Announcing our latest fundraising, our new office in San Francisco, and joining the Heavybit accelerator.
We are very proud to announce that we have taken on a seed funding of $2.4 million, in a round led by Heavybit Inc and Alliance Venture, together with a group of angel investors from the developer community, including Jon Dahl (founder and CEO of Mux), and Ohad Eder-Pressman (CEO and co-founder of Stackbit and board member of Netlify).
Becoming a member of Heavybit, the San Francisco accelerator and fund, has been our top choice of partner for the journey ahead, having earlier backed companies like Stripe, Pagerduty, Circle CI, Netlify, and Mux. James Lindenbaum, Heroku founder, and the team around him has a unique understanding of the space we are in and a deep understanding of how to develop developer-centric software for the long run. This gives us a special opportunity to learn from the best, and take Sanity further in the direction of becoming the choice for developers whenever they need a content backend.
We thought this was a good time to come to California, and become Sanity, Inc. So this summer we opened an office in San Francisco. Even Westvang and I, Magnus, have moved from Norway with our families. Rune Botten and Espen Hovlandsdal will also spend a lot of time in the Bay Area. We will all be working out of the Heavybit Clubhouse in SOMA. This means that you are welcome to visit us in both Oslo, Norway, and in San Francisco, US. The whole team traveled to SF to kick it off in August, and we arranged a meetup at Heavybit HQ. Watch the videos here.
It has been quite a journey since we launched Sanity to the public back in November 2017. Since then we have had over 10k people try it out. The focus has always been on creating the best developer experiences for working with structured content. And we’re staying the course, in fact, we’re doubling down on it. Sanity should be the first choice for developers whenever they need a content backend. And for that to happen, we have to provide some excellent tooling.
But we are not only spending our days designing user interfaces and writing code. We are also making Sanity a sustainable business, and growing the platform. We have been very fortunate in having an inspiring group of people choosing Sanity.io and running us in production for their services and products. Among the over 100 paying organizations, we can name companies like Cornerstone OnDemand, MIT, Condé Nast, Micro:bit, and Office for Metropolitan Architecture. We have also become an appreciated platform for agencies like McCann, Moving Brands, and many more.
It’s easy to forget that developer tools, and technology isn’t just about the code that’s put up on GitHub, or the user interfaces that ends up in people’s browsers. It’s as much about the community and the sharing that comes with it. People keep mentioning the developer community as a core feature. And with good reason. We have nothing but gratitude for the excellent group of people that have ended up sharing their experiences, questions, and help. The feedback, good or bad, has been invaluable for us, and the enthusiasm is part of what makes it really fun to go to work.
This wouldn’t be possible without people taking their time to try us out, and sharing their experiences, and for that, we are truly very thankful.
With more funds, new partners and new offices in the US we are prepared and committed to continue this journey or making your experience working with content better and to get more people experiencing the opportunities with Sanity.io. We have only just started!