Tom Preston-Werner - DeveloPassion

# Tom Preston-Werner ![[50 Resources/51 Attachments/51.03 Public/2026-02-12 Tom Preston-Werner.jpg|400]] Tom Preston-Werner is an American software developer and entrepreneur, best known as co-founder and former CEO of [[GitHub]], the world's largest code hosting platform. He co-founded GitHub in 2008 with Chris Wanstrath, PJ Hyett, and Scott Chacon, serving as CEO until 2014. GitHub was acquired by Microsoft in 2018 for $7.5 billion. Beyond GitHub, Preston-Werner has created several influential open source projects including [[Tom's Obvious Minimal Language (TOML)]], [[Jekyll]] (the static site generator that powers GitHub Pages), and Gravatar (globally recognized avatars). He's known for advocating open source and has written influential essays on startup culture and software development. ## Key Contributions - **[[GitHub]]**: Co-founded the code hosting platform (2008) - **[[Tom's Obvious Minimal Language (TOML)]]**: Created the configuration file format (2013) - **[[Jekyll]]**: Created the static site generator powering GitHub Pages - **Gravatar**: Co-created globally recognized avatars (later acquired by Automattic) - **[[Semantic Versioning]]**: Co-authored the SemVer specification - **RedwoodJS**: Co-created the full-stack JavaScript framework ## Career - **Gravatar** (2007): Co-founder - **[[GitHub]]** (2008-2014): Co-founder and CEO - **Preston-Werner Ventures**: Current investment and projects - **RedwoodJS** (2020-present): Co-creator ## Philosophy Preston-Werner is known for advocating: - Open source by default - "Readme Driven Development" - Transparent company culture - Developer experience as priority ## References - https://tom.preston-werner.com - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Preston-Werner - https://github.com/mojombo ## Related - [[GitHub]] - [[Tom's Obvious Minimal Language (TOML)]] - [[Git]] - [[Open Source]] - [[Semantic Versioning]] ## Quotes  ## Books