Laravel raised a $57 million Series A funding round from venture capital firm Accel. Despite being founded in 2011, this is the company’s first full-fledged round of funding. And while Laravel's growth has been notable—open-source installs in July 2024 grew by 25% year over year, with the team expanding from 8 to 35 employees.

Based in Little Rock, Arkansas, far from Silicon Valley, Laravel doesn’t fit the usual mold of venture-backed companies.

“We have this unique and somewhat peculiar strategy of looking for difficult-to-find, bootstrapped companies that are profitable and tend to be located well outside of Silicon Valley,” - Miles Clement Accel partner

Laravel's track record of growth and the strength of its community were so compelling that Clement and his team pursued Taylor for over a year before he agreed to take a meeting.

The Laravel community has always been a cornerstone of the framework’s success. Laracon, Laravel’s official conference, has become a mecca for developers passionate about open source.

Though Laravel has faced its fair share of detractors, particularly due to its association with PHP, a language often perceived as outdated, its community has embraced this underdog status.

“If you’re a quote-unquote real developer, you use something else…Think in terms of high school. The not-cool kids in high school banded together to form an alliance. That’s us,” - Aaron Francis

Now, with its Series A funding, Laravel is poised for even more growth. The goal is to drive the development of Laravel Cloud, a service designed to allow developers to ship a Laravel app in just 60 seconds. This focus on ease of use and speed has always been at the heart of Laravel’s success, and Taylor is betting big on its future.

“We want people to be able to sign up and ship a Laravel app in 60 seconds, period,” - Taylor Otwell