LinearB, which brings contextual metrics to software development project management, raises $16M

LinearB, the company behind a “software delivery intelligence” platform for developers, has raised $16 million in a series A round of funding. The raise comes after “six months of hyper-growth” that has seen its customer base soar to more than 1,500 developer operations (DevOps) teams, including at unicorns such as BigID and Hippo Insurance.

Founded in 2018, Los Angeles-based LinearB promises a fresh approach to software development project management and metrics, for example helping developer teams correlate project issues with data from their code, Git, projects, and more. LinearB promises to bring context to the metrics, helping engineering leaders understand what is happening across a team and how they can improve things.

A key selling point is that LinearB is designed to work out of the box, with minimal manual configuration. Users initially sign up with their GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket accounts, after which they can connect their Jira or Clubhouse project management tools, and Slack to receive automated alerts. Then LinearB highlights all the important things in a single unified view, showing developer dependencies; work that is completed, pending, or in progress; and even work at risk of being delayed.

Users can also dig down into the details within particular branches and pull requests, and LinearB automatically detects if an issue status is out of date and updates the user’s project management tool for them.

For CTOs or engineering leads, LinearB provides a window into a team’s overall efficiency and “health,” ensuring there is alignment between the work they’re doing and the company’s business objectives.

LinearB said a major factor in its recent growth has been its focus on asynchronous development and collaboration tools, which is particularly important as the world has transitioned to remote working over the past year.

The company has now raised $20.6 million since its inception, with Battery Ventures leading its latest round. LinearB plans to continue offering a free version of its product to smaller developer teams, but it will also use funds to put “LinearB in the hands of the global enterprise community,” according to company cofounder and CEO Ori Keren. This builds on its enterprise plan, which costs $45 per developer per month. The expansion will involve adding more developer tool integrations to the mix, as well as pushing out additional workflow automation features.

Other players in the space include Boston-based Jellyfish, which is a similar proposition and recently raised $31.5 million, although it doesn’t advertise its pricing and doesn’t appear to ship with a free tier. Alongside other sizable VC investments in the developer tool space — spanning universal code search, project management and issue tracking, and more — it’s clear that tools to help developers operate more efficiently are in big demand. After all, every company is now a software company.