Ask Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub, anything Today, Mon 18 Oct 2010.

Two days ago I had the pleasure of speaking at Startup School. Never before have I see such a high concentration of smart ambitious people in one place.

I've posted a followup on my blog at http://tom.preston-werner.com/2010/10/18/optimize-for-happiness.html that covers some of the ideas I introduced in more detail.

Since I only had about 25 minutes for the talk and 5 minutes for questions, I wanted to make myself available for additional questions. So today I'll be answering any questions you have here on Hacker News.

Ask away!

We actually haven't talked to Linus. He only takes part in discussions around Git when he notices something wrong. The model that the Linux kernel uses for contributions is pretty well set in stone (and email) and so it's likely that GitHub doesn't really offer him, personally, much benefit. We do, however, speak regularly with the top core Git maintainers and have a good relationship with them.

Hi Tom - I saw your talk (streamed) from Startup School, loved it, and also read Drive over the weekend. I'm currently strongly considering bootstrappping my new company (healthmonth.com) similarly to how you've done.

Are you willing to share a bit more detail about the timeline of the first year when you went from 2 people to ? people... when you hired, how much you spent on salaries versus how much you were making in revenue (exact numbers not required), and how certain you were that revenue would continue to grow at the pace required to support your staff.

Also, what were the "other means" by which you supported yourself until GitHub was able to support you? Your jobs? Or something else?

It's not a figure that we publicize, but let's just say it's enough to support thirteen well paid employees, a San Francisco office, 34 physical machines at Rackspace, and plenty left over to put in the bank account.

Any comments on how you (either personally or GitHub as a whole) manages the work/life balance issues?

Any pointers for dealing with cases when the people you work with turn out not to be "reasonable"?

(I ask because I tend to find that soft-skill management issues are where I'm lacking in expertise)