DEV Raises $11.5M to Expand Fastest-Growing Social Network for the Software Industry

BROOKLYN, N.Y., Nov. 7, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- DEV, creators of the fastest-growing social network for developers, announced a $11.5M Series A funding led by Mayfield with participation from existing investors including OSS Capital and Charge VC. DEV operates a social network for software developers built entirely on open source software. The company believes the future of social networking is distributed open source technology established on trust and transparency, and as such, has built a technology platform that does not track users, centralize control, or otherwise hoard user data. The new financing will be used to expand the development of its technology platform to provide an inclusive space for software developers all over the world. With this round, Navin Chaddha and Vivek Saraswat from Mayfield will join DEV's Board of Directors. 

DEV was designed to serve programmers of all backgrounds and experience levels looking for a community experience beyond code collaboration and troubleshooting advice. DEV members get together to publish work, participate in conversations, elevate their skills, and support each other in a positive community environment. To ensure that DEV remains inclusive to all community members, regardless of background, the founders have created a diverse moderator pool who work together to ensure constructive dialogue is emphasized over pedantic arguments and harassment. DEV currently serves more than 5M unique visitors a month, with more than 250K active signed up members. 

"We found the DEV founders inspiring in their mission to bring open source to the masses and solve problems with centralization and consolidation in social media," said Navin Chaddha, Managing Director at Mayfield. "Similar to the Hashicorp team, which leveraged the vision of its founders into a high-velocity business, DEV has built the fastest growing, most inclusive social network for the software industry. We believe this is the next paradigm for community building, and are honored to partner with Ben, Peter and Jess on their journey."

"We started with a simple, but daunting, mission of bringing truly inclusive community to the software industry. As the field of software development goes mainstream, it is unacceptable that gatekeeping, discouragement and harassment remain so deeply ingrained in the culture," said co-founder, Ben Halpern. "Having deeply important core values begets more values and as we collaborated with the community, we discovered the incredibly positive impact we could develop through leaning into open source for the purpose of transparency and trust. It has been an incredibly fulfilling journey of creating change in the tech world."

An Open Source Platform: Built by Developers for Developers
DEV is built as an open source codebase, allowing anyone to inspect any line of code. DEV's distributed community of thousands of developers regularly contribute issue reports, fix bugs, and build features, helping to create an increasingly valuable and self-reinforcing resource for software developers. The platform is bringing open source technology all the way to the end user in order to foster trust. The organization allows anyone to run its code, and envisions a future where social media is made up of separate, but compatible communities of different shapes and sizes. These separate community networks will empower hobbyist clubs, fanbases, friend circles, workplaces, and more groups, to thrive on a modern platform without handing over their data to massive technology corporations.

"At Vue Vixens, we love DEV because it allows us to reach a new audience with quality Vue-focused content. DEV is our official blog and we really enjoy interfacing with folks on the comments, which tend to have a very positive vibe," said Jen Looper, Cloud Developer Advocate Lead at Microsoft and Founder of VueVixens.org

About Dev
DEV is the fastest-growing social network for the software industry, already serving over 5 million unique visitors a month and more than 250K registered users. Based on open-source software, DEV serves programmers of all backgrounds and experience levels looking for a community experience. DEV members publish work, participate in conversations, elevate their skills, and support each other in a positive community environment. DEV was founded in 2017 in Brooklyn, New York by Ben Halpern, Peter Frank and Jess Lee.

SOURCE DEV

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