Okay okay. I know I’m still struggling with the whole “What even is a Portland startup…?” question in this remote first post pandemic world. But this one is more than a Earth Class Mail PO Box mixup. This actually has a real Portland footprint. With known Portland folks. So I’m going with it. Depot has raised $10 million.
If we rewind to the version of Depot when we were just two founders getting into YC, we were focused on one core problem: Docker image builds sucked. We faced the same annoying grind in our day jobs at Thorn and later at Era Software. Watching a multi-platform image build in GitHub Actions takes 45 minutes, all because of flaky networks, bizarre cache limits, and painful emulation.
We got so frustrated with the problem that we just decided to go build the solution we wanted for ourselves. That POC made our own container builds 5x faster. I can still remember the surprise and telling Jacob, “There’s no way that’s possible.” We were both blown away by the results from what could now be best described as a trivial solution when compared to what Depot does today.
But it turned out that spirit to go solve our own problems was a springboard to starting a company, getting into YC, and ultimately building a suite of products that powers some of the best engineering teams in the world.
And while Zapproved alum and cofounder and CEO Kyle Galbraith left Portland for France, there are still Depot folks working here — including Chris Bright, the cofounder of Zapproved.
So I’m calling this a Portland startup win.
For more, read the announcement from Depot.
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