
Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud: GitHub - fogus
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2486-bootstrapped-profitable-proud-github
======
delano
This is an interesting observation:

 _The first year or so of the company reminded me a lot of the awkward teenage
phase of self-discovery. GitHub the company had sort of sprung up from this
side project, so we never had any big vision or dream or aspirations. We just
wanted to work on something cool. I’d love to say that’s all you need, but
we’ve learned there’s more: you need to have a vision and a philosophy.
Everyone (all the founders, at least) need to be on the same page. The hard
part is finding that page._

 _Do we make web apps, or just do source control? What do we pay our
employees? Should we speak at conferences? How do we approach customer
support?_

I don't hear many people talking about the value of a company vision and
philosophy. I occasionally hear people talk about company culture, but usually
in an abstract way.

~~~
DTrejo
They never really said how they manage this, or whether they wrote it down.
What ways of keeping people on the same page are most effective?

~~~
subwindow
I have a feeling it was mostly accidental. Having a bunch of awesome people
increases the likelihood of it happening, but I don't think that is a very
repeatable lesson.

~~~
werrett

      Having a bunch of awesome people increases the likelihood of it happening...
    

I'd hazard a guess and say the non-repeatability comes down to the _awesome_
bit.

It is easy to label someone as _awesome_ after coming out on the good side of
a rough patch. It is much harder to be comfortable in that label when sizing
up a potential co-founder.

~~~
derefr
If you assume the set-equivalence that "awesome people get on the same page
quickly" implies that "people who get on the same page quickly are awesome",
you then find, by <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem>,
that "awesome" means _rational_.

The question is whether the assumption holds :)

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jacquesm
That was worth reading just for this bit:

"We generally ignore the advice/opinions of others as a rule. GitHub is the
company of the compelling argument – every decision needs to stand on its own
merit. That someone successful (or unsuccessful) tried something before might
matter in a discussion, but what matters more is how the idea itself applies
to the situation."

~~~
goof
Every company would describe itself as a meritocracy though. In github's case
they're probably still small enough for that to be true.

~~~
jacquesm
Agreed, but in this case I actually believe them. As soon as you've got two
layers of management that probably is the first to go out the door.

~~~
derefr
I've never understood why a startup would choose to grow to the size where it
needed two layers of management, unless the individual product they were
working on was really of a complexity too high for a small team to manage
(like, say, a nuclear reactor.) For products that stay the same size, but gain
new sub-products, cross-products, side-businesses, etc., why not just "undergo
mitosis" and become two startup-sized companies, each handling a single facet
of the business but sharing a treasury and building?

~~~
jacquesm
There was a company (BSO) that did just that, they split every time they got
to a certain number of employees (I believe the magic number was 50). They
were hugely successful.

You can read all about it here: [http://www.extent.nl/articles/entry/the-
evolution-of-bso-and...](http://www.extent.nl/articles/entry/the-evolution-of-
bso-and-its-offspring/)

------
n8agrin
The most salient point to me was the fact that github was not initially
conceived of as a business, but as a tool the founders desired for the
betterment of their own day to day. And not only that, but github was quickly
adopted in the founders' workplaces at the time, giving them time to focus on
it and refine it without giving up an income. Dogfooding is a common theme in
startups and it's worth noting that 37signals' Basecamp product was, as I
understand it, built with the a very similar purpose. Initially it was a tool
for them to help manage their own projects first and something they could
charge for second, built under similar conditions where they already had a
business designing client websites, providing them an income.

A lot of times I dream up projects I think of as potential startups but often
have to ask myself, "Would I actually use this product?" If the answer is ever
even a hint of "no" I tend to suspect that I could not dedicate myself to the
project wholeheartedly enough to back a business. I wonder if this is a
meaningful metric and if dogfooding is really such a powerful motivator.

~~~
GrandMasterBirt
Is that not how most great technologies are born? Ok some are for war, but
most of the "cool" technologies I've seen (even some made by co-workers) are
all about someone having a major itch and developing the best damn back
scratcher they could to scratch that itch. Its quite incredible what someone
with a vision can do, even without technical prowess that some posess. Its all
about just thinking that "I am only one man, I only have a few hrs a day...
however I need to do the job of 10" and instead of giving up building
something that lets you do just that.

I find the in corporations where you can throw more people/time at the problem
is where it starts to fail. I can always "hack" something up fast, and add a
few programmers to make it faster, but the trick is to not add anyone and
still meet the deadline (or a bit over, but that gets covered by blowing all
other deadlines away).

GitHub is no different. They had an itch, scratched it, turns out other people
had the same itch.

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muhfuhkuh
Wow, the cottage industry that is Linus Torvalds keeps churning out the goods
that make empires (Red Hat, Android) and up-and-comers (github).

"I'm not a businessman; I'm a business, man!" --Jay-Z

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davidw
Paradoxically, I think some of these businesses 37signals is listing are more
interesting than they are themselves. Part of their 'unfair advantage' is
simply being famous. Github is famous too, because they took a smart approach
to the free/paid split that works out pretty well.

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jmcnevin
I want that octocat plush doll.

~~~
riffraff
I thought it went by the name octopussy, but i want one too

~~~
graywh
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopussy_(character)>

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codexon
_One thing Tom had learned at his previous venture, Gravatar, was that
offering a resource intensive service for free was a losing proposition._

Is anyone else wary about the continued existence of gravatar? Even though it
was bought out by Automattic, I think it might shut down in the future because
it is resource intensive and hard to monetize.

~~~
gojomo
I would think it could be optimized to be quite efficient, and breakeven value
might be possible via the data it throws off -- every Gravatar is a web bug.

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lzw
All to often, people seem to associate "not taking venture capital" with being
a "lifestyle business".

GitHub is an interesting business. Like EngineYard or any other tool oriented
startup, its potential is not the same as a broad consumer internet business
(like Facebook or Google).

But I don't think Github will be a "lifestyle" business. It already isn't.

I don't think Paul Graham has a problem with this. But it seems like a lot of
his followers do / might.

I think there's an important distinction here that is missed and I'm not sure
how to bring it up. (Last week I asked about doing a startup outside the US,
because the US is not an option for US, and one person presumed we were doing
a "lifestyle business" because we expressed costs as one of our concerns.)

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al1
fogus, thanks for highlighting that article, which then showed up in the HN
feed on Twitter. Great advice and perspective from Chris Wanstrath.

------
joelmichael
Rock stars living the dream.

