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Comment by dpflan | Hacker News Reader

I am curious how the Gitlab is so valuable. I've never used the service, but HN posts keep me informed superficially. Could someone explain the valuation?

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They've positioned themselves as an all-in-one package for every tool you'd need to implement a devops software development workflow - source control, continuous integration/deployment, etc. Existing enterprises pay different vendors to implement all of these things; new and growing companies (in theory) just need to buy a GitLab license.

Because Microsoft paid for GitHub -- since GitLab is well positioned to compete with GitHub, cash rich companies like Apple or Google could be interested purely to keep up the Jones's.

Not a dig at you because I understand that you're using Apple simply as an example of a big company, but Apple hypothetically buying GitLab sounds soo ridiculous.

Apple hypothetically buying GitLab sounds soo ridiculous

That would mean Apple did something to positively invest in their developer ecosystem which would certainly be very unusual.

If Apple cares about their dev. ecosystem buying Gitlab would be pretty solid investment.

Apple would destroy the open-development Gitlab culture instantly, building a walled garden and alienating Gitlab users' ?

I hope that scenario does not unfold, for anyone involved.

Thanks. Do you have any insight into MSFT's strategy for GitHub? I assume it helps make it seem developer friendly, data-mining, identifying projects/new ideas of value and validation, and is part of their becoming more of a cloud company strategy.

> Do you have any insight into MSFT's strategy for GitHub?

Developers, developers, developers.

They are deeply integrating GitHub into Azure and Tfs, and integrating that with Visual Studio, creating a top-notch devops platform for you to develop for Windows or Azure.

And now with their move into Linux, they are creating an image just like the old Borland.

> Do you have any insight into MSFT's strategy for GitHub?

Between LinkedIn and GitHub they probably have the best data for identifying great devs/engineers as well as encouraging future devs to use their products. Soft power.

This is very interesting, as means of finding talent before its larger competitors do. The discussion about how Google has a “deep bench” to deal with shifting and departures seems to apply here conceptually.

GitHub should help azure compete with amazon's aws offerings as well as Google's. GitHub is also where MS hosts many of their open source projects so brining that "in house" was probably a large part of the acquisition strategy.

How GitLab can have this kind of high evaluation is beyond me when they sale only one part of what Atlassian( bitbucket) offers.

GitLab is far more than just source control like Github or Bitbucket. Servicing the entire software pipeline from planning to delivery has been their entire mission.

It's being tightly integrated with Azure and the new Azure DevOps.

From my experience working with that, it's very nice. But there is always the anti-Microsoft bias around, so GitLab may do well for that reason alone.

> Thanks. Do you have any insight into MSFT's strategy for GitHub?

MSFT integrated sales channel. LinkedIn data + Github data is pretty much everyone who buys any "IT"/"software" services.

Microsoft has quite a few things they want to promote via GitHub.

* Azure * Azure * Azure * Azure * Azure

I am not sure what would they do with Gitlab. How do you think Gitlab fits into Apple's portfolio?

This may be the one big reason.

Microsoft bought Github for $7.5B so it gives them a great comparable.

Yeah, but if Github goes down the developer world basically comes to a standstill, while if Gitlab goes down, most developers will only read about this on hacker news.

Wouldn't that put them at 40% of github's value. Giving that github's brand is more valuable this is pie-in-the-sky vc math. Ready to be ipoed and written down to a 1/10 of the value in 2 years.

I think both valuations are too high but there it is. Enterprise is hot right now and some people are anti-MS. Also, Gitlab allows on prem which is a huge issue for some orgs. Also, it seems that Gitlab's all remote teams have a much lower cost structure and will allow for easier profitability. I guess we'll see.

Github also has on prem offerings.

I stand corrected. Historically they didn't.

GitHub was on prem before gitlab was even a ruby application.

Not sure what you mean exactly.

Github Enterprise was released in 2011.

> I am curious how the Gitlab is so valuable. I've never used the service, but HN posts keep me informed superficially. Could someone explain the valuation?

FOMO from the VCs. It will implode.

The only company that could potentially be the one to pay the money already bought the valedictorian of the class.

The ones that are left are Google, Apple and Amazon. Google does not buy those kind of companies. Apple is not in that business and Amazon is... well... Amazon.

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