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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 t

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.

rmoriz 14y ago
I bet nobody here as anything bad to say about the exceptional skills of the github team. However such a huge investment may force them to "overscale" in order to be able to reach the expected return (by the VC). As some communities, e.g. the Ruby community, is approx. based 99% on github, I fully understand and have a strange feeling myself. Time will tell if TPW and AH can work together and make an even bigger success.
- ihodes 14y ago
  >However such a huge investment may force them to "overscale" in order to be able to reach the expected return (by the VC). But how can we know that's even an issue? There are a hundred hypotheticals here (both positive and negative), and focusing on the ones that would only be the case were Andreessen Horowitz & GitHub unwise companies seems unnecessarily negative. Now, if there were reason to think any of them, that'd be one thing. But we only know there was a huge investment in an awesome company from a great VC firm.
  - pmarca 14y ago
    I'll leave it to the company to describe what they are going to do (and they talk about some of that in their blog post today). I can say that my partner Peter and I have spent a lot of time with the guys over the last several months, and there is no daylight between their vision of what they want to do, and what we would want them to do.
nyellin 14y ago
Oddly, the top two anti-VC comments are from Israeli HN users. I wonder what that says about us.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  We could easily argue that you could be ahead of the curve ^^.
kylebrown 14y ago
> 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.
- possibilistic 14y ago
  I do not follow this logic. They have enormously succeeded from the moment of Github's inception to this point. Does it not make sense to invest in them if they believe they can utilize new capital to expand their platform? In any case the money believes in them. And they are already vetted.
  - kylebrown 14y ago
    They've never been a capital-intensive business, so it doesn't make great sense to invest substantial sums. Its more likely to change the business to one focused on maximizing profit, rather than improve the product. Try the analogy where a startup is like a band (I'm not the first to use this). After the band sells out, do you expect better music? As the cliche goes, their artistic integrity is compromised, the members start in-fighting, and the lead singer grows increasingly strung-out on fame and drugs.
    - possibilistic 14y ago
      Good points, thanks. I hope this doesn't occur, but we'll see in due time.
    - francesca 14y ago
      If anything, innovation on their product is going to speed up with the funding, then slow down because they hire a ton of engineers who need to be ramped. Then they will plateau. With funding comes expectations. Github has never had to answer to anyone but their community and customers (and their board, but the board had no real monetary stake in the company outside of stock). Now A16Z has some control over their operations. Not sure what their terms were in the deal, but investment and board members change how a company operates. Hope for good things and more elaborate octocats
pmarca 14y ago
This is exactly right.

rmoriz 14y ago

I bet nobody here as anything bad to say about the exceptional skills of the github team. However such a huge investment may force them to "overscale" in order to be able to reach the expected return (by the VC). As some communities, e.g. the Ruby community, is approx. based 99% on github, I fully understand and have a strange feeling myself. Time will tell if TPW and AH can work together and make an even bigger success.

ihodes 14y ago
>However such a huge investment may force them to "overscale" in order to be able to reach the expected return (by the VC). But how can we know that's even an issue? There are a hundred hypotheticals here (both positive and negative), and focusing on the ones that would only be the case were Andreessen Horowitz & GitHub unwise companies seems unnecessarily negative. Now, if there were reason to think any of them, that'd be one thing. But we only know there was a huge investment in an awesome company from a great VC firm.
- pmarca 14y ago
  I'll leave it to the company to describe what they are going to do (and they talk about some of that in their blog post today). I can say that my partner Peter and I have spent a lot of time with the guys over the last several months, and there is no daylight between their vision of what they want to do, and what we would want them to do.

nyellin 14y ago

Oddly, the top two anti-VC comments are from Israeli HN users. I wonder what that says about us.

hkmurakami 14y ago
We could easily argue that you could be ahead of the curve ^^.

kylebrown 14y ago

> 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.

possibilistic 14y ago
I do not follow this logic. They have enormously succeeded from the moment of Github's inception to this point. Does it not make sense to invest in them if they believe they can utilize new capital to expand their platform? In any case the money believes in them. And they are already vetted.
- kylebrown 14y ago
  They've never been a capital-intensive business, so it doesn't make great sense to invest substantial sums. Its more likely to change the business to one focused on maximizing profit, rather than improve the product. Try the analogy where a startup is like a band (I'm not the first to use this). After the band sells out, do you expect better music? As the cliche goes, their artistic integrity is compromised, the members start in-fighting, and the lead singer grows increasingly strung-out on fame and drugs.
  - possibilistic 14y ago
    Good points, thanks. I hope this doesn't occur, but we'll see in due time.
  - francesca 14y ago
    If anything, innovation on their product is going to speed up with the funding, then slow down because they hire a ton of engineers who need to be ramped. Then they will plateau. With funding comes expectations. Github has never had to answer to anyone but their community and customers (and their board, but the board had no real monetary stake in the company outside of stock). Now A16Z has some control over their operations. Not sure what their terms were in the deal, but investment and board members change how a company operates. Hope for good things and more elaborate octocats

pmarca 14y ago

This is exactly right.