enable companies to sponsor people

[chadwhitacre]

Via HN:

What about a sponsorship component? Facilitating companies sponsoring a programmer? Their github page gets a logo or something, and they get a bit check each month. It's not a new model. Skateboarding, for example, which has no practical use aside from entertainment, often works this way I think. Many skaters earn their living from sponsorship and make next to nothing from competitions or whatever else.

If there were a major github competitor (maybe there is, I'm not so much in a position to know), the rivals might also pay these figures to work on the projects they control on their platforms. It helps Github immensely to have all these projects on its platform.

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I think sponsorship is a great idea. Look at the success Meetup has had with this strategy. The nice thing about sponsorship money is that once a contract is signed, the revenue will be consistent month to month.

The payoff for the sponsoring company will be the good reputation it gets from that developer ecosystem. There could even be a way to connect this sponsorship to recruiting developers from that ecosystem as employees (the bonus being that they are already familiar with this project)

[steveklabnik]

This is a crucial ticket for the personal philosophy of Gittip. The choice made here really determines what you want the service to actually be about.

[chadwhitacre]

+1 via HN:

"strongly focus on enterprise plans. For $1000 a month, you get a big giant banner add on gittip, that everyone else sees every time they add a tip or receive one, or play with their settings."

[chadwhitacre]

Blowin' up:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536059
https://twitter.com/whit537/status/322523168659095554
https://twitter.com/whit537/status/322785993512079361

[chadwhitacre]

Heroku is now the top giver on Gittip. See:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536059

Insofar as this ticket is suggesting that we deal in companies somehow, that's now done.

Insofar as this ticket is suggesting that companies should be able to sponsor specific people on Gittip, I'm saying no to that. We're bringing new community pages online (#496), and corporate patrons will be able to be featured there.