Karl Sun spent about seven to eight years at Google before Lucid, though not as an engineer, according to a Crunchbase News correction. He met Ben Dilts at a speed-pitching event in Utah.
Dilts had put a Lucidchart prototype online at the end of 2008 and spent about $100 on ads. Lucidchart LLC was formed in April 2009. Sun and Dilts formally co-founded Lucid in 2010, working with roughly $200,000 from Sun's network.
The product reached its audience through the Google Apps Marketplace in 2010. A $1 million seed from 500 Startups, 2M Companies, K9 Ventures and angels followed in 2011. Meritech, Spectrum Equity and ICONIQ invested $72 million in October 2018.
Lucid launched Lucidspark in 2020 and was valued at $3 billion in July 2021. In April 2022 Dave Grow became CEO and Sun became board chair. The company is based in South Jordan, Utah.