When I joined GitLab, the challenge was building a social communications infrastructure for a fully remote, open source software company on a direct path to IPO — from almost nothing, with a technical audience that doesn’t respond well to being talked at.
The work over three and a half years was cumulative. Building a developer-first brand voice from scratch. Establishing the social policies and governance that let a 1,000+ person all-remote workforce engage publicly without creating compliance exposure. Coaching colleagues on what it meant to represent a pre-IPO company in public. Building the community relationships that made GitLab’s audience feel like contributors rather than followers. By the time we reached listing day, the brand had grown to over one million followers and generated the equivalent of $4 million in advertising value organically.
The range of what that period required was unusually broad. When a global pandemic forced the cancellation of a planned in-person event, we rebuilt it as a virtual experience in weeks — social became the event’s second screen, and registrations increased by 2,000. When crises hit — pricing controversies, George Floyd’s murder, the compounding uncertainty of 2020 — the communications response required judgment about when to speak, what to say, and how to hold the community’s trust through moments the company hadn’t scripted for. Those decisions earned me GitLab’s Community Impact Award.
The IPO communications work was its own discipline. Transitioning the company’s social voice to comply with SEC guidelines, removing forward-looking statements, training the broader team on quiet period obligations — all of it had to happen well in advance of listing day, and consistently, across a fully distributed workforce.
On October 14, 2021, GitLab listed on NASDAQ as GTLB. We livestreamed the listing day — the first time an IPO had ever been live-streamed on NASDAQ. The broadcast drew over 20,000 concurrent viewers. The amplification involved investors, board members, and Ashton Kutcher. The moment landed because the three years of work behind it had made the audience real.
