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GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

wsj.com

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Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#41

Post by calcsam »

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 around security and flow configurability move to Github Enterprise and spend, not $7/month/organization, but $20/month per programmer.

That's why Github is being valued at $2B.

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#42

Post by hermanmerman »

blizkreeg wrote: post #34

What would the exit strategy for a company like Github be? Get acquired by a big co like say, Google or IPO? An IPO and the accompanying scrutiny of a public company sounds like an unlikely strategy for a Github. Thoughts?

Google naturally comes to mind. Facebook / Parse, also. Amazon Web Services. Actually any company in this space (that is worth more than $20bn).

Why do you say an IPO is unlikely? I don't see why the public markets would be wary: Github is IaaS done right, has clear ways to make money and grow on its current offering, and can very well come up with innovations adjacent to its core services.

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#43

Post by djacobs »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #28
aakilfernandes wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to say, but any time I need a private repo I just head to BitBucket. GitHub provides tremendous value, I hope they find a good way to capture some of it.

Really? I trust a private repo I am paying for to be there in a few years. Perhaps I am still of the "buying a cd" generation but someone somewhere has to pay for a saas service. It's just more real this way.

True, a paid service is probably more likely to be around in a few years (in general), but does that matter for distributed source control?

I guess if you depend on non-git features, like issues, there's a chance that there's some lock-in. However, most of the ones I use have a migration strategy [0].

[0] http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/49729/how-can-i-i...

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#44

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#45

Post by hermanmerman »

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #17

Just $2Bn? Sound a little low to for something like Github.

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.

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#46

Post by DanBC »

petercooper wrote: post #39
darkstar999 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seriously think censoring the word "retard" will harm their business?

I don't, but what I believe could worry many (especially business users) is the idea of needing to rapidly enact a change within 24 hours to not have a repo or even your entire account deleted. This is assuming https://imgur.com/QC51FZz is even true, though.

Let's assume for a moment that email is true: how many businesses have policies that allow their staff to use language in that particular way?

And Github, like most other providers, have catch-all clauses in the ToS. This one, perhaps:

> We may, but have no obligation to, remove Content and Accounts containing Content that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, pornographic, obscene or otherwise objectionable or violates any party's intellectual property or these Terms of Service.

I suppose my point is that if you're a business you shouldn't rely on Github etc.

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#48

Post by justincormack »

hermanmerman wrote: post #4
Trufa wrote: post #2

Github seems to be a pretty good or "safe" investment. Developers have already entrusted them with something as precious as their code itself. They also have pretty clear pathways for being profitable with private repos and so on, I'm not that surprised they are getting a lot of funding.

Well many companies are profitable (actually, it's the only prerequisite to stay alive). And arguably, Github isn't profitable enough to fuel its own growth, or they wouldn't need to take $250m from investors in exchange of shares. The question is: is it worth 2 billion dollars? As a developer my guts say yes, but I have no idea what their numbers look like...

Not necessarily, they may well be profitable (I thought they are) but they may have wanted to sell some shares to get some value out.

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#49

Post by mooreds »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #33
Uhhrrr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that censoring a few words is enough to cause them to lose momentum, but I have similar concerns. What is the compelling advantage of using github instead of gitorious or gitlab or whatever? They have a few nice tools, but nothing that can't be replicated. And if there's no significant advantage, then they're only one data breach or PR fail from losing tons of customers. The very nature of git means they…

Network effects. There's entire subcultures that have de facto clustered themselves onto GitHub, like the Erlang community. Most web developers, as well. You're right the actual GitHub interface is not as amazing as it is often heralded. I've always thought the issue tracker was a joke, for instance.

The issue tracker is absolutely a joke, but being a standard for company codebases is a huge moat. If it works well enough, what company wants to spend time moving a codebase/history.

I speak this as someone who managed developers at a company that was still using CVS. And yes, we discussed moving to git every so often, but it always was lower on my priorities than new features.

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#50

Post by gabeio »

jamesharding wrote: post #24
tswartz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you need a private repo why do you use BitBucket? I've used the private repos on GitHub and found them to work just fine, but I'm new to coding...

BitBucket is free for private repos, GitHub is not (unless you have a student promotion active).

Bitbucket is free for private repos if there are <=5 contributors (unless you have a .edu email = unlimited free).
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