Paul Copplestone didn’t think things like this actually happened.
Then one day Accel’s Gonzalo Mocorrea asked for his New Zealand address—more than 7,000 miles from Silicon Valley.
Mocorrea “literally showed up on my doorstep in Wānaka, which is really not easy to get to,” said Copplestone, the CEO and cofounder of open source application development platform Supabase. “For the next two days, he’d pop in and we’d chat for a couple hours.”
After a few days in Wānaka—located on New Zealand’s South Island and famous for its snow capped mountains overlooking a massive mirror of a lake—Accel’s Mocorrea called in backup, texting partner Arun Mathew.
“Arun said ‘alright, I’m coming,’” said Copplestone. “And I said, ‘Oh no, don’t come! We haven’t agreed to anything!’ But yeah, he came, we had dinner in Queenstown, another beautiful place. We caught up the next morning, and they offered a term sheet.”
Accel’s Mathew had traveled more than 24 hours, across two flights and multiple car rides, to make the trip as the firm weighed its first investment in Supabase.
“I needed to sit across the table, look him in the eye, and really believe he’s going to do something else,” Mathew told Fortune. “That’s necessary, certainly at this valuation…We know what greatness looks like, we believe that—and I’m obviously betting with my career.”
That term sheet became Supabase’s latest funding round, a $200 million Series D valuing the company at $2 billion, Fortune can exclusively report. Coatue, Y Combinator, Craft Ventures, and Felicis participated in the round, as did big-name angels like OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch, and Laravel CEO Taylor Otwell.
“The core thesis for us is that in every major platform shift, there’s always value created at the database layer,” said Mathew. “It’s part of the reason that Larry Ellison and Oracle have held the same power for 40-plus years. It’s partially why MongoDB is one of the most interesting enterprise software companies out there…The database layer has a lot of dead bodies, but it also has a number of companies that have created exceptional enterprise value.”
Supabase is currently used by two million developers who manage more than 3.5 million databases. The startup supports Postgres, the most popular developer database system that’s an alternative to Google’s Firebase. Supabase’s goal: To be a one-stop backend for developers and “vibe coders.”
“I see our community, over the next decade, as something that will grow with us, and it’s for everyone from developers, all the way up to enterprise,” said Copplestone. “It’s more than just developers even now. Our sign-up rate just doubled in the past three months because of vibe coding—Bolt, Lovable, Cursor, all those.”
Vercel’s Rauch first invested in Supabase in 2021, and he sees vibe coding as a key tailwind for the startup. (Vercel, last valued at $3.25 billion, is widely viewed as a leader in the vibe coding movement.)
“The metaphor I always use is that vibe coding is like a self-driving car,” Rauch told Fortune. “It’s an amazing feat that gets us around, but it still needs roads…Supabase has been working really hard not to just be easy to use, but within reach. The roads are cloud infrastructure, and Supabase was ready to meet this foundational need in the data ecosystem.”
Founded in 2020, Supabase is a product of the pandemic, and has stayed remote. Copplestone, a third-time founder whose previous startups were Nimbus For Work and ServisHero, has proactively decided to learn from the past to improve upon the future.
“I went through playing startup the first time, where you raise the money and put the posters up,” said Copplestone. “You pay top dollar, you hire, tell people how many employees you’ve got—and then, of course, we ran out of money.”
This time, he’s been hiring differently. A native New Zealander, Copplestone estimates that about 28% of Supabase employees are former founders themselves, and they’re all over the world.
“It’s a bit like Moneyball,” said Copplestone. “We found these really good humans, and they’re not necessarily in San Francisco. We’ve got people in Peru and Macedonia. What matters to us is that they’re extremely competent, but also low-ego, good people.”
Even though Supabase is remote, the company sets up ways for people to meet each other. For example, during launch weeks, Supabase releases one new thing every day. This month, employees and developers in 100 cities around the world are organizing meetups.
And, if you have any familiarity with pop hits from 2011, Copplestone is very much aware his unicorn’s name echoes Nicki Minaj’s hit “Super Bass.” In fact, that’s by design.
“I was looking for something along the lines of ‘superlative base,’” said Copplestone. “I looked up all the domain names, and nothing was free. I could only find S-U-P-A. Then, I thought it was funny, because of the Nicki Minaj song. So, I chose that name so I could send memes to my cofounder Ant [Wilson], who’s very good at memes.”
To judge by the latest funding round, the meme is catching on.
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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VENTURE DEALS
- Electra, a Manassas, Va.-based hybrid-electric aircraft developer, raised $115 million in Series B funding. Prysm Capital led the round and was joined by Honeywell Ventures.
- Biolinq, a San Diego-based wearable metabolic health biosensor device developer, raised $100 million in Series C funding. Alpha Wave Ventures led the round and was joined by existing investors RiverVest Venture Partners, AXA IM Alts, LifeSciVenture Partners, and others.
- Ocient, a Chicago-based data analytics software solutions provider, raised $42.1 million in Series B extension funding from Allstate Strategic Ventures, Blue Bear Capital, Solidigm, and others.
- FundThrough, a Houston and Toronto-based invoice platform for small and medium-sized businesses, raised $25 million in Series B funding. Klister Credit led the round and was joined by existing investors, Canadian Business Growth Fund, Urbana, and others.
- UbiQD, a Los Alamos, N.M.-based quantum dot technology company, raised $20 million in Series B funding. Phoenix Venture Partners led the round and was joined by Builders VC, Azura Group, Builders Vision, and others.
- Terra Security, a Tel Aviv and New York-based agentic-AI web application penetration testing platform, raised $8 million in seed funding. SYN Ventures and FXP Ventures led the round and was joined by Underscore VC and angel investors.
- OnePlanet, a Jacksonville-based solar panel recycling services provider, raised $7 million in seed funding from Khasma Capital.
- Kenzo Security, a San Francisco-based agentic security platform, raised $4.5 million in seed funding from The General Partnership and Michael Coates.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Argand Partners acquired Capezio, a Totowa, N.J.-based dancewear brand. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- VitalSource, backed by Francisco Partners, acquired RedShelf, a Chicago-based digital textbooks and course materials company. Financial terms were not disclosed.
EXITS
- MidOcean Partners acquired GSTV, a Detroit-based video network, from Rockbridge Growth Equity. Financial terms were not disclosed.
OTHER
- FiberLight, a portfolio company of Morrison, agreed to acquire Metro Fiber Networks, a Yorktown, Va.-based fiber provider for carriers and public institutions. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- FundThrough acquired Ampla, a New York City-based financial technology solutions provider for consumer brands. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- PlayVS acquired Generation Esports, a Kansas City-based esports platform, and Playfly College Esports, a Philadelphia-based esports advertising solutions provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- TPG and Temasek agreed to acquire a minority stake in Cliffwater, a Los Angeles-based alternative investment adviser and fund manager. Financial terms were not disclosed.
FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS
- Venture Guides, a Boston-based venture capital firm, raised $262.5 million for its second fund focused on the infrastructure software market.
- TDK Ventures, a San Jose-based venture capital firm, raised $150 million for its third fund focused on deeptech startups.