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

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

#51

Post by Lewisham »

mojombo wrote: post #16
busterbenson wrote: post #5

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…

It took three months to go from inception to private beta. We used an invite only system to introduce artificial scarcity and drive buzz on Twitter (each new signup got five invites to use). After six months we launched to the public and started charging for private repos. Because we had such a great beta period, we converted a large number of users that day and were making money immediately! For the next several mon…

Who are your customers for GitHub FI? It seems that Github is SaaS done really, excellently right: I can have private repos up and running for a cheap cost in minutes. Is FI just for people who are very protective about who has access to their source code, or is it filling some other niche that SaaS can't handle?

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

#53

Post by chegra »

mojombo wrote: post #49
chegra wrote: post #47

Well, let me just ask. I was trying to find how much Gravatar was purchased for by Automatic.

Sorry, I'm contractually unable to divulge that amount.

Figured as much but thx. Oh, did you have a previous blog that you talked about design, if so could I have the link?

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

#54

Post by mojombo »

waxman wrote: post #31

What are your thoughts on non-technical founders (or early employees) at tech start-ups (like GitHub)? Are there any non-technical people at GH? Would you consider hiring any? Why or why not? (Full disclosure: I'm an engineer just coming off of a bad experience with a 'business' co-founder)

I don't have any experience with non-technical cofounders, but I don't think that I'd start an internet company with one unless they were the absolutely most well connected, proven person that was going to be instrumental in getting us into a difficult to enter industry.

We only have one non-technical employee, our office manager Melissa. She's absolutely essential to the team. We have no plans to hire other non-technical people right now, but that doesn't mean that we won't in the future. Who we hire depends on what skills we need.

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

#55

Post by mojombo »

cgbystrom wrote: post #42

You host a lot of open-source projects and GitHub itself is even built on it. What would you say is the best way to monetize your open-source product?

Well, what we've done seems to be working pretty well. Have an open source tool (or leverage someone else's) and then sell additional hosted or installable tools that expand the power of the underlying tool.

I know of a lot of places that do well with providing support and consulting for their open source offerings, but that doesn't scale as well as something that you can charge for on a recurring basis and that doesn't derive directly from butts in seats.

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

#56

Post by mojombo »

bobf wrote: post #12

If you weren't at SUS2010 and are going to only watch a few of the talks, I would highly recommend Tom's talk (as well as Brian Chesky's). He was extremely engaging, and the content (bootstrapping - "Optimizing for happiness instead of money") was great. Tom -- Across the industry, figures such as 1% paid accounts seem to be typically mentioned. What sort of ratio do you see on Github between paid/free accounts? Do y…

It's higher than one percent, but we don't publicize those numbers. It's hard to compute the difference in ratio internationally vs. domestically because we only have the optional user specified location field to go off of.

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

#57

Post by mojombo »

ivankirigin wrote: post #52

The smartest people I know want to do their own startups. It is getting easier, so more people are doing it. How do you hire in the face of this issue?

You do it by building a company so compelling that those people would rather join your company than start their own. You do this by optimizing for happiness and creating a culture that can't be ignored.

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

#60

Post by cullenking »

mojombo wrote: post #48
Lewisham wrote: post #37

GitHub does a lot of amazing work, and you guys are all fabulous coders. However, when I've spoken to colleagues in person, there's a definite feeling that GitHub have a tendency to have some Not-Invented-Here syndrome: see CI Joe when Hudson was already mature and widely used. It seems like a lot of brain-cycles could have been saved and put elsewhere. Do you think that's a fair comment? Is it something you think is…

We don't put up with any bullshit. If the existing software out there displeases us, no matter how mature it is, we'll be tempted to build something better. This is how progress is made. It's possible that we're duplicating effort somewhere, but we all cherish the act of creation, and if we think we can improve upon the situation, we will. Sometimes just for the sheer joy of it. I'd wager that pretty much everything…

Along these lines, thanks for pushing Unicorn (I know you didn't develop it in house, but it was obscure until you used it).
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