HeroDevs, a prominent player in the tech industry, announced a major milestone today with a successful strategic growth investment of $125 million from PSG. This significant funding round marks one of the largest first rounds of investment in Utah’s history, highlighting the ambitious trajectory of the company founded in 2018 in Sandy, Utah.
With over 1,000 customers, including a substantial number of Fortune 100 companies, HeroDevs has made remarkable strides in the competitive open source sector and has consistently achieved profitability since its inception. The company was also honored last year as the top Utah-based enterprise on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing companies.
In a recent Q&A, HeroDevs founder and CEO Aaron Frost shared insights into the company’s decision to pursue fundraising after seven years in business.
“We’ve amassed over 1,000 customers, and the number of demands is a number we can’t keep up with at the current scale. We really need to pour on a lot of size into the business in order to expand into more technologies,” Frost explained. He emphasized that the urgency for growth was pivotal for HeroDevs’ future, stating, “No one has ever gotten here in open source, and if we want to be the ones that are here in 100 years, we need to grow very, very quickly.”
When discussing the uniqueness of HeroDevs, Frost highlighted how the company’s approach differs from that of typical open source competitors. Most companies in this space tend to focus on a single product, yet HeroDevs has leveraged diverse expertise to expand its product offerings. “We think we turned a corner where most people stop at a product. I do think, cosmically, our first product was just the right shot at the moon, because we piled on a lot of ARR in six months — more than most Utah companies will pile on in a decade, and that was wild,” he remarked.
A portion of the funding is earmarked for giving back to the open source community, showcasing HeroDevs’ commitment to social responsibility. “Part of our historical growth is giving back to the community. We built a pretty sizable fund into this round where we give back to the open source communities and say, ‘Hey, here’s 20 million that you guys can come and get,’” Frost said. This initiative not only supports the company’s growth but also fosters development within the open source ecosystem.
Frost recounted the significant gap in the market that inspired the founding of HeroDevs. Beginning as consultants, the team recognized a unique opportunity when older versions of open source software became obsolete. “Google had this old version (Angular JS) that we were great at migrating from, but they killed it… and that was a problem for me. So I said, ‘Hey, what if we copy that version — the last version they ever ship — and we keep it secure after?’” he explained.
HeroDevs’ innovative solution addressed a crucial issue for companies that were financially tied to outdated software versions. By maintaining these older versions, the company enables clients to transition at their own pace rather than being forced into quick updates.
In discussing PSG’s investment, Frost attributes their interest to HeroDevs’ data-driven approach. PSG’s recent announcement of an $8 billion fund signifies a strategic push into tech and tech-enabled services. Frost shared how the solid data from HeroDevs’ operations makes it easier to illustrate the company’s potential to investors. “The amount of data we know about our business is phenomenal compared to other people our size, so telling the story when you have data the way we do is actually pretty chill,” he noted.
The CEO emphasized that PSG recognized not only the impressive metrics but also the trustworthiness and capability of the HeroDevs team, which played a critical role in securing the investment.
The newly acquired funding will enable HeroDevs to accelerate the development of meaningful enterprise products. “It’s all about putting more products that are meaningful to enterprises into our catalog in a shorter amount of time. This is all about doing what we were already going to do in a much shorter time frame,” Frost stated. Additionally, the company aims to bolster recognition of the HeroDevs brand, further solidifying its position in the technology landscape.
As HeroDevs moves forward with this substantial boost, the combination of strategic growth and community contribution positions the company to make lasting impacts in both the technology sector and the open source community.
image source from：utahbusiness
