A year after closing on its $6 million Series A, Austin-based API design startup Stoplight announced Monday it has raised an additional $11 million to add to the round. The latest funding was co-led by previous investors Next Coast Ventures and Bill Wood Ventures.
APIs (application programmable interfaces) are tools that allow multiple programs to work together. Stoplight helps businesses better develop and manage those APIs, ensuring their design is useful and they work together effectively.
“I myself was a developer for 20 some odd years, and there’s literally hundreds of APIs that are out there but shouldn’t exist,” CEO Steve Rodda told Built In in a recent interview. “Stoplight is trying to make sure that things are built a little more thoughtfully and with a blueprint to better help these companies.”
Rodda has spent most of his career as a tech executive in Colorado, but was made the CEO of Stoplight in July. At the time, the company had just released its SaaS platform and was dealing with a surge in demand amid the pandemic. In fact, over the last six months, Stoplight’s active users have increased by more than 200 percent.
“The technical realities of fully remote work and reduced or no travel helped drive massive demand for API expertise. At Stoplight, it put the spotlight (yea, I did that) on our ability to help customers design, develop and deploy APIs effectively and with ease,” Rodda said in a follow-up email.
“As I got started in July,” he continued, “the challenging part was knowing where to place new bets appropriately and at the right time to build the business. Like many startups, we were heavily engineering focused and, as demand grew, we needed to expand on other aspects of the business such as marketing, sales and support functions while still pushing to innovate.”
Now, Stoplight plans to use this fresh funding to expand its engineering efforts and introduce new marketing and customer engagement offerings for its growing user base. The company is also growing its team, with several open tech positions available now.
