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Bitwarden raises $100M

bitwarden.com

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Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#171

Post by jcuenod »

MaKleSoft wrote: post #125

If you're a Bitwarden user and this doesn't worry you, you haven't been paying attention to the history of almost every company that has accepted VC funds. It doesn't matter how well intentioned the founders are - once you accept that kind of money, it's not your product anymore. You are now in the business of making money, nothing else, and those skewed incentives will start bleeding into their product and business…

So just to be clear, "bootstrapped" means that you won't accept an offer of $100m, so we should trust you rather than bitwarden?

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#172

Post by noirbot »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #43
pavlov wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enterprise sales presumably? A $100M round probably means a valuation around $500-600M. They now need to grow the company to a couple billion so it can either go public (when the IPO market is alive again in a few years) or be sold to a bigger enterprise player. $10/year customers are completely irrelevant to a company at this stage. Open source is nice as a sales bullet point, but not a central focus.

I don't really want them to grow. Growing usually means overinflated expectations and when they aren't met by the new products they will try to retrieve the shortfall from their existing customer base with additional monetisation, driving them away in the process. I hope it won't go this way here but such a cash buyin is usually the start of a difficult time. > $10/year customers are completely irrelevant to a compan…

When 10/year is often less than .01% of even a junior developer's salary with benefits, then yea, that does kinda mean we can't have nice things, if nice things require a few devs to implement. We've all gotten so used to getting things where the VC discount was already fully priced in over the last decade that we're deeply conditioned to expect everything to be sold at VC subsidized prices, which it turns out isn't really economical for most non-VC backed businesses to sell at.

I'm sure someone will, like clockwork, reply to me that that could be done by one developer in C, sold for $0.50 and then never patched again because UI designers just mess everything up and no one should have a smartphone anyway. If that's your idea of "nice" then you're likely living a happy life, but if you expect a UI and reliability like even oldschool 1Password or Lastpass, then $10/year isn't buying you that level of development and support.

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#173

Post by Quarrelsome »

pwpw wrote: post #155
MaKleSoft wrote: post #125

If you're a Bitwarden user and this doesn't worry you, you haven't been paying attention to the history of almost every company that has accepted VC funds. It doesn't matter how well intentioned the founders are - once you accept that kind of money, it's not your product anymore. You are now in the business of making money, nothing else, and those skewed incentives will start bleeding into their product and business…

That’s a hell of a disclaimer after a decently alarmist comment. You may be correct, but I’m not sure it’s appropriate for you to raise that point given the conflict of interest.

disclaimer is good tho.

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#174

Post by Ozzie_osman »

NickHoff wrote: post #10

Bitwarden already does one thing well. It's everything I'm looking for - open source, costs money but not much ($10/yr), 2FA, clean interface. I'm happy for the new investment, but I hope they don't start adding new things just for the sake of growing. Also - to the people who analyze funding rounds - $100M sounds like a huge amount to me. Why would a password manager need so much money?

> Why would a password manager need so much money?

A cynical take on this would be the business is at a large enough volume and growing fast enough to be valued at a certain price (eg 400M), VCs want to own a certain percentage (eg 20%), so the math dictates the round needs to be 100M (100 / (400 + 100) = 20%). Then the founders put together some story that explains why they'd need 100M.

Not saying that's what happened here but I've seen it happen this way.

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#175

Post by metadaemon »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #131

I'm not referring to Bitwarden here but isn't this the standard M.O. of any SV startup? 1. Release great product for free 2. Attract as many free users as possible to signal growth to investors 3. Keep running the unprofitable free tier at a loss as long as possible using your massive VC war chest, while locking in your users with various gotchas 4. Once you reach critical scale and gained mass user adoption and you'…

Ah, the lifecycle of a company. I think of the first rounds of funding as a sort of puberty. Going public is the mid-life crisis, signaling the downward spiral towards inevitable death. Of course, being bought out is like God taking Enoch directly to heaven, where who knows what happens. Those large companies with unnatural lifespans have somehow tapped into the deep, dark magic of the Elder Ones (usually government contracts).

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#176

Post by sleepless »

mirzap wrote: post #127
xani_ wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just hope we won't get repeat of LastPass - some company buys it then just keeps on life support while raising prices. Also "OSS" version is not really open source, it's just core and all the features you really want from password manager are behind the paid license anyway

Like what? All the features that password manager needs to have (and features that 99% of people need) OSS version have it. SSO, organization management etc. is not something that "password manager" needs to have.

Like TOTP, which is part of payed variant and I consider that an essential feature of a password manager in 2022. Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining about that business decision, just answering since you asked.

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#177

Post by scarface74 »

mrweasel wrote: post #94
scarface74 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you trust the word of a company that doesn’t have a profitable business model? Just wait for the inevitable “Our Amazing Journey” post on their website.

The way I read it is that they already have one minority investor, Battery Ventures and they are now adding another, PSG. PSG will get a seat on the board of directors, it's unclear if Battery Ventures have a seat. It is also unclear if the two minority investors combined holds a majority. I hope things goes well for Bitwarden, but I'm also expecting an amazing journey in their future. I really doubt that there's eno…

I doubt the company will just disappear. They will probably get acquired. But what it morphs into is probably not something consumers who like it now will want.

The only company that I can think of that has managed the transition well and gone public is BackBlaze.

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#178

Post by sammorrowdrums »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #131

I'm not referring to Bitwarden here but isn't this the standard M.O. of any SV startup? 1. Release great product for free 2. Attract as many free users as possible to signal growth to investors 3. Keep running the unprofitable free tier at a loss as long as possible using your massive VC war chest, while locking in your users with various gotchas 4. Once you reach critical scale and gained mass user adoption and you'…

4 also could add “try to avoid 5. by drawing up the regulatory ladder (such as YouTube becoming a bastion of large scale copyright enforcement)… so that it’s virtually impossible for startups to join the space.”

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#179

Post by JshWright »

ensignavenger wrote: post #137
JshWright wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, a standard exists, but that by itself isn't a great user experience. If you actually try to use something like a YubiKey you end up having to register multiple keys with each site to deal with lost key (assuming the site allows that in the first place). The you have to remember which keys correspond to which sites, and remember to get your backup key out each time you sign up somewhere new , etc. Google, Apple,…

I find that the essayist way to handle backup keys is with a printout of 10-20 pre-generated auth codes, which go in my safe. Much easier than having a backup hardware key I have to remove and then replace from my safe, each time I need to add a new service service.

Which is great if you have a printer (and are near it when you're signing up for the account, and remember to do it, and remember to put it in your safe, etc...). Just because it's the easiest way currently doesn't mean there isn't substantial room for improvement in the usability of passwordless systems. Most users aren't going to go to the trouble of printing something out like that.

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#180

Post by LelouBil »

jabart wrote: post #128

Congrats to the Bitwarden team. Also wanted to mention it's a c# (dotnet) project for those who say dotnet isn't for startups.

I was also amazed at how easy it is to self host, manage and update a bitwarden installation, they truly made it as easy as possible.
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