Latest / Startup Stories with Fexingo: Conversations About Founders, Funding, and Building Companies from Zero / How GitLab Built a Remote-First Billion Dollar Company
Transcript
- Lucas: Last week I was reading through a company handbook — two thousand pages of it — and I realized I was looking at the actual blueprint of a business that has no physical headquarters, no assigned desks, and no expectation that any two employees ever meet in person. Luna: Wait — you read a company handbook for fun? Lucas: It sounds weird, I know. But this is the GitLab handbook, and it's public. Anyone can read it. And it's the closest thing we have to a user manual for how to build a remote-first billion-dollar company. Luna: So today we're talking GitLab. The DevOps platform that went public in 2021 via a direct listing and is now worth around 12 billion dollars — all while having zero offices. Lucas: Exactly. And the story starts in 2011, when a Ukrainian developer named Dmitriy Zaporozhets created an open-source tool for managing code repositories. He called it GitLab. A Dutch entrepreneur named Sid Sijbrandij found it, started contributing, and eventually convinced Dmitriy to co-found a company around it. Luna: The classic open-source origin story — but what made GitLab different was the bet on remote work from day one. Lucas: Right. Sid and Dmitriy were in different countries — Netherlands and Ukraine — so they had no choice but to work remotely. But rather than treat it as a temporary constraint, Sid decided to make remote the defining feature of the company. Luna: And that was in 2011, long before remote work was trendy. We're talking pre-pandemic, pre-Zoom-everything. Lucas: Exactly. By 2014, when GitLab raised its first venture round — 1.5 million dollars from Y Combinator — the team was already scattered across time zones. And instead of trying to centralize, Sid doubled down. Luna: I remember reading that they formalized it in 2015: they decided that GitLab would never have an office. Not even a co-working space. Lucas: That's right. And this was a radical bet. Most investors at the time assumed that fast-growing startups needed in-person collaboration. But GitLab argued the opposite — that remote work, done deliberately, could be a competitive advantage. Luna: The key word being 'deliberately' — because they didn't just say 'work from wherever.' They built an entire operating system around it. Lucas: That's where the handbook comes in. Sid Sijbrandij has said that the handbook is the company's 'source of truth.' Every process, every decision, every policy is documented and searchable. New hires don't shadow a colleague — they read the handbook. Luna: And because it's public, customers and open-source contributors can see exactly how the company operates. It's a transparency play. Lucas: It's almost radical transparency. For example, GitLab publishes its salary formula — a spreadsheet that shows exactly what everyone earns, based on role, location, and experience. They also publish their strategic plans, their quarterly objectives, and even notes from board meetings. Luna: That would terrify most CEOs. Lucas: It would. But Sid's argument is that transparency builds trust, and trust enables speed. When everyone has access to the same information, you don't need layers of management to relay messages. Luna: Let's talk numbers. GitLab now has about 30 million registered users and over 1,500 employees spread across 65 countries. How do they actually coordinate? Lucas: They rely heavily on asynchronous communication. The default is to write things down — in the handbook, in issues, in merge requests — rather than scheduling a meeting. Meetings are the exception, not the rule. And when they do meet, it's usually recorded and transcribed. Luna: There's a famous principle they call the '80-20 rule' for remote: 80 percent of communication should be asynchronous, 20 percent synchronous. It forces clarity. Lucas: And that clarity creates a kind of discipline. You can't rely on a whiteboard or a hallway conversation. You have to articulate your thinking in a way that someone in a different time zone can understand. Luna: But it's not all sunshine. Critics point out that asynchronous work can lead to burnout — because you're never really 'off' — and that it can stifle spontaneous creativity. Lucas: GitLab acknowledges that. They've experimented with things like 'no meeting days' and mandatory vacation time. And they've built a culture where it's okay to say 'I'm done for the day' without guilt. But the spontaneity problem is real — they try to compensate by having regular virtual social events and occasional in-person summits. Luna: Still, the model has attracted a lot of talent. People who value autonomy and deep focus over commuting and water-cooler chat. Lucas: And it's attracted customers. GitLab's main product is a DevOps platform that competes with Microsoft's GitHub. The key differentiator is that GitLab offers a single application for the entire software development lifecycle — from planning to monitoring — whereas GitHub relies on integrations. Luna: That integrated approach has been a big selling point for enterprise clients. Companies like NVIDIA, Siemens, and the US Department of Defense use GitLab. Lucas: And the business model is a mix of open-source and proprietary. The core product is free, but enterprises pay for features like security scanning, compliance, and higher-tier support. That's how they reached over 600 million dollars in annual recurring revenue by 2025. Luna: Now, the direct listing in 2021 was a risky move. Most companies go through a traditional IPO, but GitLab chose to list directly on the NASDAQ under the ticker g l a b. No underwriters, no roadshow — just a reference price and open trading. Lucas: Sid Sijbrandij said they wanted to avoid the 'pop' — the first-day spike that benefits Wall Street banks but not the company or its long-term investors. Instead, they let the market find the price. The stock opened at around $100 and eventually climbed to $150, valuing the company at over $15 billion at its peak. Luna: Of course, like many tech stocks, it's come down since then. But the company's fundamentals have continued to improve — revenue growth, margin expansion, and a path to profitability. Lucas: One thing that stands out about Sid Sijbrandij is his personal story. He beat cancer twice — a rare form of bone cancer — and he's open about how that shaped his philosophy. He's said that facing mortality made him focus on building a company that would outlast him, one that doesn't depend on any single person. Luna: That's a powerful motivator. And it echoes in the handbook-first culture — if everything is documented, the company can survive anyone leaving. Lucas: Right. And that philosophy extends to their hiring. GitLab looks for people who are 'managers of one' — self-starters who don't need hand-holding. They also screen for 'no ego' — candidates who are willing to be wrong and change their minds. Luna: I think one of the most interesting lessons from GitLab is that they've proven remote work at scale is possible, but it requires a level of intentionality that most companies aren't willing to invest. Lucas: Absolutely. It's not just about letting people work from home. It's about rewriting every assumption about how work gets done. And that's a hard, ongoing process. Luna: Speaking of intentionality — we put a lot of that into these conversations. We research for hours to bring you specific numbers and original angles. And we do it without any ads or sponsors. Lucas: Yeah, we deliberately keep this show ad-free. If you've gotten value from it — maybe a new framework for thinking about your own work, or a concrete example you've used in a meeting — and you want to support that choice, there's a simple way. It's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: No pressure at all. Just know that your support helps us keep this independent and free for everyone. Lucas: Back to GitLab — I think one of the biggest takeaways is that remote-first isn't a compromise. For them, it's an edge. And as more companies try to figure out their post-pandemic work models, GitLab's handbook is sitting there, free for anyone to copy. Luna: And that's the kind of open-source thinking that built the company in the first place. Lucas: Next time, we're going to look at a company that took the opposite approach — built around physical proximity and serendipity. It's a good contrast.