Overview

The talk, delivered by Irina Nazarova at RailsConf 2025, explores the enduring appeal and current momentum of Ruby on Rails (Rails) for startups, examining its historical trajectory, current success stories, and what is needed for its future growth.

Main Topic

The session investigates the ways in which Rails has helped startups grow from inception to IPO and its resurgence among new founders, using concrete examples from both well-known and recent companies.

Key Points

• Recent Startup Successes on Rails:

  • Chime Financial completed an IPO, exemplifying Rails' capacity to scale from an idea to a public company.
  • Figma, less known for its use of Ruby, also filed for IPO, using Sinatra and ActiveRecord in its backend.
  • Bolt.ne achieved $40 million ARR within five months of launch and ran the world’s largest hackathon, all products served by Rails and ActiveRecord.
  • Whop (an e-commerce platform targeting Gen Z) processed $1.4 billion in transactions within a short period after its 2021 founding on Rails and Next.js.
  • Uscreen, a platform for creators, raised $150 million, demonstrating continued investor faith in Rails-powered startups.

• Rails' Historic Trajectory:

  • Review of the Gartner Hype Cycle, illustrating how Rails experienced early hype, a period of migration away by some companies, and ongoing improvement as the community invested in tooling and the ecosystem.
  • The foundational role of Rails in the rise of major startups (e.g., Shopify, Twitter, Heroku, GitHub, Stripe, Intercom, GitLab, Coinbase, Instacart), many emerging from early Y Combinator (YC) batches.
  • The cyclical pattern of Rails adoption, hype, and renewal underscored by strategic investments in open source and infrastructure during visibility slumps.

• Current Rails Community and Adoption:

  • Strong present-day momentum with an increase in meetups (800 in the last 12 months) and many new startups across fintech, AI, e-commerce, healthcare, and other sectors choosing Rails for its productivity, conventions, and rapid iteration capabilities.
  • Founders value Rails for conventions over configuration, ease of building business logic, community, expressiveness, and efficient prototyping.
  • Renewed advocacy from YC partners and successful entrepreneurs, encouraging new founders to leverage Rails for full-stack development.

• Challenges and the Path Forward:

  • Noted gaps: need for a more comprehensive frontend story, scalability for larger teams, improved hiring/training resources, enhanced advocacy, and especially robust tooling for AI/ML-related workflows.
  • Despite recent SDK releases for Ruby in the AI ecosystem, there remains a need for better support for AI workflows, code generation, observability, and integration with Python-based data pipelines.
  • Emphasis on the community's responsibility to build missing pieces, promote Rails successes, and ensure relevance, especially in the age of AI-powered startups.

Conclusion & Takeaways

• Rails' unique combination of developer happiness, productivity, and a mature ecosystem continues to make it a compelling choice for startups aiming for rapid growth and large-scale success.
• The recent wave of high-profile Rails-powered IPOs and startup success stories signals a renaissance, driven by collective community investment and new technological advancements (e.g., Hotwire, Inertia, Kamal).
• Ongoing challenges—especially around AI tooling and advocacy—represent opportunities for the community to further strengthen Rails’ role in powering tomorrow’s most innovative startups.
• Networking, advocacy and knowledge sharing, as showcased at events like RailsConf and local Ruby meetups, are key to sustaining this momentum.