<story><title>Gitlab from YC to IPO</title><url>https://blog.ycombinator.com/gitlab-from-yc-to-ipo/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jedberg</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll admit that I was wrong about GitLab.  I had the chance to invest in them way back in the day, and passed.  My thought at the time was that no open source company had ever been super successful except RedHat, which was more of an outlier than a pattern.  And my other thought was that they are competing against GitHub, which was extremely popular and well funded.&lt;p&gt;I honestly didn&amp;#x27;t think they stood a chance.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m happy to have been proven wrong.  Congrats to the whole team on their successful exit!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>klysm</author><text>I think if GitHub simply gave free private repos sooner, GitLab would’ve had a way harder time.</text></comment>
<story><title>Gitlab from YC to IPO</title><url>https://blog.ycombinator.com/gitlab-from-yc-to-ipo/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jedberg</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll admit that I was wrong about GitLab.  I had the chance to invest in them way back in the day, and passed.  My thought at the time was that no open source company had ever been super successful except RedHat, which was more of an outlier than a pattern.  And my other thought was that they are competing against GitHub, which was extremely popular and well funded.&lt;p&gt;I honestly didn&amp;#x27;t think they stood a chance.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m happy to have been proven wrong.  Congrats to the whole team on their successful exit!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>killerstorm</author><text>&amp;gt; My thought at the time was that no open source company had ever been super successful except RedHat&lt;p&gt;Sun bought MySQL for 1 billion USD in 2008, does that not count as successful?&lt;p&gt;Also, MongoDB, Elastic and many many others...</text></comment>