I would argue the largest developer tools/services acquisition in recent history was GitHub (assuming you don't count RedHat in that category). GitHub was primarily an acquisition focused on acquiring the network of developers, based on the trust and cachet GitHub had earned, with the intent to upsell (land and expand) the developers at large Enterprise companies on downstream workflows and tools.
If I were an employee looking to join Entire, or a developer evaluating the durability of Entire for my needs over the long-term, I'd ask things like —
- What's the terminal value of a DevTool in the AI era? Is it closer to a standard 10x ARR? or maybe 100x...perhaps 1000x?
- Is there value in the asset attributable to the network? If so, is it defensible? What is the likelihood protocols emerge that simply disintermediate the network moat of a AI agent memory company like Entire?
- What kind of AI data are developers willing to silo with a single vendor? What kind of controls do Enterprises expect of an AI agent memory system? Can Entire reasonably provide them to grow in the next 12-24 months?
- As a potential employee...if you join a company with a $60M seed funding and 19 employees, what is the ARR they need to achieve based on the first product in market in roughly ~12 months? $6M...$12M...20M? Is there a DevTools company that's ever done that!? What is the thesis for "this time is different"? Getting developers to pay for things is tough 'doncha know?
Only then can you ask basic technical diligence questions —
- Is Git a system that can scale to be the memory system and handle the kind of tasks that AI agents are expected handle?
- Are the infrastructure costs for these early platform decisions here reasonable over the long-term? Or do they just run out of money?
I wish them the best, and I hope employees get liquidity, and people take money off the table in a responsible way.