Guillermo Rauch became a teenage tech rock star when he helped build React, the popular development framework started by Facebook for building faster apps and websites.
But it looked like the 29-year old entrepreneur was going to have a bad year when in January one of his startup's top engineers was forced to quarantine in Wuhan, China due to the coronavirus, which subsequently led to a global pandemic that plunged the tech industry — and the global economy — into a downturn.
But 2020 may yet turn out to be a breakout year for Rauch. On Tuesday, he relaunched his startup Zeit under a new name, Vercel, and announced $21 million in Series A funding from investors including Accel and GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. The pandemic itself and the rise of the remote workforce has sparked more demand in Vercel's software.
"We saw a massive uptick in traffic," he told Business Insider. "The opportunity that we have today is that every company in the world is seeking to reinvent their frontend experience because they want to be closer to their customers."
React is a development framework built by Facebook engineers and released as open source in 2013. Rauch was one of the active contributors to the React project, and created Next.js, a major React framework.
Rauch founded Zeit, now known as Vercel, in 2015 to offer tools for building better user interfaces, which refers to the ways users interact with a software program. Vercel's clients include companies like AirBnb, Uber, GitHub, Nike and Ticketmaster.
Increased demand
Rauch said the coronavirus crisis and the sudden shift to a remote workforce created stronger demand for Vercel's technology.
"Companies were scrambling to create new websites," including new sites geared to responding to or offering information on coronavirus, he said. "So they were like, 'Hey, I need to create a new front experience and push it out really quickly.'"
The financing had been approved before the coronavirus crisis escalated. "Obviously, there's a tragedy going on from a healthcare perspective, and then even from an economic perspective," Dan Levine, a partner at Accel, told Business Insider. "That's obviously the most important stuff."
But he said the crisis also underscored the importance of developing software tools "for the frontend," programs that make it easier to access and use platforms. "That's where the unique opportunity is," he said. "There aren't that many frameworks that are so widely used and popular."
Rauch's team also recently won rave reviews for holding a virtual tech conference done via video streaming in December, just as the coronavirus crisis was starting. One of the participants was the top engineer in Wuhan.
While other startups are forced to reduce costs, including headcount, Rauch said Vercel, which has 35 employees, is looking to expand. However, he said they will probably rethink earlier plans to expand their physical San Francisco headquarters in light of the crisis and the benefits of having a remote workforce.
"We've always been remote and San Francisco-based," he said. "If you had asked me three months ago, I'd totally say, 'We'll expand the office.' Now we're thinking, let's expand the benefits for remote work."
Here's the pitch deck Vercel used to raise $21 million:
