Netlify

Netlify, Inc.

Formerly called	MakerLoop, Inc.
Founded	January 27, 2014 (2014-01-27) (incorporation) April 7, 2015 (2015-04-07) (public launch)
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Christian Bach (President) Mathias Biilmann (CEO)
Products	Jamstack Netlify CMS Netlify Build Netlify Edge Netlify Dev Netlify Drop
Website

Netlify is a San Francisco–based cloud computing company that offers hosting and serverless backend services for web applications and static websites.

The company provides hosting for websites whose source files are stored in the version control system Git and then generated into static web content files served via a Content Delivery Network. Given the limitations of the purely static model, the company later expanded services to include content management systems, and features of serverless computing to handle websites with interactive features.

History

A predecessor to the company was founded in 2014 when Danish entrepreneur Mathias Biilmann noticed the emergence of Git-centered workflows with modern build tools and static sites generators, a shift he described as "a massive change happening in the web development space", while running MakerLoop, a content management startup based in San Francisco. In 2015, Biilmann invited Christian Bach, his childhood friend who was working as an executive at a creative services agency in Denmark, to join him as co-founder in his new venture. In 2017, MakerLoop was rebranded as Netlify.

Beyond the initial focus on hosting for static websites, and attracting many developers with a free basic offer, the company expanded to a broader offering including serverless functions and test and deployment services.

Financing

On August 16, 2016, Netlify raised $2.1 million from the founders of GitHub, Heroku, and Rackspace Cloud.

On August 9, 2017, the company announced that it had raised $12 million in series A funding from Andreessen Horowitz.

On October 9, 2018, the company issued a press release announcing that it had completed a series B round led by Kleiner Perkins—with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Slack and Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, Yelp CEO and co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman, among others—securing $30 million.

On March 4, 2020, Netlify secured $53 million in a series C round led by EQT Ventures, the venture capital branch of Swedish investment company EQT, with contributions by existing investors Adreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, and newcomer Preston-Werner Ventures.

On November 17, 2021, Netlify secured $105 million in a series D round led by Bessemer Venture Partners at a $2 billion valuation, with contributions by existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, BOND, EQT Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Mango Capital, and Menlo Ventures.

Products

Netlify CMS

File:Netlify CMS dashboard.png

Netlify CMS dashboard

To address some of the limitations of static websites, which tend to be less sophisticated and harder to use for the website maintainer than a dynamic content publishing solution such as WordPress or Medium, Netlify develops its own open source headless content management system called Netlify CMS.

Jamstack

Main article: Jamstack

Jamstack is a cloud-native web development architecture based on client-side JavaScript code, reusable APIs, and markup content. It was pioneered and created by Netlify. In its purest form, the idea of Jamstack is that a web application is pre-built into static pages, using content and code to generate the output. In basic terms, Jamstack is a significant shift in focus from the now abstractable back end to the now-powerful front end.

Reception

In March 2017, Netlify CMS was named "GitHub project of the week" by the Software Development Times.

On July 10, 2018, GitHub founder and former CEO Tom Preston-Werner predicted that "within 5 years, you'll build your next large scale, fully featured web app with JAMstack and deploy on Netlify."

Netlify customers include Google, Facebook, Verizon, NBC, Samsung, Nike, Cisco, Atlassian, LiveChat, TriNet, Loblaw, Wieden+Kennedy, Vue.js, Citrix, Peloton, Kubernetes, Lodash, Smashing Magazine, and Sequoia Capital.