Postman, a San Francisco-based platform that helps developers build, design and test their APIs, announced Wednesday that it raised $225m in a new financing round. This brings its value to $5.6 billion from $2 billion last year.
Insight Partners, a New York-based investor, led the startups' new financing round a series D. Other investors Nexus Venture Partners (CRV) also participated. The new round also saw participation from BOND, Battery Ventures, and Coatue as well as existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and CRV. This brings the total raised across all rounds to over $430 million.
Developers can use APIs to connect to external and internal applications. It is a space that not many companies have tried to optimize in the past decade. Many developers still rely on open-source CLI tools like curl and HTTPie. Postman has many competitors now, including Stoplight and Tiger Global-backed Kong.
Former intern at Yahoo!, Abhinav Asthana created a Chrome extension to help him and his friends.
He didn't realize how many developers and companies needed it.
Six-year-old startup product started in India and is now used by over 17 million developers and more than 500,000 organizations including Microsoft, Stripe and Shopify.
Asthana, co-founder of Postman and chief executive of Postman, told TechCrunch 98% of Fortune 500 companies are customers.
We have solved a fundamental problem in the technology industry. Two years ago, he said that big companies are slower because they have so many other tasks.
Today, every company in any industry uses APIs. They all need an API platform. In a recent interview with TechCrunch, he stated that this trend is only increasing with the shift to digital experiences and cloud computing.
Today, the startup is leading the market. This would explain investors' excitement. Postman refused to share its revenues, but the new round was funded at more than 100 times that amount, according to an investor who is familiar with the matter.
Postmans platform is essential for developers. However, it wasn't until recently that the startup opened a public marketplace to allow developers and companies to access ready-made APIs.
The Postman Public API Network connects million of developers worldwide and gives them a place to explore, share and discover APIs. Asthana explained that this was achieved by creating public workspaces which allow users to connect across organizations.
APIs are a key element in the future of citizen and no-code developers. This will bring about the next generation of innovators. He said that we are seeing more people in finance, marketing and sales become more familiar with APIs and become champions of this technology.
The startup employs over 425 people and plans to use the new funding to hire additional employees in sales, marketing, product, and engineering.
Postman will invest heavily in expanding its product roadmap. We are expanding Postman's platform in areas that technical users require, as well as supporting business users. He said that we are investing in workflow support for all types of APIs, whether they be private APIs, partner APIs, or public APIs.
The roadmap will include a new version for the Postman API, ProtoBuf support, and expanded capabilities for GraphQL. Integrations with other vendors are also a key focus of our software development process. These include integrations with Git hosting providers such as GitLab and AWS. Our Flow Runner tool is also available, a tool that allows anyone to create API-driven programs without the need to code.
The startup plans to also invest in students via API literacy programs, and contribute towards open-source projects.
Insight Partners' Managing Director Jeff Horing stated that APIs quickly became the foundation of all software developed in any industry and in any country around the world. Postman has established itself as the preferred platform to developers.
Postman can be a key pillar in how businesses build and deliver products. It also has the potential to seamlessly facilitate partnerships throughout the ecosystem. Postman's future looks bright due to its continued rapid growth and solid management team.
