MongoDB and the rise of developer driven enterprise IT

At NEA, we have been involved in enterprise technology companies since our founding 35 years ago. Traditionally, the formula for enterprise technology involved a top-down selling process. That is, startups would have to build out technology, create sophisticated pitch decks, and then reach out to the CTOs and CIOs of large corporations. The sales cycle was often eight to ten months long and involved pilots, alphas, betas, and generally a massive amount of sales and marketing spend to land an enterprise account.

MongoDB is leading a revolution in how technology is being adopted in enterprises that was unfathomable just two years ago: technology adoption driven by developers. Led by Max, Dwight, and Eliot, MongoDB has taken a developer first approach with its open source product that is easy to use, agile, and enables developers to get into production quickly. The technology has clearly resonated with developers with over 5M downloads and 20,000+ user group members.

While it was no surprise that startups were the early adopters of MongoDB, it has delighted us to see the number of developers that work at Fortune 500 companies that have played a critical role in the widespread adoption of MongoDB. It makes sense that the same features that appeal to developers at startups would also appeal to developers at the largest companies, because, today, enterprises also have to innovate quickly to satisfy their customers and differentiate themselves against competition.

With a world that requires speed, enterprise developers have taken it upon themselves to develop applications on MongoDB, even without CIO/ CTO approval. Over the past year, we have seen multiple cases of enterprise CIOs sanctioning application development with large teams and massive budgets on top of legacy databases such as Oracle failing and developers going rogue for the benefit of the project to develop the same application on MongoDB. And CIOs and CTOs began to take notice. Today, MongoDB has quickly grown to over 600 enterprise customers that subscribe to MongoDB’s enterprise features.

We are thrilled to be a part of today’s $150 million financing, which the MongoDB team will use to continue to build features that appeal to developers and features that help enterprises implement and manage MongoDB. We believe that MongoDB is just in the early innings of disrupting the massive database market and that disruption is going to be led by developers.