Tom Preston-Werner

Background

Tom Preston-Werner was born in 1979 and grew up in Dubuque, Iowa ¹. He attended Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California before dropping out to pursue entrepreneurship ¹.

In 2004 he founded Gravatar, a globally portable avatar service, which he sold to Automattic in 2007 ¹. In 2005 he moved to San Francisco to work as a Ruby developer at Powerset, a natural language search engine that was subsequently acquired by Microsoft ¹. It was during his time at Powerset that he was first introduced to Git by a colleague ².

In late 2007 he began building GitHub alongside Chris Wanstrath, P.J. Hyett, and Scott Chacon, declining a reported $300,000 bonus and stock options from Microsoft to go full-time on the project ¹. GitHub launched publicly in April 2008, became profitable immediately without venture capital, and grew to become the world’s largest developer platform ³. Preston-Werner served as CEO until his resignation in April 2014 amid a workplace investigation — the investigation found no evidence of gender-based harassment or discrimination, though it noted “mistakes and errors of judgment,” and Preston-Werner stated that remaining at GitHub would be “a distraction” for the company ⁴. Microsoft acquired GitHub in 2018 for $7.5 billion ¹.

Beyond GitHub, Preston-Werner created several widely adopted open-source projects and standards: Jekyll (static site generator), Semantic Versioning (SemVer), and the TOML configuration file format ¹. In 2019 he co-created the RedwoodJS full-stack JavaScript framework ⁵.

After departing GitHub, Preston-Werner co-founded Chatterbug, a language-learning platform, with former GitHub co-founders Scott Chacon, Russell Belfer, and Liz Clinkenbeard, launching in fall 2017 ⁶.

He began angel investing shortly after the GitHub exit and has backed over 175 startups over more than a decade ⁷. Three years prior to October 2025, he joined forces with David Price and David Thyresson (DT) to formalize his investing practice as Preston-Werner Ventures (PWV) ⁷. In October 2025 he announced PWV Fund I, targeting $100M to lead pre-seed and seed rounds in software and AI-driven companies ⁷. PWV is a team of three co-founders: Preston-Werner (GitHub co-founder), David Price (tech startup veteran), and David Thyresson, a repeat entrepreneur who previously co-founded Entessa (acquired by Energy Solutions International, 2010) and Spogo (acquired by NTN Buzztime, 2015) ⁸.

Stated Thesis

Preston-Werner has described his investment focus publicly as backing “ideas that truly create a differentiated future — ideas that change the fundamental rules of what’s possible” with founders as the most critical success factor ⁷.

He has stated his overarching goal is not purely financial: “For me this is much more than a financial game. I want to fund founders that want to create a better future for PEOPLE” ⁹. He has described his desired fund identity as “the venture firm we wish we’d had early in our startup journeys” ⁷.

PWV’s publicly stated focus areas are software and AI-driven companies at pre-seed and seed stage, with a particular emphasis on developer tools, open-source software, infrastructure, SaaS, and climate technology ¹⁰. The firm describes its approach around three pillars: being “founder focused” (operational experience helps founders avoid mistakes), “community oriented” (150+ active portfolio companies share knowledge), and “networked” (warm introductions to growth-stage investors for Series A) ⁷.

Preston-Werner’s investing also has an explicit equity and climate dimension. Through the Redwood Startup Fund — a $1M vehicle announced in April 2022 — he stated: “I’d like to create more opportunities for Black devs, women devs, and other minoritized devs within our broader community to travel down the startup path” ¹¹. Climate technology has been a consistent theme, with investments in electric aviation (Beta Technologies), green hydrogen and carbon sequestration (Mote Hydrogen), and air-to-fuel conversion (Prometheus Fuels) ¹¹.

Preston-Werner has said his investment range is $100,000 to $5,000,000 with a target check of $1.5M ¹².

Inferred Thesis

Based on 22 verified investments with confirmed sources (representing a small fraction of the 175+ claimed total; the full portfolio cannot be independently verified from public sources without premium database access).

Sector distribution (22 verified investments): - Developer tools / infrastructure: 9 of 22 (41%) — Netlify, Snyk, Supabase, PlanetScale, Graphite, StackBlitz, SigNoz, Platformatic, Zed - AI / machine learning: 7 of 22 (32%) — Cursor, Liquid AI, OpenPipe, Weights & Biases, Langbase, Not Diamond, Alinia AI - Fintech / payments: 2 of 22 (9%) — Stripe, MoneyHash - Climate / hardware: 2 of 22 (9%) — Beta Technologies, Mote Hydrogen (cited in Redwood Startup Fund post) - Other: 2 of 22 (9%) — Ready Player Me (metaverse/avatar), Milestone (dev productivity)

Note: This sample of 22 is a small fraction of the 175+ claimed total; sector distributions should be treated as directionally indicative, not definitive. Developer tools and AI appear consistently but the true breakdown across the full portfolio is unknown.

Stage distribution (22 verified investments): - Seed / pre-seed: estimated majority — OpenPipe (seed, 2024), Not Diamond (seed, 2024), Langbase (seed, 2024), Alinia AI (seed, 2024), Liquid AI (seed, 2023), SigNoz (seed, 2023), Platformatic (seed, 2023), MoneyHash (pre-Series A, 2025), StackBlitz (seed, 2022) - Later stage (Series A+): PlanetScale (Series C, 2021), Supabase (Series A, 2021), Weights & Biases (Series B, 2021), Graphite (Series A, 2022) - Stage unknown for remaining entries

PWV’s stated focus is pre-seed and seed. The documented later-stage investments (PlanetScale Series C, Supabase Series A, W&B Series B) likely represent follow-on checks into companies where Preston-Werner held earlier positions, consistent with the claim that Netlify (seed 2016) was followed by a board seat at Series C (2020).

Developer-tool pattern: The portfolio strongly skews toward companies building for developers: code editors (Cursor, Zed), infrastructure (Railway, Netlify, Supabase, PlanetScale), security (Snyk), observability (SigNoz), and collaboration (Graphite). This is consistent with Preston-Werner’s own background as a developer and open-source creator.

Open-source affinity: Many portfolio companies have open-source core products — Supabase, SigNoz, Platformatic, RedwoodJS, Snyk, PlanetScale, Netlify — reflecting his stated philosophy of “open source (almost) everything” ¹³.

AI trajectory: Investment in AI companies has accelerated since 2023 with at least 5 documented seed-stage AI investments in 2023–2024 (Liquid AI, OpenPipe, Not Diamond, Langbase, Alinia AI), consistent with his public statements about the opportunity in AI.

Geographic focus: Primarily US-based companies, with some exceptions (MoneyHash — MENA, SigNoz — global, Platformatic — founders in UK/Italy). PWV has stated willingness to invest outside Silicon Valley if founders build strategic US relationships ⁹.

Co-investor patterns: In documented rounds, Preston-Werner co-invests with Costanoa Ventures, Y Combinator, SignalFire, Heavybit, Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz (Graphite), Coatue (Supabase, W&B), and Insight Partners (W&B). No single VC appears dominant across his portfolio.

Notable gap: Despite his deep roots in developer collaboration tools (GitHub), there are relatively few investments in the productivity/project management category. His portfolio is more infrastructure and tooling than applications.

Sample size caveat: With only 22 of 175+ investments verified, any percentage figures should be treated as preliminary. The full portfolio likely shows more diversity across sectors.

Portfolio

This table represents 22 verified investments with sources. Preston-Werner claims 175+ total investments over 13 years; this table covers approximately 13% of the claimed total. The full portfolio cannot be independently verified without premium database access.

Notes: Stripe and Cursor years are estimates based on “earliest checks” description ⁷ and company founding dates (Stripe: 2010, Cursor: 2022). Zed investment based on TechCrunch article mentioning Preston-Werner alongside Redpoint Ventures ²⁴. Ready Player Me and Railway years are estimated from PWV portfolio context.

In Their Own Words

On his investment philosophy: “For me this is much more than a financial game. I want to fund founders that want to create a better future for PEOPLE.” ⁹

“I want to feel less like a VC and more like a mentor and champion.” ⁹

“That same spirit of breaking the rules and expanding what’s possible is exactly what draws me to founders today.” ⁹

On GitHub’s relationship with venture capital: “For the first four years of GitHub, I actually had a bit of an antagonistic approach to the VC world.” ⁹

“We took it as a point of pride that we didn’t need to play the VC game to succeed.” ⁹

“We made our own rules and were the masters of our own destiny.” ⁹

On PWV’s mission: “I feel tremendously lucky to count myself as a part of the journey of such talented and driven founders.” ³¹

On building GitHub: “We wanted to build a company where we would have wanted to work as employees.” ³²

“You’re working on insanely hard projects, but you’re doing it with your best friends.” ³

On optimizing for happiness vs. money: “I’m a hacker; I’m happy when I’m building things of value, not when I’m writing a business plan filled with make believe numbers.” ³³

“We do all this because we’re optimizing for happiness, and because there’s nobody to tell us that we can’t.” ³³

On why he invested in Snyk: “What Snyk is today is just the tip of what will become an intelligent and proactive bodyguard for your entire codebase.” ¹⁵

“To win [on security], you have to get it right every single time. To lose (and lose big), you only have to screw it up once.” ¹⁵

On open source: “There’s so much that can be learned on that open source journey that no one has to give you permission to do.” ³²

On geography: “If you are building in SF, you better burn twice as bright, because you might just be burning half as long.” ⁹

On the Netlify board and JAMstack: “What if you could author your web app in two parts: a JavaScript frontend client written in something like React that could be delivered statically via Netlify’s CDN, and the business logic layer that could run on AWS Lambda?” ¹⁴

On developer pain and opportunity: “Where is the pain today? Maybe it’s in AI…there’s tons of opportunity there.” ³²

“You embed yourself in a thing, figure out where it hurts, and write something to solve that pain.” ³²

On RedwoodJS: “I kept waiting for somebody to come out and glue this all together with Rails, but for the JAMstack/JavaScript world. Nobody was doing it, so I started working on it myself and that has become RedwoodJS.” ⁵

On adventure: “When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say ‘wow, that was an adventure,’ not ‘wow, I sure felt safe.’” ³⁴

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials found. PWV’s website features portfolio company context, but attributed founder quotes about working with Preston-Werner specifically are not available in public sources reviewed. PullFlow’s announcement blog post described Preston-Werner’s “profound knowledge of developer ecosystem, tools, and community-building” as “a priceless resource,” but this is company marketing copy rather than an attributed founder quote ²⁷.

Connections

Board member, Netlify — joined the board at Series C close in March 2020, alongside founders Mathias Biilmann and Christian Bach ¹⁴.

Co-founder, GitHub — alongside Chris Wanstrath, P.J. Hyett, and Scott Chacon ¹.

Co-founder, Chatterbug — alongside Scott Chacon, Russell Belfer, and Liz Clinkenbeard ⁶.

Co-founder, RedwoodJS — open-source framework; co-created with Tom’s Preston-Werner Ventures colleagues ⁵.

Co-investor, Cursor — invested alongside other angels; also confirmed investor in Graphite, which was acquired by Cursor in December 2025 ¹⁶, ³⁰.

Co-investor, Supabase Series A — alongside Elad Gill, Solomon Hykes (Docker), Guillermo Rauch (Vercel), Alex Solomon (PagerDuty), and Coatue ¹⁹.

Co-investor, Weights & Biases Series B — alongside Insight Partners, Nat Friedman, Pieter Abbeel, and Richard Socher ²⁰.

Sources