GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

Post by matwood » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:21 AM UTC

chucksmash wrote: post #124

hueving wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit like a social network. There are better technologies out there (e.g. bitbucket), but like you said, developers have chosen Github for now. However, it would be possible for a mass exodus as they turn up the enforcement on the offensiveness bans.

Why do you say bitbucket is a better technology?

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:24 AM UTC

calcsam wrote: post #41

Both this piece, and most commenters, seem to miss the point about where Github's value comes from. It's not for being a social identity for programmers, or hosting open-source libraries. Those are worthy pursuits, but from a business perspective mostly serve as marketing. Github is basically Microsoft Word for programmers, and is an essential part of their workflow. Companies that need enterprise functionality aroun…

Post by thedufer » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:27 AM UTC

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #72

hermanmerman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tablecloth math time: $2bn worth, assuming they're worth 10 times their revenue (let's be generous), that would require $200m in sales. they have 10m users, assuming 1% are paying, that means 100k users for $200m sales, meaning each user must spend 2000 dollars per year at Github. Sounds a little high considering the basic plan is $7/month, but with entreprise sales and growth rate, it sounds feasible.

Sure, I can understand that. But that is based on the notion that Github will stay the way it is, simply a place for collaboration. However, it can amount to so much more, it can spin out its own careers site, like stackoverflow did. The point I'm trying to make is that Github has ludicrous potential , and if you value it based on that 2bn seems rather low.

Post by gavazzy » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:30 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #148

timr wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Word became a valuable monopoly because it was a proprietary standard. But git hosting is a commodity service. There are already a number of players doing exactly what GitHub does, for less money, and it's trivially easy to migrate a repository away from GitHub to those other providers. Something tells me that the "facebook for programmers" angle is essential to selling the dream here. The so-called "networ…

Git hosting is a commodity, but GitHub is a proprietary and increasing dominant solution with strong network effects that had git housing as a central element, but also includes several differentiating features on top of git hosting.

Post by tomschlick » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:32 AM UTC

stonogo wrote: post #137

hipcactus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enterprise Customers cannot (and will not) attempt to transition from hosting hundreds (in some cases, thousands) of private repositories on gitHub in favor of another service. The alternative would have to aggressively undercut gitHub's enterprise sales model while competing with gitHub's uptime. Customers aren't going anywhere.

No "Enterprise Customer" is using github without a fallback plan. Github is in no way stable enough to rely on for business-critical work; fortunately, git is distributed and cnames exist, so it's easy to seamlessly fall back to competent hosting as needed.