Apparently "git cash" isn't working very well ...
More like "git spend" is running in an infinite loop on frivolous bullshit. 600 employees is pretty crazy for what GH is.
GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
221–230 of 594 posts
Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they can't stand on their own feet, I imagine somebody would/will buy GitHub at a firesale rather than see it disappear completely. For all their missteps, they have developer mindshare that is the envy of everyone. If we're lucky it would be someone like Google or Microsoft, if we're unlucky it might be Oracle or SalesForce. Whoever it would end up being though, GitHub won't just vanish.
Ignoring the fact that the VCs want to get paid and GitHub's employees want to keep working, how big of a skeleton crew would it take to keep a site like GitHub running in "maintenance" mode?
Ask Craigslist, or soon Twitter?
Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It was that conversation that made me realize how we've become accustomed to the quality and price of software that's been heavily subsidised by massive VC investments. Not to mention open source, sponsored by big companies, universities and passionate individual contributors. E.g. try and sell a compiler, a JS framework or an IDE.
This is one of several reasons why the GPL is a great license for FLOSS. You can GPL-license your software and contribute to the community, while offering alternative commercial licenses to companies that want them. If you use a totally-permissive BSD-style license, you're stuck trying to charge for a support contract or custom plugins or something.
What's stopping other companies from using your GPL software in their proprietary stuff without telling anyone? Not every company out there is a startup who needs to be sparkling clean to pass due diligence for the next round, acquisition or IPO. A lot of companies out there are perfectly fine with a little bit of cheating here and there — I would actually say that most of them are. Especially when you remember about the world outside of US.
Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#224It's funny reading Tom Preston-Werner's write up on GitHub in Dec 08:
>You Don’t Need Venture Capital
>A lot has been written recently about how the venture capital world is changing. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the subject, but I’ve learned enough to say that a web startup like ours doesn’t need any outside money to succeed. I know this because we haven’t taken a single dime from investors. We bootstrapped the company on a few thousand dollars and became profitable the day we opened to the public and started charging for subscriptions.
I guess VCing up and losing money is a choice. They probably figure the odd $100m cash loss will end up as $1bn+ on the market cap. He looks quite cheerful in his rich list write up http://www.forbes.com/profile/tom-preston-werner/
Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#225> "The income statement shows a loss of $66 million in the first three quarters of this year. That’s more than twice as much lost in any nine-month time frame by Twilio Inc., another maker of software tools founded the same year as GitHub."
These sort of statements are a little annoying. I understand that Bloomberg has to write for a less technical audience, but the writer must know this isn't an accurate comparison.
Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#226The thought of losing Github to the startup graveyard is kind of scary. It was bad enough to lose Google Code and when SourceForge had their "great purge" of inactive projects.
Maybe, just maybe, someday we'll have a decentralized web with a web-of-trust identity framework, and people can host their own email, code repository, and even website!
P.S. to put a bit more effort into my post: I really do wonder if the discoverability problem of a decentralized web can be better solved for things like social networks, code sharing, etc.
Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#227[deleted]
Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they can't stand on their own feet, I imagine somebody would/will buy GitHub at a firesale rather than see it disappear completely. For all their missteps, they have developer mindshare that is the envy of everyone. If we're lucky it would be someone like Google or Microsoft, if we're unlucky it might be Oracle or SalesForce. Whoever it would end up being though, GitHub won't just vanish.
Ignoring the fact that the VCs want to get paid and GitHub's employees want to keep working, how big of a skeleton crew would it take to keep a site like GitHub running in "maintenance" mode?
They could probably get a lot of their diversity, inclusion, and community staff with no real issue.
Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the idea that venture capitalists alter ("distort" is a loaded term) the market in their favor. That's part of the natural process of systems commoditizing their complements. But I really think that you characterize this in an uncharitable way with your example, which I have difficulty believing as it was stated. If your lead really understood that they would "immediately earn a 5x return with no risk",…
Perhaps you live in a world different from mine, but what you describe as "cartoonishly foolish" behavior I consider completely standard. Customers refuse to spend 5000 to make 20.000 all the time, or they're willing to waste weeks finding a different vendor that can offer the same for 3000. Others are willing to walk away from a great deal unless they get a discount, but are content with a tiny discount. Because a d…
Too true. I had a potential client who had already spent months and a bunch of money on external consultants regarding an intermittent identity management integration issue. They heard about me through word-of-mouth.
I offered a fixed-price "no win, no fee" rate equal to about a week of my normal hourly rate. I thought it was a great deal given how much they'd already spent, plus it gave some certainty to them around something could have been very messy and open-ended.
The client got hung up on, "What if Tom only takes an hour to solve it? What an expensive rate! What a rip-off!" They were more concerned with seeing me put in time and effort than actually getting results.
Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#230This is an example of how VCs distort the market for other businesses. I had a recent conversation with a prospect and they took issue with the price of our software. Our app is in a specialized industry (ie. a smaller market). We charge a per use fee of $35. This fee enables our customer to immediately earn nearly $200 (a 5x return with no risk to them). Despite the significant benefit and profitability of using the…
Well my company is paying GitHub a lot of money right now so I'm not sure this really applies to customers that are real businesses.
It is funny that mention this: "paying GitHub a lot of money right now". Believe me: you are not paying as much as you should. Ask some people who were dev managers in 1990s how much was a single ClearCase license...
The software is so cheap now...