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I think github would be the exception that proves the rule, because the github investment isn't a typical "Venture" investment- it was much closer to a late sta
by nirvana 14y ago
I think github would be the exception that proves the rule, because the github investment isn't a typical "Venture" investment- it was much closer to a late stage hedge, or hedge fund investment.
This was a company that was profitably growing like crazy and thus could effectively dictate terms. Whatever A16H's exit expectations are here, I'm pretty sure they are rather long term, and on the order of "github goes public" rather than "github is shut down after an aquihire."
Yesterday I was watching a presentation where Steve Blank said that the pyramid has shifted-- the big VCs have replaced IPOs and private equity, and everyone has moved up the stack. (So now instead of needing VCs for your first investment, for instance, there's accelerators like YC, then angels, then super angels.)
- hboon 14y ago> Yesterday I was watching a presentation where Steve Blank said that the pyramid has shifted-- the big VCs have replaced IPOs and private equity, and everyone has moved up the stack. (So now instead of needing VCs for your first investment, for instance, there's accelerators like YC, then angels, then super angels.) I agree. An additional value which VCs provide that hasn't been eroded that much is credibility to enterprises. It's a good guess that Github took the investment so they appear more credible to enterprises, i.e. they are going after Perforce and ClearCase
- jiggy2011 14y agoNot to mention that github's foundation is git which is very much open source so your repos are moveable.
- rfugger 14y agoSparrow's foundation is imap/smtp...
- jiggy2011 14y agoTrue, but I expect you use access github through the standard "git commit" , "git pull" type commands. So switching git providers can be done relatively transparently without changing the "UI". Although I guess you would lose whatever extra features github provides, which is partly why I build my git workflow around "standard" git.
- Evbn 14y agoWhat extra features? Github is hosting and a nice UI.
- bad_user 14y agoGitHub's value is not what you think it is. It goes beyond Git hosting, being a social network for developers and OSS projects. Anybody can setup their own remote git repo on a cheap Linode or EC2 micro instance, but replacing a social network is almost impossible.