fritzek

namespace :deploy do
  PRODUCTION_APP = 'myapp'
  STAGING_APP = 'myapp-staging'

  def run(*cmd)
    system(*cmd)
    raise "Command #{cmd.inspect} failed!" unless $?.success?
  end

  def confirm(message)

fritzek

(This is the text of the keynote I gave at Startup Riot 2009. Will update when video becomes available.)

Hi everyone, I’m Chris Wanstrath, and I’m one of the co-founders of GitHub.

GitHub, if you haven’t heard of it, has been described as “Facebook for developers.” Which is great when talking about GitHub as a website, but not so great when describing GitHub as a business. In fact, I think we’re the polar opposite of Facebook as a business: we’re small, never took investment, and actually make money. Some have even called us successful.

Which I’ve always wondered about. Success is very vague, right? Probably even relative. How do you define it?

After thinking for a while I came up with two criteria. The first is profitability. We employ four people full time, one person part time, have thousands of paying customers, and are still growing. In fact, our rate of growth is increasing – which means January was our best month so far, and February is looking pretty damn good.