Sorry we missed that email! I don’t know what went wrong there, but I just replied and will figure it out. This is definitely not the norm (and Build Crew is a small fraction of our users).
Yeah, I said about coding agents, “it’s obviously the future, but it’s not there yet”. That talk was from the AI Engineer conference in June 2024 (16 months ago). Coding agents have come a long way since then!
It's a big organization of teen coders who build really cool things together. Instead of coding alone, they get to hack on software and hardware projects in person and online with other smart teens all around the world.
You can see full financial and donor information at https://hackclub.com/philanthropy/ as well. Check it out. It's an organization that lots of HN folks would support (and many do). (I am on the board of Hack Club.)
Sourcegraph CEO here. Just to be clear, so internet rumors don’t get started, there was no “offer” here. We started Sourcegraph with the intent of remaining independent because building really good code search and intelligence means working across all code (not just on GitHub), all devs, and all code intelligence sources (code nav plus every dev tool you use that knows stuff about code, not just the ones in the GitHub/Microsoft suite bundle). We’ve never entertained any kind of acquisition interest for this reason.
We don’t think any of today’s code host vendors with their current strategies can make truly great code search and intelligence because they’ll be biased toward their own bundled tools and limited to the subset of code hosted on that instance. It’d be kind of like Encyclopedia Britannica or The NY Times building a web search engine: helpful, but so much more limited compared to what the independent Google became.
And yes, none of this was a surprise. GitHub’s new code search has been out for 14 months now.
Sourcegraph CEO here. “Challenging times” is how it should be all the time. That means competition is forcing both GitHub and us to build better stuff for devs. Devs win.
But to be clear, as a company we are doing well and growing nicely inside customers, with a ton of cash in the bank, an awesome team, and a huge opportunity ahead of us. GitHub’s new code search has been out for 14 months now, so this is nothing new.
It’s a big market and there’s way more room for differentiation and dev choice in code search/intelligence than in CI. There’s a lot of code intelligence that GitHub won’t support (precise code nav for more languages, comprehensive code ownership, metadata from other dev tools that know things about code outside the GitHub/Microsoft suite, etc.), there’s a need for the ability to fix (with our Batch Changes) not just find, and even in the core search workflow there’s so much room for improvement with AI fine-tuned on your own code, etc.
But talk is cheap and only shipping matters. So, watch what we ship, and send any feedback and requests our way!
Sourcegraph CEO here. We definitely need a cheaper tier for smaller companies or those who don’t need our entire feature set. I agree! What do you think that should be?
Overall, we’re building what our customers need, and our product goes way beyond what GitHub can offer. Sourcegraph indexes all the code and increasingly all the code intelligence (including code nav but also code ownership and other metadata in the future from your other dev tools). We charge based on active usage, so we make money when devs at customers /choose/ to use us over the alternatives. We’re trying to do this the right way, and tons of customers agree. (If anyone reading this disagrees, please let me know!)
Re: your comment about our sales team, I’m really sorry to hear that and want to understand more so I can fix the problem. Can you please email me at [email protected]?
Re: Sourcegraph, we're working on improving that, and sorry you couldn't get the results you wanted. We primarily build for the code within customers, where this particular problem is less common than across all open-source repositories. But we want it to work really well in every case.
Counterpoint: I thought it was really, really cool when I tried it for a couple hours. I have no affiliation with Magic Leap. The Magic Leap unit I tried was a friend's (so it wasn't as though Magic Leap sent me a free unit to try out and therefore could have biased me).
I bet it's much less than 12.5% now (since 2016). Also, individual user revenue is revenue that public investors value less than revenue from businesses, because there is perceived to be a much bigger overall market (and therefore more future potential growth) in selling to businesses rather than individuals. And growth is what matters for the stock price.
Source: I am the CEO of Sourcegraph and consider similar things.