The Porter co-founders Trevor Shim, Justin Rhee and Justin Rhee were already well-versed in remote Kubernetes development when they decided to create a company around DevOps. They were also constantly getting burned by the technology, just like many other users.Rhee explained to TechCrunch that they realized that the technology had many benefits but that users were still having to manage the complexity and costs of hosting solutions.They decided to create a solution outside and applied for Y Combinators Summer 2020 batch. There, they met other startups looking to do the same.Today Porter announced $1.5 Million in seed funding from Venrock Capital, Translink Capital and Soma Capital. Its mission is to create a platform that can be used by any team to manage its applications in its own cloud. This will allow them to deliver the full flexibility of Kubernetes through an Heroku-like experience.Why Heroku? It's the platform developers know and love, not only for small businesses but also for larger companies. Shim stated that Porter will act as a bridge for them when they move to Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud, DigitalOcean or Google Cloud.The pair stated that Heroku is still very popular and they believe companies think it is becoming outdated as technology advances. Rhee stated that companies leave the platform each year due to technical limitations or cost.Porter said that he isn't charging users for hosting and that it is free. Porter isn't trying to be a reseller, so companies can use their cloud. However, Porter will automate the process and users can pay using their AWS or GCP credits. This gives them flexibility.One common pattern is to move into Kubernetes. But, the zinger is that if Heroku were built in 2021 it would have been constructed on Kubernetes. Shim also added.He said that we are a successors successor.Shim stated that the company will use the funding to expand its engineering capabilities in order to be that bridge. Shim also said that the company aims at becoming the standard for startups.Ethan Batraski (partner at Venrock) stated that Porters platform was launched in February and became the sixth fastest growing open-source platform download site on GitHub in six months. He first met Porters through YC, and was impressed by Rhees' vision and Shims.Batraski said that Heroku is home to 100,000 developers. However, I think it has stagnated. Porter has already 100 startups on its platform. You want to see the four- or five-fold growth that they have seen.His company has been long focused on data infrastructure. He says that the stack is becoming more complex. However, developers want to be able to build an app in less than a week and scale it to millions of people. This requires resources. Kubernetes can make anyone an expert developer, without them even knowing.
