Topics
late
AI
Amazon
Image Credits:Workbrew
Apps
Biotech & Health
Climate
Image Credits:Workbrew
Cloud Computing
Commerce
Crypto
The Workbrew dashboard.Image Credits:Workbrew.
endeavor
EVs
Fintech
Workbrew vulnerability alerts.Image Credits:Workbrew
Fundraising
Gadgets
Gaming
Government & Policy
computer hardware
layoff
Media & Entertainment
Meta
Microsoft
Privacy
Robotics
Security
societal
place
Startups
TikTok
Transportation
Venture
More from TechCrunch
upshot
Startup Battlefield
StrictlyVC
newssheet
Podcasts
Videos
Partner Content
TechCrunch Brand Studio
Crunchboard
Contact Us
A trio of former GitHub executives and technologist have found a novel startup that bring the welfare of one of the most pop heart-to-heart reference package managers to the enterprise .
Workbrew , as the inauguration is called , emerges from stealth today with the military mission of mitigating the risks of “ dwarf IT ” practices , giving company admins and security teams concentrate control and visibility intoHomebrewdeployments across the system . To drive its commercial push , the inauguration has bagged $ 5 million in funding from developer - focalize VC firmHeavybit , Essence VC , Operator Collective , and a peck of angels who let in GitHub co - founder and X - CEO , Tom Preston - Werner .
Designed in the first place for macOS , withsupport for Linux , Homebrew is a arrangement - point , candid rootage software package managing director that makes it loose for developers to install and maintain software libraries , command - line tools ( CLI ) , and other utilities . Developers are , of course , free to manually install this computer software themselves , but it can be a time - consuming endeavor , specially if a given package has legion dependencies that are required for it to run in good order . Homebrew does all of this with a single command , sourcing all the relevant element and hold open them up - to - date automatically , which is why Homebrew and its ilk are sometimes dubbed “ app stores for developers . ”
Still , this creates a headache for arrangement that , while keen to keep their developer glad and productive , are also cognizant of the security and compliancerisksof give their men unfettered access code to the world of open source software . That is where Workbrew arrive into the picture .
Founded in 2023 , Workbrew is the handiwork of CEOJohn Britton(pictured above , right ) , COOVanessa Gennarelli(pictured above , center field ) , and CTOMike McQuaid . Britton has contributed to Homebrew since 2014 and has held several elderly roles at Big Tech companies , including as conductor of developer marketing at GitHub , while Gennarelli was most recently senior theater director at GitHub ’s education unit . McQuaid was formerly principal engine driver at GitHub and is one of the longest - serving maintainers of the Homebrew contrive itself .
“ We talk to company of all sizes , from startup to large enterprises that are using Homebrew today , and we hear over and over again the same problem — as the number of devices increase in an organization , it ’s difficult to deploy Homebrew in a consistent way , ” Britton secern TechCrunch .
Providing support and service for popular open source tools is a tried - and - on-key mannikin — it ’s what ledIBM to dole out $ 34 billionfor Red Hat , andcountless startups have raised venture capitalfor product that enhance the utility of established community of interests - driven projects . Homebrew is a near candidate to build services for , as it has become an insanely popular puppet since its inception in 2009 and is now installed on tenner of millions of gadget globally — it ’s the gold banner for bundle management on macOS .
Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI
Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI
But transforming Homebrew from a creature loved by developers to one that ’s enthusiastically embraced by squad is the challenge that Workbrew is focused on .
“ Homebrew and its screen background serves individual developer — by choice , as an loose source project run by volunteers , ” Gennarelli said . “ What John , Mike , and I noticed is the need to take it from individual - player to multiplayer . ”
Building on top
Workbrew essentially brings endeavour rigor to Homebrew deployments . It offersa free planthat does n’t impose any kind of limitation in terms of user or gadget limits , and admins can deploy Workbrew using any wandering gadget management ( MDM ) software . They can also get at a fleet dashboard that exhibit data on equipment , package , license , and more , with support for canonic vulnerability detection .
Additionally , Workbrew also sportsspecial integrationswith MDM computer software such asJamf , Kandji , Fleet , andSimpleMDM , which let in automatize inventory synchronizing — information such as the equipment owner and name are always the same in Workbrew and the MDM cabinet . This is served in a $ 10 / calendar month pro plan , which includes other lineament such as remote management , policy enforcement , and advanced security tooling .
There ’s also an enterprise design ( with customise pricing ) that offer religious service - floor guarantees and ships with additional features , such as financial support for single sign - on ( SSO ) and information abidance via custom deployments .
Which project a company prefers will really depend on its size and the industry it works in , as some will have greater security and compliance requirement than others . Even within companies , certain team might have to espouse a unlike security strength . Workbrew said it has been designed to be flexible to these needs .
Companies have the freedom to exert whatever storey of access control they want , from extremely restrictive all the direction to an open - door school of thought , where no restrictions are actually enforced but the company has visibility and ascendency if demand . The controls can also be very specific — if a user attempts to instal a crypto miner , for example , the admin can qualify if it ’s blocked outright , an alarm is sent , or a formal approval process initiates .
In the most extreme font , a company can have a strict vetting insurance , wherein every package a developer render to install has to be skim and recorded as part of an audit newspaper trail . This might be important for certain highly shape industries with eminent compliance threshold , where they may be need to show every unmarried package that was installed on a specific machine at a give prison term .
“ The biggest affair that I try over and over again from IT and security measures professional is that they do n’t know what they do n’t know , ” Britton said . “ We make it easy for commercial enterprise to get a high - layer overview of every single parcel install , on every gimmick across their entire fleet , including its version info and its vulnerability . ”
A long time in the brewing
The fact that nobody has yet launched a commercial-grade , enterprise - grade business off the back of Homebrew is something of a head - scratcher . The reasons for this , according to Britton , can be boiled down to three key factor that had to align at the right time to make it happen .
“ The ontogenesis of the assailable source labor was a necessary first stride , and the second phase was really about Homebrew ’s social organisation as an assailable source task . Over the years , it has become more formalized , better taken concern of , which has direct to the stop where it ’s now possible to do this , ” Britton say .
Indeed , many open source task are often maintained by a undivided mortal or loose collective , with little in the room of courtly bodily structure . Homebrew , for its part , has its own governance , with a committee and elections to decide who will lead the project . This constancy and structure make it easier to build a stage business on top , particularly when one of its father — CTO Mike McQuaid — has been contributing to Homebrew from the offset and leading the project since 2016 .
This feed into the third key component that Britton experience has been necessary to make a clientele like Workbrew possible : The right multitude being available at the right time , with the right idea .
“ This team is the perfect team to build this . The three of us worked together for close to 10 years at GitHub doing developer tools , ” Britton said . “ I mold at Twilio before [ Britton was employee act 13 ] , Vanessa work onScratch[visual programming language from MIT ] , and Mike ’s been a contributor to Homebrew for 15 long time . You need to have a very cryptic knowledge of how Homebrew works in gild to solve these problems . ”
In fact , Britton and McQuaid had been discussing a likely business around Homebrew for the better part of a ten , and investors had also border on them at various critical point to see if they might want to build a byplay off Homebrew . But it never quite made sense , and McQuaid was also apprehensive about ruining a project that he ’d put so much effort into .
“ The project itself was not in a mature enough state of matter . I ’d been work on Homebrew for so many eld , it ’s very crucial to me , ” McQuaid said . “ And the problem was , nobody really had any idea what the existent business was to be here . ”
But when their schedules aligned , Britton , Gennarelli , and McQuaid got together and shape a path for what would become Workbrew . They were determined that this would n’t be some sort of “ opened core ” business that would deplete the core project itself . It had to be about total something to the mix that had hitherto been abstracted .
“ Homebrew was in a good place with its own government activity bodily structure , and we could see what an factual business was here with a path to have a profitable company that is go to redeem a batch of value to masses , ” McQuaid said . “ This is a separate entity — we are fantastically integrated with Homebrew ; we use an unforked Homebrew , but we are not Homebrew . We are Workbrew . ”
Workbrew entered public beta this August , bring in around 20 customer who includeexpenses management supplier Emburseand big data serving engineVespa , which was spin out of Yahoo . While incorporated in the U.S. , the company is fully remote — its first employee , who was also one of the most active Homebrew maintainers , is based in the Shetland Islands off the slide of northern Scotland .
With a fresh $ 5 million in the bank , Workbrew say it ’s planning to “ rapidly scale ” its program and will work up deep integrations with MDM software and more “ developer - focused feature . ”
All of this will depend on one affair : the cover support of the core candid germ project itself . It ’s always gainsay to find funding for such community projects , and we ’ve see an uptick invarious fairness - costless initiativesof recently , spanning company , grants , and pledge .
“ Homebrew is now this incredibly mature , sophisticated , and self - sustain entity , ” Gennarelli said . “ For Workbrew to come after depends on Homebrew — we have a vested interest in the project succeeding . Our end are aligned , but we are whole trenchant — one is a nonprofit , and we are a commercial-grade entity . ”
