, and opening a business in China, Sun felt that it was time to move on and try something new.
"I always liked doing something new and different and being part of a smaller team at Google," Sun said. "When I joined, it was 600 people. That was a lot more fun than when it got to several thousand or 10,000 people. I left in part because it was time -- time to find a new challenge and something interesting to do."
When Sun moved to Utah, he met cofounder Ben Dilts, who at the time was still a computer science student. Dilts built the first version of Lucidchart because his startup needed a better way to create diagrams.
"I saw the product and fell in love," Sun said. "In many ways, it was a much better user experience than even Google's text-based applications like Docs and Slides."
In 2010, Sun decided to jump in and co-found Lucidchart with Dilts and Darrell Swain, who is now the CEO and founder of a startup called Tiled.
Sun says that Google taught him the importance of hiring and creating a collaborative culture for people to thrive and help each other.
He's taken with him "this relentless focus on hiring great people and giving them autonomy and turning them loose and letting them really be able to spread their wings and do great things," Sun said.
"We let people have a lot of authority and autonomy, but we also expect people to do what's best for the company as a whole," he said.