The next GitHub is not worth winning

David Poblador has a post up arguing that building the next GitHub is a bad bet — and it's a sharp reminder about where the real leverage sits. The idea is simple: GitHub won because it made open source collaboration frictionless, and that was a one-time window. Try to build the same thing now and you're fighting the same entrenched moat with thinner margins and the same distribution problems.

The real move is to build on top of what exists — the tools, the APIs, the community — rather than trying to displace it. That's the kind of thesis that keeps a lot of founders from burning a year on a platform play they can't fund and can't scale. The post is thin on specifics, but the point lands: the big platforms are already winners. The money is in the edges, not the center.

Why this matters for us: If you're a Brown founder with a tight budget, don't try to rebuild what GitHub, Stripe, or AWS already own — build the thing that plugs into them and solves a real problem for la gente.