Open source compliance and security platform FOSSA has acquired developer community platform StackShare, the company confirmed to TechCrunch.
StackShare is one of the popular platforms for developers to discuss, track, and share the tools they use to build their applications, including everything from the front-end JavaScript frameworks they use to the cloud providers they use for specific tasks.
The company's sole founder, Jonas Bechared, told TechCrunch that he started the company because he personally found it difficult to choose which technology to use to build web applications. “I saw that many other developers were facing the same challenge and thought the best solution would be to bring everyone together in one online community with structure and data that could drive discussion,” he told TechCrunch.
The company has since raised $12 million from investors including Precursor Ventures, Headline and Gold House Ventures. Just prior to the acquisition, Becharred said the company had more than 1.5 million registered developers, more than 50,000 company profiles, 800,000 monthly active users and about 30 enterprise customers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Pitchbook estimates StackShare's valuation at about $20 million.
Meanwhile, FOSSA is a source compliance and security platform valued at more than $100 million that provides end-to-end governance for third-party code. The company started as a way for developers to see what open source licenses they were using in their products. Beshawred said FOSSA's absorption of StackShare will hopefully expose its governance and security products to a broader range of developer tools.
“The developer tools space is relatively small, so we see this as an important moment for the industry when two startups with both community and enterprise growth come together,” he added.
The acquisition began late last year as a simple partnership called “The Tech Stack File,” which allowed developers to see all the technologies used in a given codebase in one file. FOSSA partnered with StackShare because it was primarily focused on open source packages and wanted to give its customers a more comprehensive view of the technologies used across their enterprises. “Since we started this partnership, we've realized there's a much bigger opportunity,” Beshawred said.
Kevin Wang, founder and CEO of FOSSA, told TechCrunch that the acquisition was born out of a need for greater visibility and control over developer tools within organizations.
“As software supply chains become more complex, companies struggle to keep track of development tools at scale,” he says. “StackShare's community insights are invaluable in helping companies understand and secure their development tools.”
Becharred will join FOSSA as head of new products. He will not be joining what he described as a small team of StackShare employees. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, with Becharred saying only that “both parties are happy with the agreement.”
He said the merger process is very similar to the fundraising process, saying, “You ultimately need a compelling story, metrics and team to be successful.” He said friends who have previously acquired startups guided him. He added that investors have been supportive and he gave special thanks to the Black people who backed him, including Dropbox's first employee Aston Moats, former basketball player Baron Davis and Precursor's Charles Hudson, one of the company's first backers. He said that meant a lot to him, especially as a Black founder.
“I also believe there aren't enough Black people investing in developer tools and the enterprise space, so I'm really proud that I had such amazing people backing me and StackShare,” he continued, adding that this is yet another proof that Black founders can build businesses and be successful in the developer and enterprise spaces.
“We built a product that's used by over 40 million developers because we were solving a really interesting and valuable problem,” he said. “I think there are too few Black founders solving software engineering problems, so I hope this inspires more Black people to pursue development in this space, with the confidence that they can do it too.”