Software documentation—the resources that specify how software works and learn how to use it—has evolved dramatically over the past few many years. Documents was once mostly in the shape of PDFs and static plain text, but today they’re more interactive and user-friendly than before.
But creating them continues to be a time-suck. Han Wang and Hahnbee Lee, each developers and entrepreneurs, say they've struggled with this personally.
“In the 2010s, firms like Stripe, Hashicorp, Twilio and lots of others raised the bar for developer content,” Wang said. “They proved that a really great developer experience for his or her content is just not only a luxury, but a competitive advantage. Since then, every company has been attempting to catch up, but it surely's actually quite difficult.”
Inspired by an try to simplify document publishing workflows (mainly to make their very own lives easier), Wang and Lee created Mintlifya set of tools for documentation creation, including tools for mechanically generating documents from code bases.
“In the 2020s, the necessities for documentation will develop into even higher,” said Wang. “This time, it's not only concerning the user interface, but additionally concerning the way developers and editors fundamentally interact with the content due to AI.”
An AI-powered vision
Wang and Lee met in college. The two attended Cornell University. Lee studied computer science and Wang earned his bachelor's degree in information science.
As a student, Wang founded two firms: FoodFul, a system for remotely monitoring livestock, and People, a platform for constructing customer communities. After People (which Lee helped found) was acquired by user engagement firm Bettermode, Wang stayed for a number of more months but eventually left to develop into a partner at Bain Capital Ventures.
Wang left Bain in 2021, which happened to be right across the time he and Lee got here up with the concept for Mintlify. They raised seed money from Bain (leveraging Wang's connections) and others, including Sourcegraph co-founder Quinn Slack, to grow the platform into an organization.
At a high level, Mintlify helps developers write tutorials, API references, SDK documents, and chatbots (powered by OpenAI's API) to clarify the specifics of their software and services. It provides built-in components and templates for basic document formatting and structures documents in order that they may be embedded in a code base.
To make document maintenance easier, Mintlify also frequently checks for “outdated” documents and detects how users interact with the content to suggest ways to enhance readability.
However, there may be some criticism of Mintlify’s automation features.
An early user, Tim Anderson of DevClass, Claims Mintlify adds comments to codebases which have “little value” and in a single case repeated the identical factually incorrect sentence 4 times in a document. Others have identified that Mintlify may be confused by disorganized and unoptimized or otherwise poorly written code.
Wang emphasizes the importance of the platform's AI over its limitations, while also suggesting that humans can’t be completely faraway from the cycle of writing documentation.
“We imagine that AI is changing the role of content. Documentation will evolve mechanically and in real time from support messages, the code base and product feedback,” said Wang. “AI support will help firms mechanically write technical content based on product changes and user feedback.”
An expanding business
Mintlify isn't the one startup trying to alter the best way developers create and publish technical guides.
For example, there may be Guidde, whose AI mechanically generates software documentation videos. Documatic, which is more according to Mintlify, mechanically creates change logs and explanations from the code along with documentation.
I discussed competitors to Wang, and he responded by highlighting Mintlify's quite impressive customer list, which incorporates Anthropic, Cursor, Perplexity, Zapier, Polymarket, Fidelity, and around 3,000 other brands. (Wang estimates that Mintlify's tools reach over 1.5 million developers per thirty days.)
He also hinted that the Mintlify platform may have differentiating features within the near future.
“Every documentation today should have AI chat to reply questions directly. But it will go much deeper,” Wang said. “Content creation may even change… Content will probably be used to power support, chatbots and generative AI models themselves. The content may even be personalized for every reader.”
To make that vision a reality, Mintlify recently closed an $18.5 million Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz and backed by Bain and Y Combinator. (Jennifer Li, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, is joining Mintlify's board as a part of the deal.) That brings Mintlify's total raised to $21.7 million. Wang says the brand new money will go toward expanding Mintlify's 11-person team and product development.
“We have at all times focused on running a lean and efficient business,” Wang said. “We didn’t need to boost funds, but we decided to accomplish that for strategic reasons to drive further growth.”
Wang declined to reply questions on Mintlify's revenue and profitability.
