Excalidraw: a weekend side project, 135K GitHub stars, and a paid Excalidraw+ to fund it

Q: Why did Excalidraw work?

Proven value. Chedeau had used a similar tool for about 10 years to illustrate his blog and knew the idea worked (vjeux blog). Attention turned into contributors. He posted progress videos to a large Twitter audience, filed many small issues and gave commit access to everyone who got a PR merged (vjeux blog). Zero friction. He "had to actively prevent people from adding title selection and login" so users could start drawing immediately (vjeux blog). Paying for what companies need. The top complaints were about company adoption: sharing, reliable collaboration and data security. Excalidraw+ answered those (Excalidraw blog).

Key takeaways

Started on 1 Jan 2020; two weeks later: 12k unique active users, 1.5k GitHub stars and 26 contributors, per the founder.
May 2021: Excalidraw+ launched as a paid team workspace so the open-source project 'will be properly funded'.
Usage grew from 60K to 170K monthly active users in 2021; the repo has 135,000+ GitHub stars (checked 3 Nov 2026).

What it is

Excalidraw is a virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn-looking diagrams (GitHub). The editor is free and MIT-licensed and is also published as an npm package (Excalidraw blog). Excalidraw+ adds team workspaces, cloud storage and more AI requests for $6 per user per month (Excalidraw+ pricing).

Timeline

1 Jan 2020: Christopher Chedeau starts building it; in two weeks it gets "12k unique active users, 1.5k stars on github and 26 contributors" (vjeux blog).
May 2021: over 100K people used Excalidraw in the previous month; the team launches Excalidraw+ at $7/month (Excalidraw blog).
2021: monthly active users grow from 60K to 170K, and a long-time maintainer joins full time, funded by Excalidraw+ (Excalidraw blog).
3 Nov 2026: the GitHub repository shows more than 135,000 stars (GitHub API).

Why it worked

Proven value. Chedeau had used a similar tool for about 10 years to illustrate his blog and knew the idea worked (vjeux blog).
Attention turned into contributors. He posted progress videos to a large Twitter audience, filed many small issues and gave commit access to everyone who got a PR merged (vjeux blog).
Zero friction. He "had to actively prevent people from adding title selection and login" so users could start drawing immediately (vjeux blog).
Paying for what companies need. The top complaints were about company adoption: sharing, reliable collaboration and data security. Excalidraw+ answered those (Excalidraw blog).

What to learn

Use your launch buzz fast. Chedeau says the initial buzz "is only going to last so long (a few days)" (vjeux blog).
Charge for what teams need (accounts, sharing, storage and security) and keep the core free.
Be honest about unfair advantages. Chedeau lists his experience, audience and friends who promoted the project (vjeux blog).

Risks and what didn't work

The team said it couldn't find a good way to fund the project in a "volunteer-based open source model" and had to build a company (Excalidraw blog).
The MIT license lets anyone self-host or embed the editor, so the paid product has to stay clearly better than free.
Revenue for Excalidraw+ is not public; usage figures are the team's own.
The founder's head start (a large audience and well-known friends) is hard to copy (vjeux blog).

FAQ

Short answers drawn from the sections above.

What is Excalidraw?

Why did Excalidraw work?

Proven value. Chedeau had used a similar tool for about 10 years to illustrate his blog and knew the idea worked (vjeux blog).
Attention turned into contributors. He posted progress videos to a large Twitter audience, filed many small issues and gave commit access to everyone who got a PR merged (vjeux blog).
Zero friction. He "had to actively prevent people from adding title selection and login" so users could start drawing immediately (vjeux blog).
Paying for what companies need. The top complaints were about company adoption: sharing, reliable collaboration and data security. Excalidraw+ answered those (Excalidraw blog).

What can indie builders learn from Excalidraw?

Use your launch buzz fast. Chedeau says the initial buzz "is only going to last so long (a few days)" (vjeux blog).
Charge for what teams need (accounts, sharing, storage and security) and keep the core free.
Be honest about unfair advantages. Chedeau lists his experience, audience and friends who promoted the project (vjeux blog).

What didn't work for Excalidraw, and what are the risks?

The team said it couldn't find a good way to fund the project in a "volunteer-based open source model" and had to build a company (Excalidraw blog).
The MIT license lets anyone self-host or embed the editor, so the paid product has to stay clearly better than free.
Revenue for Excalidraw+ is not public; usage figures are the team's own.
The founder's head start (a large audience and well-known friends) is hard to copy (vjeux blog).

Sources

Every link cited above, in order of first use.

1.GitHub (github.com)
2.Excalidraw blog (plus.excalidraw.com)
3.Excalidraw+ pricing (plus.excalidraw.com)
4.vjeux blog (blog.vjeux.com)
5.Excalidraw blog (plus.excalidraw.com)
6.GitHub API (api.github.com)