GitHub

A self-taught programmer who dropped out of the University of Cincinnati (where he studied English and a few CS courses), Wanstrath moved to San Francisco in 2005 and worked at CNET on GameSpot and Chowhound—it was while rewriting Chowhound in Ruby on Rails that he deepened the expertise he'd later apply to GitHub. In 2008 he co-founded GitHub alongside Tom Preston-Werner and PJ Hyett, bootstrapping it into the dominant platform for code collaboration before selling to Microsoft for $7.5 billion in 2018. Beyond the company, he authored foundational open-source tools including the Mustache templating language, the Resque job queue, and later co-created the Electron framework and Atom editor. After leaving GitHub, he co-founded Null, an indie game publisher, and serves on the board of OpenAI. Wanstrath is notable for being a builder-CEO who remained an active coder throughout his tenure, often shipping personal open-source projects while running the company.

A software engineer by trade, Hyett graduated from North Central College with a degree in computer science before moving to San Francisco to work as a senior software engineer at CNET Networks. He later became a partner at the consultancy Err Free, LLC. In 2008, he co-founded GitHub alongside Tom Preston-Werner and Chris Wanstrath, initially building the billing system that powered the platform's first paid tier — generating $1,000 in revenue on day one. As COO, Hyett helped scale GitHub from a side project into the dominant code-hosting platform, culminating in Microsoft's $7.5B acquisition in 2018.

Began programming in Dubuque, Iowa, before studying at Harvey Mudd College, which he left before graduating to pursue startup work. Founded Gravatar, a globally recognized avatar service, and sold it to Automattic in 2007 — an early exit that gave him both capital and credibility in the developer-tools space. Co-founded GitHub in 2008 with Chris Wanstrath and PJ Hyett, building it into the dominant platform for Git-based code collaboration. Served as the company's first CEO and later CTO until resigning in 2014 following an internal investigation into harassment allegations. After GitHub, co-founded the language-learning platform Chatterbug and launched Preston-Werner Ventures (PWV), an early-stage firm that has backed Stripe, Cursor, Netlify, and others — extending his influence as a connector in the developer ecosystem rather than returning to operational leadership at scale.