The SaaS CFO · Ben Murray
podcastplaybook$40M Raised to Make Developers Lives Easier
Source excerpt
About The SaaS CFOAirplane, a San Francisco, CA-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) development platform, closed a $32 million Series B funding round led by Thrive Capital with participation from Benchmark, bringing the startup’s total raised to $40.5 million. I interviewed Ravi Parikh, Co-Founder at Airplane. He is also the former co-founder of Heap. Ravi is on a mission to automate the harder part of admin tools in applications. This is the behind-the-scenes code necessary to run your applications. Airplane has a sales and PLG led motion. His former founder background helped with current capital raises. Segment co-founder Calvin French-Owen, Confluent co-founder Neha Narkhede, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch, Airtable co-founders Howie Liu and Andrew Ofstad, Allison Pickens from The New Normal Fund, Behance founder Scott Belsky, Jaren Glover, Gokul Rajaram, Liu Jiang, Comma…
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Apollo layer
What a founder can learn
Founder takeaway
Look for recurring internal development work that every software company must do but few consider a competitive advantage. Productizing that burden can create clear customer value; combining product-led adoption with sales can then serve both individual developers and larger organizations.
Why it matters
Founders can build a stronger wedge by removing costly, repetitive work rather than adding another optional workflow. A dual PLG-and-sales motion may also connect bottom-up developer demand with larger company purchases.