GitHub has raised a jaw dropping $100 million from Andreessen Horowitz, the largest investment ever for the Sand Hill firm, according to the Wall St. Journal. The investment reportedly values the company at $750 million.
The amount is surprising, but what is more surprising is that the four year old bootstrapped company actually took it. The company has amassed more than 3.1 million software projects and more than 1.7 million users, all on its own dime while achieving profitability.
The company offers developers a site to store, write, and collaborate on software coding projects. Instead of labor intensive traditional techniques, code can be easily written and coded back into the project. While open source projects are free, developers can pay $25 monthly for a business account that keeps their code repository private. Companies can purchase a similar software coding product for $250 per year per user.
Why take the cash now after four years of success?
“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,” Tom Preston-Werner, GitHub’s co-founder stated in his blog. “The experience and resources of Andreessen Horowitz can help us do that.”
The company was also inspired by an Andreessen Horowitz entitled “Software is Eating the World,” which points to a number of industries from agriculture to defense to Hollywood that are being consumed by more cost effective software approaches. Preston-Werner also said the company was impressed with the culture of the firm.
“…Like GitHub, they’re trying to do things differently. They believe in software as the future of everything. They want to help founders build great companies. They clearly have no interest in the status quo of venture capital,” Preston-Werner blogged. “Over the past few months we’ve gotten to know Marc and one of his partners, Peter Levine, and we really like them. We wish we could hire them both, but they already have jobs.”
The company will use the funding to push into new markets, make the system more usable to beginners and more powerful for professionals. The company’s vision, according to Preston-Werner, is to “GetHub Everywhere.”
“We want GitHub to be usable by everyone in the software ecosystem — everything from individuals to small teams and businesses to students at universities,” Preston-Werner told Bloomberg.