“they grew 254% YoY from ~$11M ARR in late 2020 to ~$135M at the end of 2022 just by flipping Docker Hub and Docker Desktop to paid for businesses.”
Docker burned $335 million over 11 years trying to sell orchestration to ops teams and lost to a free Kubernetes. Then it laid off 80% of staff and started charging businesses for tools their developers already depended on. Net dollar retention jumped from 80% to 120% in a month or two. Every number here is Sacra’s estimate, and the growth strategy is a toll booth on a road everyone was already driving.