
Github Raises $100 Million - jakebellacera
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303292204577517111643094308.html
======
courtewing
I'm a little surprised by all of the anti-VC sentiment in this thread so far,
especially from this community. I'm perhaps even more surprised by the "what
do they need 100 million dollars" sentiment that is being floated around.

Github is an impressive company that has, so far, blown away its competition
in many aspects. The fact that they have been self-bootstrapped up until this
point and that they are profitable to boot is a testament to Tom's incredible
leadership and their absolutely exceptional team.

Tom has made it abundantly clear that he is not against venture capital. He
just thinks it is starting off on the wrong foot if you try to build your
company with the expectation of relying on venture capital from the start.

So he's taken Github to profitability, and in four years they've all managed
to transform the way most of us collaborate online. That is a profound
achievement, but those responsible for such a radical change aren't generally
the type to sit idly by on the backs of their previous accomplishments.

They want to do bigger and better things with Github. They're not quite done
trying to change the world. Now they are not only profitable, but they have
substantial capital to invest in further innovations.

With 0 dollars, a couple of guys built something amazing. I can't wait to see
what they can do with 100 million.

~~~
kylebrown
> _With 0 dollars, a couple of guys built something amazing. I can't wait to
> see what they can do with 100 million._

Since substantial funding wasn't a contribution to their first success, nor
apparently even their goal, there's no reason to expect that throwing money at
them would lead to something even more amazing.

~~~
webwright
Except that virtually every big company that we admire has successfully used
the cash that they've raised to build awesome things that they otherwise
couldn't have afforded without considerable risk or years of building up a war
chest.

Cash is a tool. Disciplined companies CAN use cash intelligently.

~~~
iusable
"Cash is a tool. Disciplined companies CAN use cash intelligently."

'nuff said!

------
jbarham
I can't help but think that this investment marks the Pets.com point in this
investment cycle.

GitHub is essentially a web interface to a single open-source DVCS. The
switching costs to using another DVCS such as Mercurial (which I personally
prefer) or another Git hosting provider are minimal. There are no barriers to
entry since Git is and always will be free. There are very few network effect
benefits to using GitHub for paying customers who by definition want to keep
their code private.

GitHub is a good service and I use it myself, but I'm now increasingly
cautious about using it since GitHub are now under serious pressure to deliver
pretty spectacular returns to their investors.

In the end I think this investment has less to do with GitHub and more to do
with the fact that e.g. yields on 10-year Treasuries are currently under 2%.
Investors are desperately looking for any decent returns on their money and
throwing it a company like GitHub is just a Hail Mary pass.

~~~
emperorcezar
Go use Bitbucket and tell me it's comparable. It's not. On every level.

~~~
jbarham
I do use Bitbucket and it does exactly what I need: track changes to my
private source code repos and manage issues.

Does GitHub do some things better than Bitbucket? Sure, but I don't believe
that those differences justify a valuation approaching a billion dollars.

~~~
wildmXranat
Indeed. I use both and have to say that there's nothing killer about both of
them. I have my private projects on bitbucket, but feature wise they are
interchangeable.

------
jammur
I have to imagine that a chunk of that money is to provide liquidity to the
founders, which they very much deserve.

I don't really see how this is a bad thing. They were very much profitable,
and were likely able to dictate the terms of the deal. Also, the money came
from one of the most, if not THE most, reputable and respected VC firms.

~~~
atirip
"I don't really see how this is a bad thing." They were independent and
profitable company. Now they are virtally deep in debt. Everything they do now
will be focused on one thing only - how to pay back that debt. They have
people on board who's only goal is to get that loan back in multiples. Every
decision from now on will be waged against the question "will it pay back the
loan". Independency is lost, now we have company in deep dept, doing desperate
things to pay it back. Desperate people in desperate situations make desperate
decisions...

Yes, founders maybe took some money off he table, that's good for them, no
question. But the company is now troubled.

~~~
bcambel
I think you're not talking about GitHub. Because I see A company which started
from zero, revolutionized SCS, socialized coding. Makes a lot of cash, not
from advertisement, but from an actual useful product. A Product that people
love to use. I think A16Z is a very clever firm that invested in a very solid
product.

GitHub has 102 employees. Which means they're already paying around $10M wage
in a year and they're profitable. I bet they're at least making $20M per year
right now. They're going after the enterprise market which would make them
much much more cash.

Do the math. Is it really hard to pay that money back in a company like this ?
Is AirBnB, Dropbox, Evernote in trouble ?

Github is not troubled.

~~~
abalashov
$10M/year in wage? That would imply $100k per employee per annum. I understand
that it was just a budgetary figure, and I understand the premium that
employer-side payroll taxes and benefits add - it is very non-trivial. Still,
do you suppose the median wage at GitHub is that high? For everyone?
Salespeople, receptionists, accounts payable clerks? Are you sure? I should
hope they are spending a good bit less on payroll, even gross and with
overhead.

~~~
infinite8s
Yes. 100k for developers is definitely on the low end (not even including
overhead), and for others it might be on the high end, so assuming most of
their employees are developers, 10M is a pretty low estimate of their payroll.

~~~
abalashov
I would be very surprised if most of their staff were developers.

------
yuvadam
I hate to crash the party, but this is a very odd move for an awesome company
and a service that I use and <3.

Github has always been against taking money. Actually, TPW has used some very
harsh words criticizing startups that choose to take VC money.

Now, Github raises 100 gazillion dollars? How the f*ck do they plan on
spending that wisely? Sure, it's nice to have that sum in the bank. But, in
all honesty, someone has to explain how this is a reasonable move, because I
simply don't get it.

~~~
JonnieCache
The person who figures out how to get movie/music studios and the like to use
version control is going to be very, very rich.

~~~
megrimlock
Just curious, what makes you think they don't already use version control
prolifically? What opportunity do you see? One studio I'm familiar with has
some assets with change history back through to SCCS -- back through RCS, CVS,
and P4. These places have long dealt with large groups of people collaborating
on shared files that are constantly changing, forking, merging, etc.

~~~
JonnieCache
I'm sure lots of bigger places do use it. In the world of music, there are
studios everywhere that have maybe a dozen staff, making a lot of money and
producing a lot of output, where version control is an unheard of concept. No
audio production software that I'm aware of has any provision for version
control.

I was kindof assuming that it would be the same for mid to smaller sized
movie/tv studios as well, but at the same time I wouldn't be surprised to
learn that you can get a plugin for Premier or whatever that does it.

I know for a fact that there are many largish advertising agencies out there
who have fileservers with hundreds of ProjectName01, ProjectName02 etc style
directories.

Why do you think apple brought "Versions" or whatever its called in with lion?

~~~
esonderegger
I use Sequoia (<http://pro.magix.com/en/sequoia/overview.527.html>) and I'm
very happy with the 'Save Project Copy' function. When I start a new project,
I create a 'history' folder and the project copies go in there, named as
project_name-timestamp.VIP. I do that every time I'm a stopping point, much
like how I use 'git commit' on a code project.

That doesn't mean there isn't huge room for improvement in this arena. An
approach like this (or OSX's versions) doesn't allow you to do anything like
'git diff' to see what's changed from version to version. I can imagine this
is a very difficult problem for binary data, however. Also, distributed
version control on media production software could allow for multiple users to
be editing a project simultaneously.

Unfortunately, I don't really see GitHub being able to help much here. For
example, any work done to make ProTools files git-friendly wouldn't also work
on Photoshop files. I'd love to be wrong about this, but I suspect seeing
version control in media production software would require redesigning the
application's file format from the ground up, and would be a task for each
software company to do on their own.

------
siong1987
Many people do not realize that Github has an enterprise product called
github:enterprise. Aside the money they raised for this round, there are also
help comes together from the VC, Andreessen Horowitz in this case.

I don't have any experience in enterprise sales. But, from what I know,
enterprise isn't a market that the best product always wins. Yes, Github
definitely has one of the best products out there. But, they definitely don't
have the required experience to push their enterprise product to the
market(look at the developers heavy team). The VC will definitely help in this
case.

Now, look at another similar product in the market, Atlassion, which raised
about 60 millions almost two years ago from Accel. That was also after years
of bootstrapping from Atlassian itself. 2 years ago, the funding market was
definitely not as good as the funding market today. Yet, Atlassian managed to
raise 60 millions. So, the 100 millions Github raised today seems reasonable
to me.

~~~
pnathan
enterprise sales are _radically_ different than open source evangelism, b2c
sales, and small biz sales.

The difference is (literally and metaphorically) there is are _suits_
involved.

A few key thoughts which are likely to apply:

\- Per-customer customizations

\- $100K+ per sale per customer

\- 3 month to 3 year sales cycles

\- Usable on Windows XP and IE6 (most likely).

\- Certifications/audits (e.g., ISO9001).

I can easily see hiring 20-30 guys to sell/consult/customize for the
enterprise market.

~~~
lnguyen
The product market for enterprise VCS/SCM is also quite a bit different. It's
no longer enough to make it easy for developers; you need to be able to
provide better access controls/security and start managing the code lifecycle.

Github has quite a bit of work ahead of them to be on par with say
IBM/Rational ClearCase/ClearQuest or CA Software Change Manager (aka Harvest).
Definitely wish them luck.

~~~
pnathan
What do you see as the Clearcase wins vs. github? (I can't think of any,
sorry! :) )

~~~
lnguyen
I'll readily admit that the core of ClearCase leaves much to be desired from a
technology, administration and user perspective. Especially in comparison to
git. But that's the difference a few decades of progress can make.

But what's built on top of it are definite wins in comparison to git and
Github: UCM and lifecycle integration with ClearQuest.

Most developers don't know how/when to branch. UCM at least sets up a
structure and process for that. There's also enough out-of-the-box security to
control access to everything that most enterprises would care about. This is
supported, documented, etc.

Managing an application's lifecycle is probably far more important in a large
organization than most people experience in a small project or startup.
Integration with ClearQuest allows everything to be tracked.

Since all of this are essentially "add-ons" to a core versioning tool, there's
nothing to say something similar can't be done with git/by Github. It's just
that they're not available _now_.

------
maxko87
Can't read the full article without an account. Try this:

[http://gigaom.com/2012/07/09/github-finally-raises-
funding-1...](http://gigaom.com/2012/07/09/github-finally-raises-
funding-100m-from-andreessen-horowitz/)

~~~
w1ntermute
Screenshot of WSJ article: <http://i.imgur.com/jfZLu.png>

~~~
1qaz2wsx3edc
You make the internet a truly amazing place.

------
leftnode
<https://github.com/blog/1189-investing-in-github> Straight from them.
Congratulations on building such a great business.

~~~
yan
I love GitHub, but anyone else felt it was a little immodest for TPW to say
they'd "hire Marc" if they could? Can't put it into words, but I don't feel
that Tom is in the position to make that statement.

~~~
danielharan
Really, "We wish we could hire them both" irks you?

Sounds to me like a great heuristic for whether a person would be a good
investor.

~~~
yan
I realize it's a statement of praise, but I think Marc is legendary in the
valley and an immensely successful investor/veteran of the business. Implying
that he'd be in the running to become an employee at GitHub just felt off.
Again, hard to put it into words.

~~~
pmarca
I found it to be very flattering :-).

~~~
yan
Well then, I'm going to go be quiet elsewhere now.

(Hi Marc!)

------
richardv
"finally" raises funding.

In my mind the $750M valuation is still actually pretty consevative. GitHub
has a long long way to go and I see so many great things ahead for the team,
but I don't understand why they would raise $100M?

Is this a deal for the founders to take some money off of the table? I don't
see what benefits $100M will have for them.

(Don't shoot me for my opinions on this one), but I think it's also really
only a matter of time before the legacy systems move from SVN/Mercurial/CVS
onto GitHub. Some people use BitBucket (I guess because Atlassian makes some
other great software). SourceForge (past it's sell-by-date), and Google Code
isn't really suitable for anything other than hosting specific release
candidates or tags..

~~~
human_error
Some people prefer BitBucket because it offers free private repos.

------
mrkmcknz
"Little-known social coding start-up".

Got to love the WSJ.

~~~
cluda01
None of my non-programmer/startup friends know who or what a github is so I
think that given the WSJ's audience, it's a fair statement.

~~~
ef4
Yes, "well-known" is context dependent. But I would argue the WSJ chose a poor
context. The reader already knows whether or not he/she has heard of Github,
so the real question is "are they well-known in their industry?"

Pick any non-consumer-facing industry where the average person doesn't know
the players, and _everybody_ is "little known". That doesn't really tell you
anything about their actual businesses or reputations.

~~~
matt2000
I agree with you, the wording from the WSJ sounds like they want the
investment size to seem ridiculous. How about "quickly growing and profitable
software company github..."

------
zorked
So Linus Torvalds has created two billion-dollar industries in his spare time?

~~~
scorpion032
I count 3. Servers on Linux, Android and Git.

------
SethMurphy
I am a paying customer and quite torn over what to think.

On one hand I feel like my favorite indie band just got signed by a major
record label. I will lose the intimacy, or cool factor, I felt as I first
enjoyed them. However, isn't it better for all to enjoy them? Especially if
they have been signed by the best record company of the bunch? I really have
no reason to find this analogy a bad thing.

On the other hand I think, why does every company feel the need to take over
the world? Can't you be satisfied? At what point have you done enough? I
already see Github as a success, and I fear for the founders that true
satisfaction will never come. For the most ambitious it probably never does. I
do not see this as a good sign for the future of Internet businesses in
general. I would rather see more small businesses than fewer large. I think
many aspiring hackers have lost a role model today, and VC's everywhere are
cheering as a big game trophy has been reeled in.

------
rabidsnail
SharePoint makes Microsoft billions of dollars per year of revenue (the only
concrete number I could find was $2B, but it was from a blog that didn't cite
sources). If github can pivot from code sharing to general work sharing, $100M
doesn't seem like quite so much money.

Edit: $800M/yr in 2007 [http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/news/press/2007/jul07/07-26SP...](http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/news/press/2007/jul07/07-26SPPT800MPR.aspx)

------
tlrobinson
Congratulations GitHub!

I'm a bit surprised given their previous stance on VC...

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4VtBcmbbSs>

[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2486-bootstrapped-
profitable-...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2486-bootstrapped-profitable-
proud-github)

------
herval
"Little-known social coding start-up GitHub Inc. has raised $100 million in
its first round of funding, in a sign of how big investment bets are
continuing in Silicon Valley"

this "little-known" probably has more revenue than a lot of "well-knowns" out
there, and the "bet" here is probably a lot safer too...

------
brown9-2
_CEO Tom Preston-Werner said the company hopes to develop new features but
also improve existing ones, such as web applications for different operating
systems._

"web applications for different operating systems"?

~~~
azylman
My guess is they're talking about the various Github desktop clients and he
was misquoted...

------
swombat
WTF? Why? What for? What are they planning to do with so much money?

~~~
anon808
"Because we want to be better. We want to build the best products. We want to
solve harder problems. We want to make life easier for more people. The
experience and resources of Andreessen Horowitz can help us do that."

I guess they didn't think they were able to build the best products without
outside investors.

goes without saying, I hope it doesn't change github for the worse; eventhough
history has plenty of counter examples. good luck github.

~~~
alttab
The minute they change my e-mail address to @github.com I'm setting the world
on fire.

------
arrowgunz
Okay, I think now is the time for GitHub to shut up about being Bootstrap and
Bullshit. I think it's high time. I absolutely love the service but this is so
lame. Bunch of hypocrites.

~~~
vulf
> Bootstrapping in business means starting a business without external help or
> capital.

Keyword: "starting". GitHub has long moved out of the "starting" phase, which
has always been bootstrapped for them.

------
kyleslattery
On GitHub's blog: <https://github.com/blog/1189-investing-in-github>

------
oldgregg
What a great way to ruin a perfectly awesome company.

~~~
herval
why would it ruin them? Given the valuation people are talking about, they
sold less than 15% of the business - they'll probably retain enough control to
do whatever they want with it and probably try new things...

I personally know at least one company that has been profitable from the very
beginning and took 3 rounds of VC already, always on the same terms: "we don't
need your money, so we'll sell you a very small piece for a large sum and run
with it the way we do today". In the end, it's a great way to either cash-out,
put some money in the bank to avoid future surprises or launch new
experiments/products with minimal risk...

~~~
anon808
"with minimal risk"

is it possible the maximal risk they encountered when building github with
their own cash helped make the great product github is today? history has
shown time and time again if you give someone a long enough rope they will
hang themselves, doesn't mean that's githubs fate of course, but they're
certainly opening a door of influence that wasn't around through the initial
building of a great product.

~~~
herval
I'm not sure there is a correlation between little money and making great
products - that's a link people (specially incubators and accelerators) try to
force-feed on everyone's throats, but I'm not convinced if having no money
produces better/more companies/products than having "too much" money. Anyway,
that's all unrelated to the topic here :-)

If you give someone a short enough rope, they'll never be able to get out of
the hole...

------
richardv
I got five words into that article and hit back to find a different source.

> "Little-known social coding start-up GitHub..."

Really?

The Gigaom is a much better read.

[http://gigaom.com/2012/07/09/github-finally-raises-
funding-1...](http://gigaom.com/2012/07/09/github-finally-raises-
funding-100m-from-andreessen-horowitz/)

~~~
zmanji
Consider the audience of the WSJ. I doubt Github is known to more than 5% of
the WJS audience.

~~~
slig
I'd guess that less than 5% of _programmers_ knows github and/or git.

~~~
kennywinker
I'd say you are wrong.

GitHub has 1,784,455 members. That alone is probably 5% of coders.

There are still many millions more people out there that have _heard_ of
GitHub, or downloaded code via GitHub, but don't have an account.

------
base698
They certainly deserve it. They have a clear business model that makes money
now and a gorgeous product. Look forward to seeing more Octocat in SOMA :)

~~~
getsat
I am looking forward to the billboard on 101. If Basho and NewRelic can have
one, so can GitHub.

------
xpose2000
They deserve every penny. And I am sure their revenue has been increasing over
time (at least I hope so).

They are a great blueprint on how to spend money wisely and develop features
people care about.

Off the top of my head: Company Github accounts, many desktop Github redesigns
and performance tweaks, Github for Mac, Github for Windows, and a Github
Android App.

And this is only in the past 12 months or so. Amazing company.

------
blhack
Okay, a question:

I have a github (<http://github.com/blhack> \-- nothing too interesting
there), but only use it in the "free" way; saving my javascript stuff, and
keeping track of some arduino projects.

"Github" and "money" in the same thought here triggered me wondering about
maybe buying a monthly plan from them, and letting them host all of my code
for work, play, etc. (stuff I'm too embarrassed to release, ha)

Maybe I'm just naive, but how large are most git repos?

You can get a full pizza box, in a rack, with power and data, and plenty of
storage for $50/mo.

You could get two redundant linodes for $40/mo.

What are people getting out of github that they are willing to spend as much
money as some of these plans cost?

(What I mean is: if this was $5/mo for unlimited repos, I'd have a plan now.
But $7/mo for 5? That seems steep)

~~~
brntbeer
TPW (or some early GH employee) has posted somewhere that yes, the cost of
servers on your own is cheaper.

However, the original goal of GitHub was to build a tool that allowed
collaboration easier. You pay for the experience and the tools and the network
IMO.

~~~
blhack
Ah, gotcha. I guess I was missing out on the social aspect of it.

But I have to wonder: if you're hosting that many private repos...how much
does "social" play into it?

~~~
andreaja
You can add collaborators to private repos (ie people with push rights). You
can have organizations with private repos and use the collaboration tools
within the organization.

For me, the private repos are more about having them where I have my other
code.

------
DigitalSea
So much negativity here regarding the capital announcement. Github got to
where it is now from now investment and you want to know the reason why they
accepted such a large amount of capital (it's rather simple), Github are
wanting to infiltrate the corporate sector because that's where the money is.
Lets be honest the $10 per month I pay for my Github account isn't making any
difference, a corporation paying $1000 per month to exclusively use Github to
manage their code? Now that's making a difference.

To expand you need cash, take this as a sign that Github is going to expand
heavily in every direction. As an avid Githubber I am ecstatic about this,
it's a testament to the product and a good sign Github is never going
anywhere.

~~~
tatsuke95
> _"a good sign Github is never going anywhere."_

Right. Because we've never seen a company take a huge VC investment then
disappear.

~~~
DigitalSea
Probably a bit of an overstatement on my part, but how many companies can say
they're highly profitable before even getting venture capital? I can't think
of any highly profitable companies off of the top of my head that were highly
profitable and took VC investment, can you?

------
qntmfred
$750M valuation!?

~~~
franzus
Internet business is conducted in fantasy dollars.

------
andyfleming
My suspicion is they are going to be putting a lot of effort towards
continuing to develop the GUI, for the lack of a better term, for git. IMO,
that's what has helped them be successful in the first place. Git is complex
and a bit unfriendly at times. They have made it more accessible and it sounds
as though their hope is to increase overall engagement in git and
version/source management tools.

Who knows, they could be working on their own flavor of git.

------
tocomment
I actually forgot github was a business. I'm going to hate to lose their
services when they get bought by yahoo or whatever is going to happen :-(

------
adulau
I just hope that the investment will not force Github to change their revenue
model. The current private hosting model seems quite adequate. Especially, I
hope they won't become the next Geeknet (<http://investors.geek.net/>) where
there are more advertising on the page than hosted FLOSS projects.

------
rmoriz
Maybe the startup in inhouse-incubator developping new apps in small teams.
They clearly have all the required skills to launch a couple of commercial
interesting apps per year.

However a burn rate of 25m$/year — The VC wants 100 times the return of his
investment. That's imho not doable with the current "monolitic" github
business model.

------
CoryMathews
Now I hope they can at least make the watch button work in Opera, maybe even
the rest of the BASIC functionality.

------
zeruch
"Little known..." ? Granted, Github isn't eBay, but its hardly obscure,
especially within its domain space.

The article is otherwise fairly flat about _why_ it might be valued so high.
I'm not saying it's fully justified, but the writer clearly did not seem to
understand what he was actually writing about.

------
modarts
So, Github taking on some capitalization in order to spur growth in enterprise
markets is apparently seen by many on this thread as Github "not keeping it
real." (to borrow a "street" analogy.)

What exactly would the individuals complaining about this action do
differently?

------
dantheman
Congrats to Github - great project, great team. Good work, can't wait to see
what's next.

------
zeppelin_7
"little known" is actually the reality of how the rest of the world sees the
tech startup domain. I am sure I can find people even at HP/IBM who will ask
"whats a github"?

------
rgenzon
Why raise money? I love Github. But this bothered me. I believe they can
pretty much earn a lot from their current subscription plans. Why raise?
Githuubbb!

------
andrew_wc_brown
With all that money they could buyout their competitors.

------
meta8609
I wonder what the percentage the founders are pocketing?

------
curt
They could be moving into "other" markets as well. Version controlling for
design? Think that'd be a huge market especially with a simple interface.

------
vlad
Rumors first circulated in May: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4006017>

------
cschmidt
Their RSS feed has new hires almost every day. I suppose they need to pay all
those hires. I wonder why they need quite so many people.

------
shocks
Awesome. Now they can make more font icons.

------
statictype
I hope this doesn't mean everyone now gets free private repos but now with ads
served up.

------
perfunctory
> GitHub tries to become the standard in software coding

Standard. Really?

------
nirvana
Damn, github seemed like the perfect model for bootstrapped, they were growing
like a weed, seemed to not lack for money from income, etc.

In these situations, I'd really love to know the details-- did they go
shopping for investment (love to see that deck!) or did A19Z pursue them and
talk them into it?

Probably perfect timing, too, because I think things are going to cool down in
2013.

Anyway, couldn't happen to a nicer company, but I do lament the loss of a
bootstrapped example to point to.

FWIW, can't read the wsj article because it is already behind the paywall.

~~~
zanny
They were the bootstrapped happy ending. They went from zero to market
dominator for web services source control, and now they got their payoff for
all the work with VC adoration.

------
tubbo
2 months ago github was all "we don't need VC funding we're completely
profitable"...

~~~
count
What better way to pitch?

~~~
djloche
Yep. I was involved in a local 'pitch your startup to a room full of
investors' conference. Guess who 'won' the contest and had everyone talking
about it? The three college kids with a mobile app that flat out said, we
don't need your money, we're profitable, we have big deals with major
corporations and we're growing fast. We're here to work on our product pitch
to people outside our niche for continued growth.

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rprasad
Was that the demo day in Santa Monica in April/May?

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zashapiro
I just happened to be on their About page today and I noticed they'd taken
down the "VC money raised - $0.00" section.

Congrats to the fine folks at GitHub!

~~~
vulf
That went away some time ago, when the latest redesign of the page was put up.

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wavephorm
Why can't a company worth nearly a billion dollars just go public? There are
thousands of public companies worth less than a billion. So why sell your soul
to a VC who could push you into a situation that could make you implode,
rather than raise money on an open market and give up less control?

~~~
harryh
regulatory issues

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rdl
The implication of VC is that you'll have to sell or go public eventually
anyway, so you might as well take the pain and go directly to public if your
revenues support it. The general rule being 5 years of $100mm/yr.

~~~
vulf
When you are just starting out and have no real leverage in the deal, sure.
But it sounds like the GitHub guys were the ones holding all the cards in this
deal, maybe they made sure the terms of the deal excluded that "general rule".

~~~
rdl
There is no way a VC would invest if there weren't SOME exit in the future, or
at least a convincing story (independent of veracity) told to make it seem
that you're open to an exit.

The exit could be M&A (although it would have to be $3-5b to be on-target, and
in that range, you need to be able to IPO as a credible alternative when
negotiating the M&A).

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franzus
I guess it's time to move away code from github. Now a VC has insights into
all private repositories ... a VC that possibly is funding competition.

