StackBlitz

Company/Author Information

Company: StackBlitz Inc.
Founded: 2017
Website: https://stackblitz.com/
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, USA
Logo: Geometric lightning bolt in blue/purple gradient

Company Summary and History

StackBlitz was co-founded in 2017 by Eric Simons (CEO) and Albert Pai (CTO), childhood friends who started coding together at age 13. The company was born from their previous startup Thinkster, which was acquired by a private equity firm in December 2018.

Founders:

• Eric Simons (CEO): Serial entrepreneur who gained media attention for secretly living at AOL headquarters for two months in 2011 while working on a startup. Previously founded Thinkster and has expertise in social media, public speaking, e-commerce, and product design.
• Albert Pai (CTO): Technical co-founder with deep expertise in browser-based development technologies and WebAssembly.

Key Historical Milestones:

• 2017: StackBlitz founded as browser-based IDE for Angular and React
• 2021: Released WebContainers technology - browser-based operating system
• 2022: Raised $7.9M from Greylock, GV (Google Ventures), and GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner
• 2024 (Spring): Anthropic contacted StackBlitz for WebContainers licensing
• 2024 (October 3): Launched Bolt.new after 3 months of development
• 2024 (December): Near-shutdown board ultimatum due to poor growth
• 2025 (March): Achieved $40M ARR with 1M monthly active users

Financial Journey: StackBlitz struggled for years with minimal revenue (less than $1M ARR after 7 years). By late 2023, the company faced potential shutdown until Bolt.new's explosive success transformed their trajectory. The platform now represents one of the fastest-growing products in Silicon Valley history.