How Copado helps developers get home in time for dinner

Delivering software updates used to involve stress, system failures, and countless hours of developer overtime. Traditionally, businesses would bundle their software changes into one big “release day” — often late at night or on weekends.

When updating these complex software systems, every change carries risk. One small update can ripple across an organization, disrupting critical workflows and leaving DevOps teams scrambling for a fix.

Nowhere is that more evident than in Salesforce. For years, Salesforce development has been dominated by consultants hired to deliver projects quickly, resulting in fragile systems and costly outages. For businesses, these outages can lead to lost revenue and frustrated customers; for the developers behind the scenes, they can mean chronic stress, weekend work, and burnout.

Restoring trust in DevOps

Over a decade ago, two Salesforce release engineers with firsthand experience of the chaos of manual deployments and overnight release cycles set out on a mission: to make release days obsolete.

In 2013, Federico Larsen and Philipp Rackwitz founded Copado, one of the first DevOps tools tailored to Salesforce’s ecosystem.

Today, Copado’s platform automates how companies build, test, and release changes in cloud applications, giving them version control, continuous integration, compliance checks, and AI-powered monitoring all in one tool.

While it has expanded beyond Salesforce into other cloud environments, Copado’s goal remains the same: to speed up software releases and get developers home in time for dinner.

“When everything works, and you get to go home for a meal with your family, and you make that play that you were going to miss, or you see that soccer game, you tend to like your life a lot more, and you tend to do your best work,” says CEO Ted Elliott.

“We’re really focused on trying to give people back their personal time.”

At first, Larsen and Rackwitz thought Copado would be as simple as putting an app online for people to download and use. But they quickly discovered that big companies wanted it — and those customers needed training, help with security and compliance, and full support to get started.

“We needed to build a more robust sales operation to help get customers on board,” recalled Rackwitz. “It was time to adapt because we knew we were onto something.”

Soon after, fellow Salesforce engineer Sanjay Gidwani — who would later become Copado’s Chief Operating Officer – became the company’s first paying customer.

Within its first five years, Copado had scaled annual revenue to $4M (with organic growth of 300% year on year) and signed several Fortune 500 companies, all without external funding.

The human side of software delivery

In 2018, Copado raised a €7.5M (approximately $8.8M) Series A led by Insight Partners and hired Elliott as CEO.

“I joined Copado because I believed in the mission that Copado was trying to solve,” he says. “I had myself done a startup on the Salesforce ecosystem. I saw the impact of having to sit by the elevator bank to make sure the developers wouldn’t leave the building when things were broken.”

As a Salesforce user himself, Elliott was sold on the idea that Copado could bring trust to the development process. “The real power of any piece of software is not the company, it’s the users,” he says. “If people are getting value from what you’re doing, they’re going to pay you a lot of money for that value, and you can feel good about it.”

Building a category

Under Elliott’s tenure, Copado has evolved from a daring European startup into a global leader in Salesforce DevOps, with more than 1,500 global
customers and 400 employees across 24 countries. Customers such as T-Mobile, Coca-Cola, and Accenture report 20x shorter lead times, 10x faster recovery times, and a 4x reduction in change fail rate.

Insight went on to lead Copado’s $96M Series B in 2020, as well as its $140M Series C round in 2021.

Becoming an AI-first company

With fresh investment behind it, Copado expanded far beyond its original release management roots. The company built out a full DevOps lifecycle platform with version control, testing, and compliance tools, but the most transformative leap has come with AI.

“We became AI-first about two years ago,” says Elliott. “We’re doing support with AI. We’re doing our [sales] with AI. We’re doing our customer success with AI. We’ve even built an internal product that listens to our calls and tells us when we have revenue at risk, and creates tasks for our customer success team.”

Copado’s other AI-driven capabilities include org intelligence, which scans cloud environments for misconfigurations and risks, and embedded Copado AI tools that analyze sales calls, support tickets, and development pipelines.

The real game-changer is the granular data visibility AI offers, says Elliott. “What are the features that people don’t like? What is holding people back? We think of AI as the greatest listening tool ever.”

Those measures have had a dramatic impact on profit — Copado hit $140M in revenue in 2024.

The AI revolution in enterprise software

From the beginning, Copado differentiated itself by connecting technical quality with human outcomes: fewer failed releases, fewer late nights, and healthier home lives.

According to Elliott, Cisco tracked a measurable drop in employee divorces once Copado streamlined its development cycles. “I love customer stories of people succeeding with something, because I know that we’re having an impact. How does that affect the bottom line? That is the bottom line.”

“I love customer stories of people succeeding with something, because I know that we’re having an impact. How does that affect the bottom line? That is the bottom line.”

Looking ahead, Elliott sees two major shifts: Gen Z buyers demanding consumer-like, conversational experiences in enterprise software, and Agentic AI handling complex work, reducing timelines from months to minutes.

Still, Elliott argues that humanity retains a unique advantage in the era of agentic AI. “Machines aren’t curious. We are. Curiosity is going to become much more valuable.”

Elliott believes AI will reshape enterprise software as profoundly as the internet did in the 1990s. “There are these moments in time and technology that are revolutionary … and you need to show up in the arena and listen to ideas … and brainstorm where you can add value and … how you can get to market first.”

This article is part of our ScaleUp:AI 2025 Partner Series, highlighting insights from the companies and leaders shaping the future of AI.

*Note: Insight Partners has invested in Copado.