we're on a mission to help developers create extraordinary experiences
The Beginning
Aug 12, 2011
The first Firebase discussion happens. Andrew, Vikrum, and James were working on Envolve at the time, Facebook-style chat for your website. Our customers wanted to do more with realtime than just chat.
The Beginning
Aug 12, 2011
The first Firebase discussion happens. Andrew, Vikrum, and James were working on Envolve at the time, Facebook-style chat for your website. Our customers wanted to do more with realtime than just chat.
First Commit
Sep 21, 2011
The first commit was checked into the Firebase Mercurial repository (we now use Git).
Alpha
Dec 20, 2011
We showed a group of 10 devs our alpha in a small conference room at our first office. Firebase was called 'Plankton' then.
The First Hackathon
Mar 3, 2012
We showed off Firebase in public at AngelHack in SF. Michael, Vikrum, Andrew and James stay up all night helping devs build apps and getting feedback. 5 of the top 10 finalists used Firebase.
April Fools
Apr 1, 2012
A ‘fake’ MMO version of the well-known Asteroids game launches on Hacker News. Vikrum makes it multiplayer using Firebase and the game became our first 404 page.
We Tell the World!
Apr 12, 2012
Firebase launches in private beta. Over 250 people come to our launch event in San Francisco.
$1.4M Seed Round
May 22, 2012
We close $1.4 million in seed funding from Flybridge Capital, Greylock, and other investors.
Security API
Dec 18, 2012
We answer the big question of ‘How can you make Firebase secure?’ with the launch of our security API.
iOS SDK
Mar 20, 2013
Firebase goes multi-platform with our iOS SDK, bringing realtime updates and easy development to developers building apps in Objective-C.
Series A
Jun 20, 2013
Firebase raises a $5.6 million Series A from Union Square Ventures and Flybridge Capital Partners.
Android SDK
Jul 2, 2013
We complete work on the third major platform with the launch of our Android/Java SDK.
Firebase Leaves Beta
Aug 15, 2013
Firebase launches in General Availability! We become a paid product that developers can trust to build large, mission-critical applications.
Brand New UX
Dec 19, 2013
The Firebase website and dashboard is redesigned to provide a great user experience for developers.
ng-conf
Jan 16, 2014
We announce bindings with AngularJS to make Firebase the best way to wire up a backend for your Angular app.
EmberConf
Mar 25, 2014
We head to Portland for the first ever EmberConf and announce bindings with Ember to make Firebase the best way to wire up a backend for your Ember app.
Firebase Hosting
May 13, 2014
We introduce production-grade hosting for developers, a CDN-backed hosting service with SSL cert provisioning baked right in.
One Million Concurrent Connections
Jul 11, 2014
The total number of concurrent network connections to Firebase servers tops one million for the first time.
New Docs
Jul 29, 2014
Our documentation is completely redesigned and rewritten, making much easier to get up-and-running with Firebase.
Vulcan
Sep 30, 2014
We release an extension to Chrome’s DevTools that lets you easily inspect your data in the browser.
| Aug 12 | Sep 21 | Dec 20 |
| Mar 3 | Apr 1 | Apr 12 | May 22 | Jul 27 | Dec 18 |
| Feb 13 | Mar 20 | Jun 20 | Jul 2 | Aug 15 | Dec 19 |
| Jan 16 | Mar 25 | Apr 20 | May 13 | Jul 11 | Jul 29 | Sep 15 | Sep 30 | Oct 21 |
our journey
| 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 |
About Firebase
We help developers build great software in a fraction of the time it used to take. Whether you're a developer in a big company or a small startup, we want to help you ship software that's a joy to write and is extraordinary to use.
Our team has the opportunity to rethink both how software should be built and how a great culture should be grown. One of the values we aspire to live by is this is your happy place. This focus on culture shines through in our product, how we support our developers, and the way we engage with our community. We're excited to be building a platform where our developers surprise us everyday with their creativity.
Firebase joined Google in October 2014, and our team is based out of the Google office in San Francisco, CA.
The Firebase Team
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James Tamplin
James Tamplin
James has a bachelor's and a master's degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Wisconsin. He has been a stage actor in New York, an improv comic, and worked with Andrew on two previous startups.
Andrew Lee
Andrew Lee
Andrew has extensive experience building performant real-time software. He studied Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. He previously founded two startups with James and worked for Adobe, Seagate, and Green Hills Software.
Vikrum Nijjar
Vikrum Nijjar
Vikrum has a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering from UC San Diego. He previously has experience being a full stack engineer at Speedera (acquired by Akamai) and Raytheon's Advanced Concepts lab. Prior to joining the Firebase team he was having fun with his own mobile startup building iOS and Android apps.
Michael Lehenbauer
Michael Lehenbauer
You may know Michael from the Fog Creek Software documentary "Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks." After studying CS and Math at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, he spent 5 years at Microsoft where he ran the Visual Studio Editor team. He has significant experience with large-scale applications, building developer APIs, and playing tetris.
Greg Soltis
Greg Soltis
Greg has a bachelor's and a master of engineering degree from Cornell University. Before Firebase, he spent time working on everything from low-level networking code at Green Hills Software to high-level application code for Twitter. He is happy to have found a source of decent bagels beneath the top secret Firebase headquarters.
Rob DiMarco
Rob DiMarco
Rob has a bachelor's degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, where he had internship experience with Hewlett-Packard and BlackRock. Prior to joining Firebase, Rob spent three years as a full-stack developer for TrialPay.
Sara Robinson
Sara Robinson
Sara has a bachelor's degree in Business and International Studies from Brandeis University. Before Firebase, she worked as an analyst at Sandbox Industries, a venture firm and startup foundry. She's passionate about learning to code, running, and finding the best ice cream in SF.
Megan Krilanovich
Megan Krilanovich
Megan received her BA in International Studies from the University of Washington. She joined Firebase in October, 2013 and is thrilled to be supporting such an awesome community of developers. Outside of the office Megan enjoys dance, local music, and living up to her job title by learning how to fight crime in a cape.
Chris Raynor
Chris Raynor
Chris has a bachelor's degree and a master of science in engineering from the University of Warwick, UK. Before Firebase, Chris ran his own web development consultancy and was the first hire in a San Francisco tech startup as a full-stack engineer focusing on large data processing pipelines.
Tony Meng
Tony Meng
Tony has a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin (Hook'em!). Prior to joining Firebase, Tony dabbled in the defense industry at General Dynamics C4 Systems in sunny Scottsdale and quickly moved to the cloud industry in San Francisco with Salesforce. He enjoys large hats.
Jacob Wenger
Jacob Wenger
Born and raised in central Pennsylvania, Jacob has been working his way west ever since attending college at the University of Notre Dame (Go Irish!). After graduating in 2012 with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, he worked for Microsoft on the Internet Explorer team until joining Firebase in March, 2014.
David East
David East
David has a bachelor's in Computer Science from Radford University. He is passionate about creating resources to help educate developers. A military brat, David has moved over a dozen times in his life.
Joey Yang
Joey Yang
Joey loves making user experiences that make people happy. Before Firebase, he ran a noncommercial radio station, wrote optimization software for aircraft designers, and consulted both for startups and Fortune 500 companies. He graduated from Rice University, where he studied Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mathematics.
Kato Richardson
Kato Richardson
Kato Richardson received a nuclear power certification from the United States Navy. Then he traded submarines for a programming book by Lynda Weinman and never looked back. In addition to over fifteen years of web development and Java programming, Kato is a published author and holds a black belt in martial arts.
Katherine Fang
Katherine Fang
Katherine graduated from MIT with a bachelor's and master's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Outside of Firebase, she enjoys dancing, robotics, skating, and adventures.
Matt Tse
Matt Tse
Matt graduated from Duke University with a Computer Science Degree, then moved from the east coast to San Francisco. He works on the operations team at Firebase making sure everything runs smoothly. Outside of Firebase, he is vegan, a cellist, a cook, and an avid reader.
Mike McDonald
Mike McDonald
Mike is a Bay Area native and graduate of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, where he majored in Computer Engineering and Computer Science. In his free time, he enjoys backpacking, snowboarding, and developing embedded hardware.
Ali Berlin Johnson
Ali Berlin Johnson
Ali is a designer and illustrator with a bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering and history of doodling on everything she can get her hands on.
Jonny Dimond
Jonny Dimond
Jonny has a diploma in computer science from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and spent a semester abroad at Georgia Tech. He was born and raised in Germany and moved to San Francisco to join Firebase.
Tom Larkworthy
Tom Larkworthy
Tom has a PhD in Neuroinformatics from the University of Edinburgh, and was a postdoctoral fellow researching autonomous underwater vehicles. He joined Firebase to do realtime on complex systems.
Marek Gilbert
Marek Gilbert
Gil has a bachelor's in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before Firebase, he was a systems engineer and consultant. Outside Firebase, Gil is an avid skier, traveler, and board gamer.
Mike Koss
Mike Koss
Mike spent 19 years at Microsoft developing applications (Excel, Outlook, and SharePoint), and then another 10 years working with several Seattle-area startups. He joined Google in 2014. Mike has a masters degree in Computer Science from MIT.
Tim Stirrat
Tim Stirrat
Tim has a Bachelor's in I.T. from Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane Australia. He's a soccer addict, hot chocolate enthusiast, and was once a rave DJ. He joined Firebase to create outstanding user experiences.
Frank van Puffelen
Frank van Puffelen
After spending a few decades writing consumer and enterprise software, Frank decided that it's just as much fun to help developers build great software with exciting technologies. Frank has a Bachelor's in Computer Science from The Hague University in The Netherlands, where he was born and lived before he moved to the US.
Tamal Saha
Tamal Saha
Tamal has extensive experience in building very large scale distributed systems at Google and Amazon. He has a master's degree in Computer Science from University of Virginia. He was born and raised in Bangladesh.
Ajay Tripathy
Ajay Tripathy
Ajay believes in a world where all work is done by robots. So he joined Firebase to help build the tools to make them. When robots finally take his software engineering job, you'll find him writing, bouldering, or lifting weights on the moon for personal records six times his earthly ones.
Thomas Bouldin
Thomas Bouldin
Binary mixologist, technologist, and blinking light enthusiast. Thomas loves carrying a product from conception through operations and support; his software powers hundreds of millions of app installs. Thomas' pedigree includes Parse (by Facebook), Google Image Search, Microsoft Windows, Cal Poly, and a killer manhattan.
Jeffrey DallaTezza
Jeffrey DallaTezza
Jeff studied Philosophy and Computer Science at Johns Hopkins before joining Firebase in June 2015.
Alex Memering
Alex Memering
Alex, a native Hoosier, graduated from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology with a degree in Software Engineering. Outside of Firebase, he enjoys robotics, adventures, and machine learning.
Max Henderson
Max Henderson
Max has a bachelor's degree in Applied Economics from Cornell University. He has over 15 years experience leading finance, engineering, and sales teams. A German/Cuban, he really likes beer, and sometimes has trouble controlling the level of his voice.
Michael Bleigh
Michael Bleigh
Michael has been building software for developers for the better part of a decade as an entrepreneur and author of open source libraries. Before Firebase he co-founded Divshot, a front-end web hosting platform whose technology now helps to power Firebase Hosting. He's also unreasonably fond of Rock Band and other music games.