Acquisitions Handbook

Acquisition strategy

GitLab’s key goal in pursuing acquisitions is to accelerate our roadmap and offer better tools to customers more quickly. We are seeking to introduce new product categories and mature early categories faster than by building everything internally. We want to acquire strong teams that have already built great tools and products relevant for GitLab customers and have them integrate their tech into GitLab.

Additional benefits to GitLab:

1. Strengthen value prop in product categories with high growth and expected future profits
2. Improve market perception and create a PR opportunity

Acquisition approach

We are looking for companies interested in helping deliver on our vision to create a single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle. We value strong teams and technology and are looking for a combination of both that will help us accelerate our roadmap. We’re looking for acquisitions which can either present a strategic value-add or create potential for significant revenue upside.

Acquisition target profile

Below is a set of general, yet not strict, characteristics of companies that are a potential fit for our acquisition process:

• Have built features or functionalities which are aligned with GitLab’s long term strategy
• Engineers that meet our standard hiring guidelines
• Ideally bring a solution which accelerates our maturity in a product category or fits into the new categories on our roadmap.
• R&D team size under 30 people
• Willing to reimplement products into GitLab in Ruby and Go
• Willing to sunset old customers within 90 days or less, with an option to transition to GitLab. GitLab follows an open-core model
• Aligned to ship on the first month and iterate quickly
• Strong founders looking to join GitLab

Considering joining forces with GitLab

1. Please review our handbook; it is the central repository for how we run the company.
2. Spend time understanding if a remote culture is right for you and your team.

Why join GitLab?

1. Leverage the unique data and user-experience GitLab has as complete DevOps platform to act as a force-multiplier in helping you build the vision for your product area
2. Focus on building great technology at scale to reach millions of users and some of the largest enterprise companies. We can ensure what you made will be used by more than 100,000 organizations and millions of users.
3. Quick transaction - We move fast and aim to close the deal in 2-4 months, if you are able to drive a fast process with us
4. Upside - Financial outcome if GitLab is successful (GitLab stock)
5. Your team is in good company - GitLab is a unique place to work at with a leading product and a fascinating culture

What we offer

Acquisitions receive a compensation offer specific to that engagement, which will be evaluated as part of our acquisition process as we learn more about your company and your technology.

What happens to your current company?

1. Our goal is to integrate the acquired technology into GitLab’s platform with the team behind it, keeping the team as whole as possible.
2. We want to focus on integrating the value quickly, thus we don’t want to maintain existing services/products outside of GitLab’s platform as doing that will hinder the speed of integration.

Keys to successful acquisitions

1. Managing people’s expectations and concerns
2. Successful integration execution
3. Maintain a non-biased view on target companies’ value

Starting an acquisition discussion with GitLab

If you are interested in starting acquisition discussions with GitLab, please send an email to Corporate Development to connect and start the process.

Acquisition process

Learn more about our internal acquisition process and how you can prepare for an efficient process.

Contact us

For additional information contact Corporate Development.

View page source - Edit this page - please contribute.