Daytona is a self-hosted and secure open source development environment manager. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Daytona’s CEO and co-founder Ivan Burazin to learn more about the company.

Ivan Burazin’s background

What is Ivan Burazin’s background? Burazin said:

“My journey with development tools began when I co-founded Codeanywhere in 2009. I also founded the Shift Developer Conference, which has grown into a leading global event. When I was hired at Infobip, I was their Chief Developer Experience Officer.”

Founding of Daytona

How did the idea for the company come about? Burazin explained:

“The idea for Daytona was born out of our deep understanding of the cloud development environment (CDE) market. However, the decision to jump on the bandwagon came from a market stress, namely from enterprises looking for a solution. There was no enterprise-grade, self-hosted CDE that met their needs.”

“With our experience from Codeanywhere, combined with the increasing use of CDEs by individual developers and the security requirements of larger enterprises, we were in a unique position to develop Daytona. We saw an opportunity to fill this gap in the market and provide a solution that could meet the stringent requirements of enterprise customers while providing the benefits of modern CDEs.”

Favorite memory

What is your best memory of your work for the company so far? Burazin remembers:

“I enjoyed the whole ride, but probably the most exciting part was getting the first customer before we even got a cent from investors. The sale – for me personally, that’s the really exciting part.”

Core products

What are the company’s core products and features? Burazin explained:

“Our core product is a self-hosted Development Environment Management platform. It enables developers to create fully functional environments with a single command: ‘daytona create’. Our platform can run in an infra-cloud or on-premises and provides the security that companies need.”

challenges

What challenges did Burazin and the team face while building the company? Burazin admitted:

“Building a startup always comes with challenges, and Daytona is no exception. Every morning brings at least one, if not several, challenges. We’ve overcome the typical hurdles of acquiring customers, hiring the right talent, and raising funds. Of course, we’ve also had our share of setbacks, such as lost deals, employee layoffs, and rejections. These challenges are especially intense in the early stages of a startup.”

Development of Daytona technology

How has the company’s technology evolved since its launch? Burazin noted:

“We started with a focus on large enterprises, but we have since expanded our vision. In early 2024, we released an open source version of Daytona, making our technology available to individual developers worldwide. By doing so, we hope to help every developer, not just those in large enterprises.”

Important milestones

What were the company’s key milestones? Burazin quoted:

“We’ve achieved several exciting milestones. We raised a $2 million pre-seed round, followed by a $5 million seed round led by Upfront Ventures. Our open source launch was incredibly successful, raising over 3000 GitHub stars in just 48 hours. We’ve also seen strong business growth, nearly doubling our annual recurring revenue (ARR) in six months.”

Total addressable market

What size of the total addressable market (TAM) is the company aiming for? Burazin estimated:

“Some analysts estimate that the broader DevOps market is even larger, potentially reaching $20 billion to $25 billion by 2026.”

Differentiation from the competition

What sets the company apart from the competition? Burazin confirmed:

“Compared to other competitors, our differentiators may vary, but our core strength lies in our ability to deliver an exceptional developer experience while adhering to strict security constraints. This is a unique feature in today’s development landscape.”

Future corporate goals

What are some of the company’s future business goals?

“Our ultimate goal is to become the ‘way of work’ for all developers worldwide, starting with the enterprise sector. We want to make every developer more productive and enable a new group of people to become developers by removing unnecessary complexities.