I use Git as a deduplication compressing backup tool. Git is fine and useful for a multitude of uses both manual and automated. Maybe the UI aka. porcelain is a bit clunky, but Git was explicitly intended to be separated into porcelain and plumbing, so that you can use the plumbing to make your own porcelain.

From git(1):

    LOW-LEVEL COMMANDS (PLUMBING)
       Although Git includes its own porcelain layer, its low-level commands 
       are sufficient to support development of alternative porcelains. 
       Developers of such porcelains might start by reading about git-update-index(1) and git-read-tree(1).

       The interface (input, output, set of options and the semantics) to these 
       low-level commands are meant to be a lot more stable than Porcelain level 
       commands, because these commands are primarily for scripted use.
       The interface to Porcelain commands on the other hand are subject to change 
       in order to improve the end user experience.

       The following description divides the low-level commands into commands that 
       manipulate objects (in the repository, index, and working tree), commands 
       that interrogate and compare objects, and commands that move objects and 
       references between repositories.

You can stop at bullet #1 and that's plenty to raise $17m on right there. No questions asked.

I think I have just as good a shot at building what comes after git as their team does, and perhaps quite a lot better.

I'm not famous though, I'm just a good engineer who is patient, inquisitive, and determined enough to spend the last five years of my life on nothing but this.

My question is: say the investor believes that some new platform will win out over Github. How do I make the case that it will be mine over a famous person's?

I watched video to see where my prompts etc are stored in a way that makes sense. But no, this is just a nicer git. We need a solution to all these 10k loc PRs.

Makes sense to me. The new coding agents are drastically changing software development, and I think there's a lot of space for innovation in how version control tooling works in this new world.

put differently: there's already a lot of money moving from A to B as people use AI & agentic coding. Find a way to get yourself in the middle of that cash flow and suck out a few percentage points of it .. profit!

Put another way: the idea didn't raise $17M, the team did. That's usually the case but you can fully expect a pivot in their future.

Once open source spreads into an area, it tends to kill (commodify) commercial software in that space.

For example, with databases, MySQL and Postgres "won". Yes, there are commercial databases like SQL Server and Oracle but they largely exist through regulatory capture and inertia. It's highly unlike anyone will ever make a commercial general purpose database again. There are always niche cases.

Same with operating systems. Yes we have MacOS and Windows but what are the odds we get another commercial mass OS? I'd say almost zero.

It's the same for source control. Git "won". There are a handful of others (eg Mercurial). But gone are the days of, say, Visual Source Safe.

But when people talk about "what comes after Git" they really mean (IMHO) "what comes after Github", which is a completely different conversation. Because Github absolutely can be superseded by something better. Will it though? I don't know. It has an incredible amount of inertia.

As for AI and anything related to source control, I'd have a hard time betting against Anthropic. But remember the exit could be an HN post of "We're joining Anthropic!". Side note: I really hate this "we're joining X" framing. No, you took the bag. That's fine. But let's be honest.

For people with a proven track record, AI is a gold rush of acquisition more than creating a sustainable business, let alone an IPO. I think that's what this bet is.

They actually started before the LLM craze. The original pitch was just better Git.