GitHub Hires Former Bitnami Co-Founder Erica Brescia as COO | Hacker News Reader

GitHub Hires Former Bitnami Co-Founder Erica Brescia as COO

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120 pointsCrankyBear31 comments

Erica is an incredible founder who worked on Bitnami/Bitrock for 14 years. I’m lucky enough to have invested in her at Demo Day, have her as my partner at XFactor Ventures and as my friend. She is going to be phenomenal in this role, she is so deserving of this win and Microsoft is very lucky!

Didn't bitnami get acquired less than a month ago? How come the co-founder moves out so quickly? Was it an acqui-hire? Atleast https://blog.bitnami.com/2019/05/vmware-to-acquire-bitnami.h... talks about doubling down and what not but the co-founder has moved on already?

How come the co-founder moves out so quickly?

It happens. Sometimes a founder doesn't want to be part of the new organisation and negotiates a quick departure as part of their terms. If all parties are happy it's fine, and not a sign of anything negative.

Additionally when people want to leave but an acquisition is in progress, they might want to wait and finish their role during due diligence and term setting, and leave on good terms afterwards, than a hasty leave that might raise red flags and endanger the process.

(not implying that this is what happened here, just adding a scenario where that happens)

Huh, I had missed that. Hope it worked out well! I knew Daniel back when we were both working with Tcl.

Would you rather be COO of Github, or a VP at VMWare?

do you imply that it's better to be COO of Github? Because I would disagree with that.

Why do you feel that way?

VMWare has annual revenue of about 9B$. Github.... 300M$

Github is way more hyped accross engineers but VMWare is 30 times bigger! VMWare is simply one league above Github.

Github is a Business Departement part of Microsoft. VMWare is a huge company.

This is the typical fallacy of B2C vs B2B. Consumer products are way more hyped and therefore people think they are way bigger than other less famous B2B Enterprise products

Would you rather eat the world's largest steak, or the world's best steak?

Plus, a VP at VMware isn't going to be in charge of that whole $9B like a COO is. Bitnami is going to be a "Business Departement" too.

How big of a steak are we talking here?

Have you worked as an executive in an enterprise company ? It really isn't everyone's cup of tea. There is far more bureaucracy, politics, considerations than a small or medium company and your ability to meaningfully effect change is much more limited.

Most people with experience in this area would appreciate that one isn't better than the another. They are just different.

Yes, VMWare is a league above GitHub. I doubt many in this thread think otherwise. But a VP is a league below a COO. And Bitnami is a league below GitHub. And a VP of VMWare doesn’t work with all $9B of rev VMWare is doing.

Most of the article explains why she took this job. My take-away is that she saw Github as a growing company and she would be taking on similar challenges as her previous COO duties.

Is revenue the only thing you consider when looking for a new role?

I was highlighting that the "famous" and "cool" name of GitHub doesn't tell the whole story

But you still failed to account for a VP role vs COO role.

Sure. Depends which VP position you end up getting. And even so, I would say that most VPs at VMWare are a more "prestigious" and "important" position than the COO of Github (which as most COO position is a not fully defined position in between other CxOs)

I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

Github was acquired by Microsoft, so it's just gonna be a VP at Microsoft.

GitHub is far bigger than Bitnami. IE the Github founders are all among the biggest individuals with equity in Microsoft just because of the acquisition. GitHub will likely be its own subsidiary under Microsoft for some time.

Both roles sound great from my prespective

It may be part of the decision that let do Bitnami being acquired.

Erica did a great job building up Bitnami, so I'm pretty pumped to see her + Nat at the helm of GitHub.

VMware acquires Heptio - Kris Nova quits.

VMware acquires Bitnami - Ara Pulido and Erica Brescia quit.

What's wrong with VMware?

Maybe nothing? Many founders have no desire to stick around for an acquisition, and VMWare has a lot of competent people who would be eager to take over.

It's possible that's _why_ they sold to VMWare... they get to walk away rather than being stuck at a big company for 4 years vesting.

Yeah VMWare may get a reputation as the firm to call when founders are feeling restless.

Congrats to Erica! Phenomenal executive - looking forward to seeing how she moves GitHub forward.

Lucky Github. Erica is an incredible founder, met her few times in early days of Bitnami at OSCON, Portland.

The link doesn't work. Probably because of the WordPress issue discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20157882

And when it’s back online you will still probably be unable to read due to intrusive pop-ups, reloading on scroll and other dark patterns in which Techcrunch excels

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