I spoke with Mingsheng Hong, co-founder and CEO of Bluesky. Bluesky, a Menlo Park, CA-based formally launched its first product that provides unprecedented visibility into Snowflake workload usage and costs.

He couldn’t start coding his idea due to IP concerns when he was employed. However, soon after launching the idea, he raised funding and started to code the product.

Bluesky announced that it raised $8.8 million in seed funding led by Greylock, with participation from angels Ashish Thusoo (co-founder of Qubole), Jeff Hammerbacher (co-founder of Cloudera), and Johannes Gehrke (Microsoft Redmond research director).

• Founded 2022
• $9M Raised
• 12 FTE’s and hiring more
• Moved from % savings pricing model to subscription model
• Closer to $0 than $1M ARR
• If the founder’s vision doesn’t resonate with the VC, move on (fail fast)

Mingsheng Hong’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mingshenghong/

SaaS Fundraising Story: https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/bluesky-raises-8-8-million-in-seed-round