LaunchDarkly was founded in 2014 by Edith Harbaugh and John Kodumal in Oakland, California, to address the challenges developers face in deploying software updates without disrupting user experience. The company provides a feature management platform that enables teams to control feature rollouts, perform slow rollouts, dark launches, and gain better visibility into application performance, allowing greater stability and agility in software releases. Edith Harbaugh, who experienced the inefficiencies of homegrown tools while at TripIt, and John Kodumal, who had developed internal feature flagging tools at Atlassian, combined their expertise to create a scalable solution accessible to smaller and medium-sized companies that lacked the resources of tech giants like Amazon or Facebook. LaunchDarkly’s platform allows companies to avoid the risks of redeployments by managing feature flags, which control which users see certain features and when, streamlining development and deployment workflows. Over time, LaunchDarkly has grown to serve over 4,000 customers worldwide, becoming a significant player in the software development and feature management industry, valued at billions of dollars. The company’s mission centers around empowering organizations to take full control over software launches and turnaround faster with data-driven insights, shaping the future of feature delivery.