Vercel, a comprehensive
platform for creating unsurpassed web user experiences and creator of Next.js,
the leading React and JavaScript framework for frontend web development,
released Next.js 11 at Next.js Conf on June 15 and a $102 million Series C
funding round announced June 23. To learn more about Next.js 11 and the Series
C funding, VMblog spoke with Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel to discuss these
announcements.
VMblog: To kick things off, can you give us more
information on what was recently announced?
Guillermo Rauch: Vercel announced the release of Next.js
11 which accelerates frontend developers' ability to build the next big thing
through speed and collaboration. We also secured $102M in Series C funding in a
round led by Bedrock Capital and CRV with participation from existing investors
Accel, Geodesic Capital, Greenoaks Capital and GV. New investors include 8VC,
Flex Capital, GGV, Latacora, Salesforce Ventures and Tiger Capital.
VMblog: What are the new innovations included in
Next.js 11?
Rauch: New innovations include significantly
faster starts and changes, real-time feedback, instantaneous live collaboration
and significant image optimization enhancements. In addition, Google developed
Conformance for Next.js, a system that provides carefully crafted solutions and
rules to support optimal loading; Next.js script prioritization and font enhancement
automations that reduce First and Largest Contentful Paint times. Together,
these enhancements enable developers to improve Core Web Vitals scores, which
are now being used by Google to influence search rankings. Developers can try
these new capabilities by visiting nextjs.org/11.
VMblog:
Congratulations on closing the Series C funding round. Where will you invest
the funding?
Rauch:
The new funding, which brings the total raised to $163M, will be used to
scale the Vercel team globally, accelerate research and development, drive
platform innovation and accelerate adoption. Companies including Carhartt,
Github, IBM, McDonald's, Uber, Facebook, and many others deploy their frontends
with the Vercel platform.
VMblog:
What success has Vercel seen in the past year?
Rauch: Since the first Next.js Conf in October
2020, Next.js open-source contributors have grown to more than 1,600, driving
downloads on NPM from 4.1M to 6.2M. Traffic to all sites and apps on the Vercel
edge network has doubled, weekly deploys have quadrupled and the number of
homepages in the Alexa top 10,000 using Next.js have grown by 50%.
VMblog:
How does Vercel benefit developers?
Rauch: Vercel enables developers to build and
publish wonderful things, creating products for developers, designers, and
those who aspire to become one. Vercel is the best place to deploy any frontend
app. Developers can start by deploying with zero configuration to the Vercel
global edge network and scale dynamically to millions of pages. Developers love
Next.js, the open source React framework Vercel built together with Google and
Facebook. Next.js powers the world's largest web sites including TikTok, Hulu,
Nike, Ticketmaster, Staples and Marvel for use cases including e-commerce,
travel, news, and marketing.
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Guillermo Rauch is the founder of Vercel, co-creator of Now and Next.js, and former CTO and co-founder of LearnBoost and Cloudup, acquired by Wordpress.com in 2013. He has extensive background and expertise in the realtime web, and is the creator of socket.io, one of the most popular JavaScript projects on GitHub, with implementations in many different programming languages and frameworks (currently running the realtime backend of high profile apps like Microsoft Office online). He created the first MongoDB ORM for Node.JS, MongooseJS. Before that he was a core developer of the MooTools JavaScript framework. He's the author of 'Smashing Node.JS' published by Wiley in 2012, best-selling book about Node.JS on Amazon in multiple programming categories. He's spoken at dozens of conferences all around the world about JavaScript and the realtime web, such as O'Reilly OSCON, QCon and NDC. Originally from Argentina, he dropped out of high school and moved to the US to pursue his passions in the San Francisco startup world. He's passionate about open source as an education medium, and is a former mentor of an Open Source Engineering class organized and pioneered by Stanford, with students from Harvard, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, UPenn, Columbia and others.