In 2012, Sid Sijbrandij read about a free open-source project that helped developers collaborate called GitLab. He told the developer he was going to take it, put it on the web, and run it as a business — and he got his blessing to do it, no compensation required.
"That's very open minded and very much the ethics of open source: You don't owe me anything," Sijbrandij told Business Insider.
Today, more than 100,000 organizations are using GitLab, he says. And he's aiming for an IPO in 2020. Sijbrandij built the entire company — 500 employees in 50 countries — with no corporate offices, and every employee, including himself, working remotely.
GitLab has focused its offering on the super-hot DevOps market, a trend around letting programmers release new software features in a constant stream. That requires giving developers special tools for creating, tracking, and monitoring their software, which has been a major focus for GitLab.
By September, around the same time Microsoft bought his biggest competitor, GitHub, for $7.5 billion, GitLab raised a $100 million round at a $1.1 billion valuation, for $146 million total.