Phileas & Fogg

What Phileas & Fogg does

Phileas & Fogg is a privately held, founder-operated "globetrotting labs company" founded in 2013 by Silicon Valley-based designer and developer Gregory Koberger. Its operating model relocates a small rotating team — initially about four designers and developers per cycle — to a new country every 80 days to design, build, and launch a product within a 13-week window. The first rotation ran from October 1 to December 21, 2013 in Costa Rica, and the company signalled a Summer 2014 rotation to a to-be-determined destination.

The company's product strategy is a suite of interconnected developer tools, with each new product designed to build on and integrate with prior ones. The first shipped product is ReadMe.io. Engineering is centred on web applications built with Node.js or Python on the backend and Angular on the frontend in an OSX development environment, with additional capabilities in iOS, Android, Ruby on Rails, and DevOps. Products are required to be deliverable as an MVP in 13 weeks or fewer and to have a "simple, obvious revenue model."

Go-to-market is product-led growth targeting developers as a persona — individuals and SMBs reached via self-serve distribution through product websites, with organic social (Twitter, Facebook) and a company blog (phileasandblogg.com) used for recruitment and awareness. The stated revenue model is recurring subscription on the developer-tools suite. The company is venture-backed at the seed stage, founder-owned, and operates with hiring constraints limited to US-work-eligible applicants with valid passports at the time of the data.

Name

Phileas & Fogg

Legal name

Phileas & Fogg

Website

https://phileasandfogg.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2013

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Phileas & Fogg is a founder-run traveling startup lab that relocates a small team of designers and developers to a new country every 80 days to build interconnected developer tools, starting with ReadMe.io on a subscription, product-led model.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Developer Tools

NAICS

Software Publishers (5132)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)

akta.pro primary industry

Developer Portals, SDKs & Documentation Platforms (BPAMADAG)

akta.pro secondary industry

Developer Experience Platforms for Enterprise (IDEs, CI/CD, Dev Portals) (HDAEAKAI)

Keywords

• Developer tools
• API documentation
• Developer productivity
• Web application development
• Mobile app development

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Developer Tools Suite: Building a suite of interconnected developer tools with simple, obvious revenue models. Products build on and integrate with each other over time. ReadMe.io is mentioned as the first product in this suite.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels4 records

Core offering

Phileas & Fogg builds and releases a suite of interconnected developer tools, with each new product designed, developed, and launched from a different country during an 80-day sprint. The first product in the suite is ReadMe.io, an easy-to-use developer tool targeted at software engineers and developers. The company is structured as a traveling startup lab, with each team of approximately four designers and developers producing a Minimum Viable Product within a three-month window before relocating to a new country.

Product overview

Phileas & Fogg is building a suite of interconnected developer tools. Each new tool builds on and integrates with the previous ones, released in approximately three-month cycles. The first product in this suite is ReadMe.io.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• ReadMe.io: First developer tool product in the suite of interconnected tools aimed at developers being built by Phileas & Fogg.

Products and services

• ReadMe.io ReadMe.io is the first developer tool in Phileas & Fogg's suite of interconnected products aimed at software developers, designed to be easy-to-use and to integrate with subsequent tools in the company's product lineup.

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Scale indicators1 record

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Postman: Broad incumbent in the API/developer tooling space. Competes for the same developer mindshare around APIs and documentation, though Postman spans the full API lifecycle while Phileas & Fogg focuses on documentation-first tools.
• SwaggerHub / SmartBear: Established API documentation and design tooling suite (OpenAPI/Swagger). A broad incumbent competing in the same developer documentation category as ReadMe.io.
• Notion: Broad documentation and wiki incumbent often used by developer teams for product/docs. Adjacent rather than direct — overlaps on docs workflows but not API-specific tooling.

Emerging players

• Mintlify: Emerging developer documentation platform targeting the same API docs use case as ReadMe.io. Comparable as a focused, well-funded entrant in the developer documentation category.
• Vercel: Developer experience platform with adjacent developer tooling and self-serve PLG model. Comparable on developer-audience PLG distribution, though the core product category differs.

Direct peers

• GitBook: Developer-facing documentation platform serving engineering teams. Overlaps with ReadMe.io on technical documentation workflows and developer audience.
• Stoplight: API design and documentation tooling company targeting developers and API producers. Directly comparable in category and audience to Phileas & Fogg's first product.
• ReadMe: The standalone API/developer documentation company that grew out of the ReadMe.io product originally built by Phileas & Fogg. It is the most directly comparable peer given the shared origin product and target developer audience.

Others

• Recurse Center: Self-directed programming retreat community that shares the 'gather talented developers in an inspiring setting' DNA with Phileas & Fogg's lab, though it focuses on education rather than product shipping.
• Levels.io (Pieter Levels): Independent 'digital nomad' developer known for solo-built developer products while traveling. Comparable as a counterpoint to Phileas & Fogg's traveling-developer brand and solo indie hacker model.

Market position

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights5 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/phileasandfogg

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Phileas & Fogg