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GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

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

#91

Post by jlarocco »

gabesullice wrote: post #57
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.

I get that when it's just a personal project, but the Github workflow is also very nice to have. When I want a buddy to access my private repo, I just add his/her GitHub user name, I don't need to have them create a BitBucket account. I don't need to figure out how issues and PRs work with BitBucket, etc. It's the network effects and UI that I'm paying for - one UI private or public. Plus, it supports a service I val…

> On a more important note, you're probably not GitHub's target market. It's more like agencies and in-house dev teams.

That's technically true, but ignores the fact that the target market is only paying GitHub because it's popular among developers. If GitHub upsets enough developers, they'll switch to something else for their personal projects, and start recommending other things at work. The type of companies that use GitHub are also the type of companies that listen to their developers about things like what source control to use.

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

#92

Post by [deleted] »

gabesullice wrote: post #57
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.

I get that when it's just a personal project, but the Github workflow is also very nice to have. When I want a buddy to access my private repo, I just add his/her GitHub user name, I don't need to have them create a BitBucket account. I don't need to figure out how issues and PRs work with BitBucket, etc. It's the network effects and UI that I'm paying for - one UI private or public. Plus, it supports a service I val…

[deleted]

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

#93

Post by nahname »

timr wrote: post #63
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…

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…

There is no one doing "exactly what GitHub does". If you think hosting git repos is all they are about, you are completely missing out.

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

#94

Post by rch »

aakilfernandes wrote: post #7
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.

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.

I'd need to do some searching to dig up the reference, but I'm pretty sure GH has been making money since launch.

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

#95

Post by gizmo686 »

seanflyon wrote: post #85
hga wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of Microsoft Word or any editor I've ever used or heard of forbidding me from using the word "retards" or any other. Heck, Gnu Emacs allows me to write proprietary software, a user freedom RMS is no doubt not entirely happy with. I require that general freedom of expression in my tools and do no tolerate vendors who engage in these sorts of damaging stunts. I suspect I'm not alone, and I note GitHub has…

Could you explicitly state what it is you are referring to? I'm not familiar with github's content restrictions.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966118

This was on the front page recently. 741 comments and only 480 upvotes, so it wouldn't suprise me if it set off the flamewar filter and got pushed off.

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

#96

Post by justincormack »

scott_karana wrote: post #54
justincormack wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are probably valued at much more than 10x revenue as a fast growing company. And "users" is the wrong metric as big companies probably make up 90% of revenues, and most of that is not even visible in the public repos.

Are they still fast-growing? I would have thought that their growth curve would be flattening out at this point. Most of the big tech companies already have a presence there, and they've been the go-to for VCS-using developers for a few years now.

Hmm, apparently it is slowing, according to Donnie Berkholtz http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2014/09/26/githubs-vanishing-ac...

The growth will be in non tech companies starting to do software, and non software uses of git, but noth of those will be slower perhaps. And maybe Windows shops moving to git too.

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

#97

Post by Fomite »

laxatives wrote: post #79
hrayr wrote: post #16

"The company’s co-founders were inspired by a tech talk given at Google Inc. in 2007 by Linus Torvalds" funny how many successful companies are founded after getting inspiration from a single talk.

"I was inspired by a tech talk", or "I grew up doing this", etc. are better marketing than "I tried a couple things but this was the most successful". Most of these background stories are revisionist.

Or easily traced. I could claim that my dissertation topic came from a single conversation in a hallway after a talk. And while technically true, that ignores all the effort that laid the groundwork - and the number of hallway conversations that didn't go anywhere.

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

#98

Post by Fomite »

cheald wrote: post #75
darkstar999 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, it cost them my $7/mo. That decision was very disturbing to me - I've always viewed GitHub as a content-neutral platform which provided a code hosting and sharing service. Yesterday's incident seems to signal that they are willing to make political judgments about peoples' code and force their opinions into that code, and I'm just really not okay with that. This wasn't about removing something which posed a leg…

In exchange, I've started actively patronizing businesses that choose not to make "Lets indulge all speech ever!" as they hill they want to die on.

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

#99

Post by MarkPNeyer »

arikrak wrote: post #55
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…

Github currently may use the "social coding" part for marketing now, but it can build off it in the future. For example, StackOverflow built a whole careers site off Q&A, Github can choose to go further based on real code.

"github labs used machine learning to generate a simple english -> python translation algorithm. it crawled the millions of commits, looking at comments and commit logs to understand software"

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

#100

Post by gjtorikian »

gabeio wrote: post #50
jamesharding wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

GitHub also provides free private accounts to .edu addresses: https://education.github.com/discount_requests/new

(And non-profits: https://github.com/nonprofit)

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