GitHub: The Platform That Made Coding Social, and Got Bought for $7.5B

Built on a Weekend, Adopted by the World

In early 2008, three developers, Tom Preston-Werner, Chris Wanstrath, and PJ Hyett, were working on a frustratingly common problem.

They loved Git, the distributed version control system created by Linus Torvalds. But using it? Clunky command lines, cryptic errors, poor collaboration tools.

So they built a tool around it.

What started as a side project became GitHub, a web-based interface on top of Git, with a simple idea: what if coding was collaborative, social, and fun?

The MVP launched in April 2008. Within weeks, devs were hooked. And they weren’t just storing code. They were commenting, reviewing, watching projects, and building reputations. GitHub was turning programming into a shared, open conversation.

From Weekend Hack to Developer Backbone

For years, GitHub ran without VC funding. They kept the product paid, simple, and loved.

By 2012:

• GitHub had over 1 million users

• Was growing purely through word of mouth

• Had become the go-to place for open-source projects

That year, Andreessen Horowitz made a $100M bet on GitHub. It was one of their first devtools investments.

GitHub had become the infrastructure layer of software development, all while barely making any noise.

Making Coding Social

The magic of GitHub wasn’t just Git. It was the network effects built around collaboration.

Features like:

• Pull requests: Code reviews as conversations

• Stars & forks: Like retweets, but for code

• Followers & profiles: Developer reputations became portable

• Issues: Project management built into your code

It felt more like a social network than a file system. It worked on every OS, every IDE, every framework.

Developers didn’t just use GitHub, they lived on it.

The $7.5 Billion Exit

In 2018, Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion.

The reaction? Mixed. Developers were wary. Would GitHub become bloated? Closed? Corporate?

But under Satya Nadella and new CEO Nat Friedman, GitHub accelerated:

• GitHub Actions launched, CI/CD inside your repo

• GitHub Copilot was born, AI pair programming via OpenAI

• GitHub deepened ties with VSCode, npm, and Azure

• The community kept growing

What started as a few lines of Ruby code became the default place to build the future.

GitHub Today

GitHub isn’t just where people store code.

It’s where the world writes software together.

The Invisible Infrastructure of the Internet

GitHub never had a flashy marketing campaign. No billboards. No influencer deals. It quietly became the developer’s home base, the collaboration layer for the most complex software on earth.

In a world where infrastructure companies are often dull and hidden, GitHub is proof that a beautifully executed product, loved by its users, doesn’t need noise. It just needs to work.

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