Croatian-founded startup Daytona has secured $5 million in a seed round led by Upfront Ventures, with participation from existing investor 500 Global. The fresh investment will enable Daytona to lower the barrier to entry and democratize software development on a global scale.
- Established in 2023 by Ivan Burazin, Vedran Jukić, and Goran Draganić, Daytona is a secure, self-hosted open-source development environment manager. It simplifies and streamlines development environments, promoting efficient collaboration and maximizing developer productivity. Daytona allows developers to create a full environment with a single command, offering a SaaS-like experience without the associated hosting costs.
- Earlier this year, Daytona tackled the Works on My Machine issue by releasing its solution as open-source under the Apache 2.0 license. This allows developers to customize and extend the platform according to their specific requirements. The project quickly gained traction, accumulating over 2,000 GitHub stars within 48 hours and maintaining a prominent position on GitHub's trending repository list.
Details of the deal
- The investment was led by Upfront Ventures, a venture capital firm established in 1996 that backs tech founders and startups from Southern California, the US, Europe, and India. The firm has invested in 456 projects, with a portfolio that now includes 105 startups. Upfront Ventures has facilitated 162 exits, including dot.LA, behold, WithOthers, and SonicEnergy.
“We’re thrilled to support the Daytona team’s mission to simplify development environments. Daytona’s vision of simplifying and democratizing development environments aligns perfectly with our investment philosophy. We’re thrilled to support its mission and look forward to seeing the additional impact the team will have on the developer community,” Partner at Upfront Ventures, Kevin Zhang, stated.
- The round also included participation from existing investor 500 Global, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, managing $2.7 billion in assets.
- The fresh capital raised will enable Daytona to fund the Works on My Machine project while also lowering entry barriers and democratizing software development globally.
