Accel Invests $57 Million in Laravel’s Open-Source FrameworkBlog

Taylor Otwell, the creator of Laravel, is celebrated for his visionary approach to simplifying the development process for developers. His live demos often emphasise Laravel’s ease of use, resonating with developers who seek efficiency and flexibility. Otwell’s vision has always been to empower developers with tools that reduce complexity, enabling them to build robust applications more quickly. A standout moment in his presentations was when he unboxed a brand-new MacBook during a live demo and set up a Laravel environment from scratch, showcasing the seamless developer experience. His bold approach and confidence in Laravel’s capabilities have helped turn it into one of the most popular PHP frameworks. This success was recently validated by Laravel securing $57 million in Series A funding from Accel, ensuring further growth and innovation while maintaining its core mission of supporting developers.

For those who may not know, Laravel is a PHP framework that is open-source, made to streamline and speed up the process of web app development through its extensive set of built-in features such as:

• Robust authentication system.
• Easily to add features using a modular system with dependency management through Composer.
• Eloquent ORM makes data handling simple by turning tables into classes.
• The artisan command-line interface provides many pre-built commands.
• Supports development with built-in automated testing.
• Homestead offers a complete virtual environment for instant Laravel setup.

Laravel has seen significant growth recently. In July, the company’s open-source installs increased by 25% year over year, and its workforce expanded from eight employees at the beginning of the year to 35. Laravel’s client list includes major companies like Apple, OpenAI, Square, Zillow, OpenTable, Motorola, and Pfizer.

Laravel is a unique company in many aspects. Unlike numerous technology firms located in San Francisco, Laravel is based in Little Rock, Arkansas. Even though the company was established in 2011, it is interesting to note that this is their first major venture capital funding round.

Accel partner Miles Clements and his colleagues spent over a year pursuing Otwell before successfully convincing him to take the call. As a result, Accel sponsored one of Laravel’s conferences, named Laracon. Clements has high hopes for Laravel and sees great potential in it, comparing its prospects to successful companies such as Atlassian, MongoDB, and Vercel. He firmly believes that Laravel has the capability to evolve into one of the largest open-source commercial companies, citing its strong product mechanics and vibrant community as key factors contributing to its promising future.

The Laravel community grows daily, fuelled by engaging discussions on message boards and the excitement surrounding events like Laracon. Otwell, who initiated the project more than ten years ago, has emerged as a revered and influential figure within this community. His professional background, which involved working as a programmer at a trucking company in Arkansas, has contributed to his widespread appeal, endearing him to audiences and garnering even greater admiration.

The new funding aims to develop Laravel Cloud, a platform that will allow users to deploy a Laravel app in 60 seconds. Otwell acknowledges that some aspects of his live demos may need to change as the company grows, but he remains passionate about the thrill of real-time presentations.