Quick Take
I should mention upfront that I have already invested in BuildBear and worked with them, so I am biased here. I was also part of the investment team at Cocoon Capital that offered them a term sheet during the seed round, though we were ultimately priced out on valuation. I later worked as Operations lead at BuildBear from February 2024 to July 2025. While I no longer work there, I am still an investor in the business and friends with the founders. I know both founders well and have seen the business from the inside.
BuildBear Labs is one of the more compelling Web3 infrastructure plays I have worked with. They have built something genuinely useful that developers actually want to use, evidenced by their organic growth to 700+ MAUs without significant marketing spend. The product addresses real pain points rather than manufactured problems.
What stands out is their platform approach rather than point solution thinking. The sandbox-as-a-service model with plugin marketplace creates genuine network effects and switching costs. Unlike most dev tools that solve narrow problems, this could end up being infrastructure that developers rely on daily.
Having worked closely with Dipesh and Emmanuel, I can say the founding team has both the technical chops and business sense to execute. Dipesh's Web3 experience (Zapper.xyz) gives them credibility with both crypto natives and enterprises navigating compliance. Emmanuel's Rust expertise and Google ML background means he can build at the technical depth required for production-grade infrastructure.
However, timing remains the biggest question mark. Web3 is still early, with market research suggesting maybe less than 30,000 active full-time Web3 developers working on sophisticated projects, and some research suggesting a lot less than that. Developer tooling typically gets commoditised over time, and we are in a bear market where DevTool valuations are compressed. They need to capture significant market share before larger players (Alchemy, Infura) or traditional DevOps companies like GitLab decide this space is worth their attention.
From what I have seen working inside the business, this is worth backing if the valuation is reasonable. The product-market fit signals are there, the team can execute, and the market timing, while risky, could work in their favour if Web3 development complexity continues to increase. The downside is limited if they stay capital efficient, but the upside is significant if they become the default testing infrastructure for Web3.
Company Summary
BuildBear Labs is a Singapore-based company that I got to know well during my time there. They are building what they call a full-stack DevOps platform for Web3, but what it really comes down to is solving a basic problem: Web3 development tooling is rubbish compared to what developers expect in Web2.
Their main product is persistent blockchain sandboxes that actually work. Instead of dealing with slow, unreliable public testnets that cost money and break constantly, developers get private environments that mirror mainnet conditions. They support over 700 EVM-compatible networks, which sounds impressive until you realise most developers only care about a handful of them.
What made sense to me when I worked with them is that they are not just building another testing tool. They are trying to bring Web2-grade reliability to Web3 development with proper CI/CD automation and collaboration features. Whether they can execute on that vision while the market is still tiny is the real question.
Problem Statement
Having worked in Web3 development environments and served as CTO multiple times, including at a VC-backed B2B solution with a team of engineers, I can confirm that the tooling is genuinely terrible compared to what you get in Web2. While traditional software teams have proper DevOps stacks, CI/CD pipelines, and staging environments that actually work, Web3 developers are stuck with fragmented tools, testnets that break constantly, and manual sandboxes that bear no resemblance to production.
The numbers tell the story. Projects regularly take eight months and over $500,000 to build, with most of that time wasted on testing and debugging. This is not because Web3 is inherently complex; it is because the infrastructure is rubbish. But at the same time, the consequences of getting it wrong are huge.
The security angle is where it gets serious. That $471 million lost in H1 2023 due to poor testing is not an abstract statistic when you have worked with teams struggling with unreliable testnets and inadequate simulation environments. Even audited protocols get caught out because the testing infrastructure does not reflect real-world conditions. For any Web2 company used to GitHub Actions and Docker, the Web3 stack feels like stepping back a decade.
Vision
BuildBear wants to be "the GitHub of Web3," which sounds like typical startup hyperbole until you see what they are actually building. The vision is to become the default DevOps layer for Web3 development, and having worked with them, I think they have a realistic shot at it.
Their roadmap covers the basics you would expect:
- Chain-agnostic development environment (sensible, since most developers do not want to learn new tools for every blockchain)
- Plugin marketplace for integrations and analytics (classic platform play)
- Enterprise and auditor adoption for security testing (this is where the money is)
- Expansion into deployment and monitoring (natural evolution)
- Bridge for Web2 companies moving into Web3 (huge market if Web3 ever goes mainstream)
Their north star is ambitious: no decentralised application should go live without passing through BuildBear first. Given how many projects get exploited after launch, this is not as unrealistic as it sounds.
Market Opportunity
The market opportunity story sounds compelling on paper, but the reality is messier. Yes, the global software development tools market is projected to grow from $6.6 billion to $19.7 billion by 2032, but that includes all development tools, not just Web3. The Web3 slice is much smaller and more fragmented.
The timing is particularly challenging. While Web3 had momentum at the end of 2024, 2025 has seen a sharp drop in interest as the industry shifted focus to AI. The VC funding numbers tell the story. Crypto VC fundraising collapsed from $86B in 2022 to $3.7B year-to-date in 2025. LPs are backing away from crypto funds, preferring ETFs and AI investments instead.
This creates a difficult environment for Web3 infrastructure companies like BuildBear. Even if the technology is solid and the team can execute, they are raising capital in a sector where institutional money has largely disappeared and only top-tier funds with exceptional track records can attract meaningful capital.
BuildBear likes to quote projections that Web3 developers will grow to 658,000 by 2032. The Electric Capital Developer Report 2024 shows the reality is much more modest: 23,613 monthly active crypto developers in 2024, down 7% year-over-year. Even accounting for private repositories and enterprise development not captured in their GitHub analysis, we are talking about maybe 50,000-80,000 total developers globally, not the hundreds of thousands BuildBear is banking on.
Web3 Developer Growth: Electric Capital Reality vs Projections
Electric Capital data shows 23.6k monthly active developers in 2024 (down 7% YoY). BuildBear's 658k projection requires 28x growth from current reality.
The chart above shows the gap between hype and reality. Electric Capital's 2024 report reveals the developer market actually contracted 7% year-over-year to about 24,000 monthly active developers. Even accounting for private repositories and enterprise development they cannot track, the total addressable market is probably closer to 50,000-80,000 developers globally, nowhere near the explosive growth BuildBear's business model assumes.
The bright spot is developer quality. Electric Capital found that experienced developers (2+ years) now contribute 70% of code commits and reached an all-time high. This suggests the market is professionalising, which plays to BuildBear's enterprise-focused strategy. But it also means the addressable market might be smaller but higher-value than the raw numbers suggest.
That said, the economics could still work if they focus on the right customers. The projects that survive this downturn will likely have better funding and more serious development budgets. BuildBear's enterprise-first approach makes sense in this environment, even if the overall market is smaller than the hype suggested.
Competitive Analysis
The competitive landscape in Web3 dev tools is fragmented, which works in BuildBear's favour. Most players focus on one piece of the puzzle rather than offering a complete solution. Having used many of these tools myself, I can see where BuildBear fits and where they have advantages.
Infrastructure Giants
Tenderly
Simulation and debugging
✓ Excellent debugging tools
✓ Good simulation environment
✗ No persistent environments
Alchemy
Node infrastructure leader
✓ Massive scale, reliable RPC
✗ Basic testing capabilities
✗ Not focused on dev tooling
✓ Enterprise credibility
✓ Strong institutional ties
✗ Limited development workflow tools
Developer Tools
Foundry
Testing framework standard
✓ Excellent testing capabilities
✓ Developer favourite
✗ Complex setup and maintenance
Hardhat Network
Local development environment
✓ Good for solo development
✓ Easy to start with
✗ Poor collaboration features
Remix IDE
Browser-based development
✓ Great for prototyping
✓ Has BuildBear plugin
✗ Limited production use
BuildBear's Competitive Edge
Comprehensive without being complicated. Most competitors either do one thing well or try to do everything poorly. The persistent environments with proper CI/CD integration is genuinely differentiated, at least for now.
Strategic Positioning
BuildBear is not trying to be just another debugging tool or local development framework. They are positioning themselves as the DevOps layer for Web3, similar to what GitHub, Docker, and Vercel did for traditional web development. From my time working with them, this positioning makes sense and is actually achievable.
The platform approach creates real defensibility. Once teams start using shared environments and integrating BuildBear into their workflows, switching becomes painful. The plugin ecosystem adds another layer of lock-in. From what I observed, it does seem to get harder to migrate away once you are deeply integrated.
Business & Revenue Model
BuildBear runs a straightforward SaaS model with four pricing tiers. From what I saw working on their operations, the unit economics seem to work and the pricing feels reasonable for what you get.
Pricing Update (August 2025): BuildBear introduced a new four-tier pricing model with clearer value propositions and Resource Unit (RU) based usage tracking, replacing the previous transaction-based system.
How They Make Money
Subscription Tiers
Resource Units
Smart usage-based pricing that accounts for computational complexity, not just transaction volume.
✓ Prevents gaming the system
✓ Aligns pricing with costs
✓ Scales with customer usage
Plugin Marketplace
The platform play. Third-party developers build tools, BuildBear takes 30%.
Enterprise Deals
• Custom deployments
• On-premise options
• SLAs and consulting
The model works because it scales with customer success. Start free, grow into paid tiers as projects get serious, upgrade as teams expand. The plugin marketplace creates additional stickiness and higher-margin revenue.
Traction
The numbers look good, and having been inside the business, I can say they reflect real usage rather than vanity metrics. The growth acceleration from Q4 2024 through Q1 2025 has been noticeable.
What the Numbers Actually Mean
700+ monthly active users might not sound massive, but in the Web3 developer space, this is decent traction. The 49% growth from January to July 2025 shows sustained momentum, not just a one-time spike.
The sandbox growth is more impressive: 250,000+ total sandboxes created with 13x growth from March to July 2025. This suggests developers are not just trying the platform once; they are using it regularly. When sandbox creation jumps from under 3,000 per month to over 40,000, that indicates real product-market fit.
The retention numbers tell the real story. Two-month retention improving from 72% (Q1 2025 baseline) to 81% means the product is getting stickier. In developer tools, if people come back after two months, they usually stick around.
Growth Pattern
What I found encouraging during my time there was the acceleration starting in Q4 2024. Both user acquisition and usage intensity increased together, which suggests the product hit an inflection point rather than just benefiting from market timing. When sandbox creation per user goes up alongside total users, that is genuine product-market fit.
Strategy & Roadmap
What They Are Actually Building Toward
The strategy is sensible. Become the default testing layer for Web3 developers, then expand from there. Having watched the team execute, I think they understand the importance of nailing one thing before trying to own everything.
Core Strategy Progression
Nail testing infrastructure
Build platform ecosystem
Own full DevOps lifecycle
Near Term Focus (Next 12-18 Months)
The immediate priorities make sense given where the product is today.
High Priority
Integration Everywhere
GitHub Actions, CI/CD pipelines, existing dev tools
Free → Paid Conversion
Unit economics need to work for scale
Medium Priority
Chain Partnerships
L1s/L2s as distribution channels
Plugin Marketplace
30% revenue share model + community building
Integration everywhere. Getting BuildBear into existing developer workflows through GitHub Actions, CI/CD pipelines, and the tools people already use like Remix. This is smart because friction kills adoption.
Chain partnerships. Working with L1s and L2s to become their recommended testing solution. I have seen some of these partnerships in action, and they provide good distribution channels.
Plugin marketplace. The 30% revenue share model needs developer buy in to work. Early signs are encouraging, but this requires sustained community building.
Free to paid conversion. Moving users from Explorer to Developer tiers through usage based pricing. The unit economics need to work here for the business model to scale.
Long Term Vision (2+ Years)
Become the Operating System for Web3 Development
Testing Foundation
Current strength
Deployment
Next expansion
Monitoring
Full DevOps lifecycle
The big picture is ambitious. Becoming the operating system for Web3 development. This means expanding beyond testing into deployment, monitoring, and the full DevOps lifecycle.
From what I saw working with enterprise clients in Web3, there seems to be demand for integrated toolchains rather than point solutions. If BuildBear can own more of the developer experience from prototype to production, that would create some switching costs, though execution is everything.
The question is execution and timing. Web3 tooling is still fragmented, which creates opportunity but also means the market might not be ready for a full stack solution. The team seems to understand this. They are building horizontally from a strong testing foundation rather than trying to solve everything at once.
What Could Go Wrong
⚠️ Key Risk: Strategy assumes continued Web3 adoption and developer growth. If the space stagnates, BuildBear becomes a niche tool for a niche market. Enterprise focus helps hedge this risk, but execution remains the key variable.
Financial Forecast
Revenue Stream Breakdown
Subscription Revenue
Professional and Enterprise plans providing predictable income
Key driver: Team scaling
As teams grow, subscription tiers increase
Usage-Based Revenue
Sandbox overages and high-volume teams
Timeline: Meaningful by mid-2026
Scales with customer success
Enterprise Deals
Custom deployments, SLAs, consulting services
Where the real money is
High ACV if execution works
Marketplace Revenue
30% commission from plugin ecosystem
Long-term potential
Requires sustained ecosystem growth
The Financial Model
Unit Economics Snapshot
The approach makes sense. Focus on developer adoption first, monetise later. This worked for GitHub, Postman, and others in the DevOps space. The question is whether Web3 developer tools follow the same playbook.
The unit economics look promising from what I saw. High gross margins should be achievable since the infrastructure costs are relatively fixed. Customer acquisition through ecosystem partnerships and integrations keeps costs low compared to traditional SaaS marketing.
The recurring usage model ties revenue to essential developer workflows, which creates stickiness. If teams depend on BuildBear for their testing and deployment pipeline, switching costs become meaningful.
📊 Reality Check
The $60M ARR target assumes the Web3 developer market grows significantly and BuildBear captures meaningful market share. Given the current market size (~24k active developers per Electric Capital), this requires either massive market expansion or very high revenue per developer.
Risk Factors & Mitigation
The Web3 Volatility Problem
Risk
Web3 is cyclical and unpredictable. When crypto crashes, funding dries up and developer activity drops. If Web3 adoption stagnates or regulatory pressure kills innovation, BuildBear becomes a niche tool for a shrinking market.
Mitigation
Chain agnostic approach means not tied to any single protocol. Expansion into regulated Web2 environments is smart hedging. Developer tooling tends to be more resilient than applications since teams still need to build and test code even in bear markets.
Integration Dependencies
Risk
Heavily depends on external integrations with toolchains, protocols, and developer ecosystems. API changes, ecosystem fragmentation, or platform shifts could break their product overnight.
Mitigation
Focus on open standards and multiple partnerships. Plugin marketplace approach lets the community build integrations rather than relying entirely on the core team. Still, this remains a structural risk for any infrastructure business.
Execution Risk
Risk
Early stage company trying to build complex infrastructure while scaling a team and chasing enterprise deals. Product scaling, hiring, revenue timing, and maintaining focus are classic startup challenges that kill most companies.
Mitigation
Founding team has relevant experience and current traction suggests decent execution so far. Lean team size shows capital discipline. But execution risk is always the biggest variable with early stage companies, and Web3 adds extra complexity.
Risk Assessment Summary
The risks are real but not unusual for a Web3 infrastructure play. Market risk is partially hedged through diversification. Integration risk is managed through open standards and community development. Execution risk comes down to the team, and they seem capable based on what I have observed.
The Team
The founding team has the right mix of technical depth and operational experience. Both founders come from backgrounds that matter for this particular problem.
The Founders
CEO Dipesh Sukhani has eight years in Web3 development and co founded Zapper.xyz, which became a significant DeFi dashboard. His background as an international tax lawyer is actually useful here because it gives him credibility with enterprise clients who care about compliance and regulation. He also mentored developers at ConsenSys, so he understands the pain points BuildBear is trying to solve.
CTO Emmanuel Antony is well known in the Rust community for contributing to core language components. Former Google Machine Learning Facilitator with expertise in AI and scalable systems. Having worked with the technical architecture, I can say Emmanuel understands how to build infrastructure that needs to handle complex, persistent environments across multiple blockchain networks.
Team Assessment
This is a strong technical founding team. Dipesh brings the Web3 domain expertise and enterprise credibility. Emmanuel brings the systems engineering skills needed to build complex infrastructure. The combination of regulatory knowledge, Web3 experience, and deep technical ability is exactly what this problem requires.
The team is currently 12 people split between India and remote locations. They have stayed lean while shipping meaningful technical milestones, which suggests good capital discipline and execution focus. In my experience, teams that can deliver complex technical products with small teams tend to scale better than those that throw people at problems.
My Investment Thesis
I invested in BuildBear because I think they are solving a real problem at the right time with a team that can execute. Web3 infrastructure plays are rare, and this one has several things going for it.
The Timing Challenge
The Challenge: Web3 development has reached the point where professional tooling is becoming necessary, but the funding environment is brutal. Crypto VC fundraising collapsed from $86B in 2022 to $3.7B year-to-date in 2025.
The Opportunity: Fewer Web3 projects overall, but the ones that survive likely have better funding and more serious development needs. BuildBear could benefit from this flight to quality if they can position themselves with the right customers.
Platform Potential
BuildBear is not just building another developer tool. The plugin marketplace and shared environments create network effects that get stronger as more developers use the platform.
Enterprise Bridge Strategy
Most Web3 tools are built for crypto natives and fail when enterprises try to use them. BuildBear combines Web3 functionality with enterprise reliability.
What I Am Tracking
Conversion Metrics
Do free users actually upgrade to paid tiers as their projects mature?
Enterprise Momentum
Can they land meaningful contracts with protocols and institutions?
Plugin Ecosystem
Does the marketplace generate meaningful third party developer activity?
Multi-chain Adoption
Usage beyond Ethereum ecosystem shows broader market penetration.
The Risk Calculation
Downside Risk
Web3 infrastructure bet depends on continued adoption and developer growth. If Web3 stagnates, BuildBear becomes a niche tool.
Upside Case
Infrastructure tends to be more resilient than applications, and the team has shown they can execute in a difficult market.
Valuation & Raise Details
Series A Round
BuildBear is raising a Series A, though the specific valuation is not public. I participated in the round alongside existing and new investors.
Valuation Reality Check
Market Range
Web3 infrastructure companies at this stage typically see valuations in this range depending on traction. BuildBear has decent metrics (250K+ sandboxes, 700+ MAUs, 13x growth).
Headwinds
- • DevTool companies get conservative valuations
- • Bear market pricing discipline
- • Web3 sector discount
Tailwinds
- • Strong traction metrics
- • Comprehensive platform approach
- • Enterprise interest
Companies like Alchemy, Infura, and Tenderly raised at higher valuations as Web3 tooling demand grew, but current market conditions likely constrain pricing despite BuildBear having a more comprehensive platform approach.
How They Plan to Spend the Money
Team Expansion
Engineering talent for multi-chain support, debugging tools, and enterprise security features. Sales and customer success people for enterprise deals.
Product Development
Core platform enhancements including plugin marketplace, analytics dashboards, integration capabilities. AI-powered testing recommendations and automated vulnerability detection.
Infrastructure & Scaling
Server capacity expansion, performance optimization, enterprise security. Multi-region deployment capabilities for enterprise clients.
Go-to-Market
Enterprise sales capabilities, marketing to Web3 development teams, conference presence, and developer community building.
Exit Paths
BuildBear has several potential exit routes, though the timeline depends on how quickly Web3 tooling becomes mainstream and how well the company executes.
Most Likely Acquirers
Developer Platforms
GitHub/Microsoft
Already own developer workflow. Web3 testing would be natural extension, similar to Codespaces evolution.
DevOps Platforms
Atlassian, GitLab, HashiCorp expanding into blockchain workflows as Web3 becomes mainstream.
Infrastructure Players
Web3 Infrastructure
Alchemy, Infura, ConsenSys could acquire to complete developer stack and offer end-to-end tooling.
Cloud Providers
AWS, Google Cloud, Azure trying to dominate enterprise infrastructure with Web3 as part of broader platform strategy.
Strategic Acquisition
Timeline
3-5 years as Web3 infrastructure consolidates
Trigger
Enterprise adoption inflection point where Web2 companies systematically adopt Web3 tooling
Strategic Value
- • Complete developer workflow coverage
- • Enterprise-ready Web3 capabilities
- • Ecosystem integration advantages
IPO Potential
Theoretical Case
If BuildBear hits $60M ARR target by 2027 with strong margins, IPO could work. Developer infrastructure companies with recurring revenue get decent public market multiples.
Reality Check
Web3 market still relatively small. For IPO scale, Web3 would need to become default for application development rather than niche specialty. That level of adoption could take years.
Open Questions
Despite working with the team and having insider access, there are still things I am watching closely or would like to understand better.
- How quickly can they convert free users to paid tiers as projects mature? The unit economics depend on this working at scale.
- What happens when Alchemy, Infura, or other infrastructure players decide to build competing testing environments? Competition could get intense quickly.
- Can the plugin marketplace generate meaningful third party revenue, or will it remain a nice to have feature that does not move the business?
- How will enterprise sales cycles actually play out? Web3 enterprise deals can be unpredictable and slow.
- Does the Web3 developer market grow fast enough to support their revenue projections, or are they too optimistic about adoption timing?
These are the variables that will determine whether BuildBear becomes a meaningful business or remains a useful but niche tool. Most of them come down to execution and market timing, which are always the hardest things to predict.
References & Data Sources
Company Information
- BuildBear Labs official website and documentation
- Company pitch deck and investor materials (Series A, 2025)
- Internal traction metrics and user analytics (2024-2025)
- Team LinkedIn profiles and professional backgrounds
Market Research
- Electric Capital Developer Report 2024 - Comprehensive analysis of crypto developer activity and trends
- Global software development tools market reports (2024)
- Web3 developer ecosystem studies and surveys
- Blockchain security incident reports (H1 2023 data)
- Developer tooling spend analysis and industry benchmarks
Competitive Intelligence
- Public information on Alchemy, Infura, Tenderly funding and metrics
- Developer tool ecosystem mapping and feature comparisons
- Web3 infrastructure provider positioning and pricing
- Traditional DevOps platform analogies ( GitHub, Docker, Vercel)
Industry Analysis
- Web3 development lifecycle and pain point research
- Enterprise blockchain adoption trends and forecasts
- Accelerator program data ( Iterative, Plug and Play)
- Investment thesis frameworks for infrastructure companies
Disclosure
This analysis combines publicly available information with insights gained during my time as Operations Lead at BuildBear Labs (February 2024 - July 2025). All forward-looking statements and projections are based on available data and should be considered estimates subject to significant uncertainty.