Episode 149: Naytri Sramek on the GitHub Accelerator and M12 GitHub Fund

Guest Naytri Sramek Panelists Richard Littauer | Justin Dorfman Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, we’re super excited to have joining us as our guest, Naytri Sramek, who’s the Senior Director of Strategy at GitHub. Have you heard of the GitHub Accelerator and M12 GitHub Fund? Well, this is a great day to be joining us because Naytri is here to talk about these programs that they’ve been launching to help support and sustain OSS over the long haul. Naytri shares GitHub’s journey which began with the GitHub Sponsors launch in 2019, bringing on enterprise sponsors, and how it led into launching the GitHub Accelerator program and the M12 GitHub Fund. Go ahead and download this episode now to learn more. [00:01:23] Naytri reveals the two things they’ve been launching which are the GitHub Accelerator and the M12 GitHub Fund. She also tells us about bringing on enterprise sponsors since they’ve benefited from open source. [00:06:25] Peter Thomas, who worked at Intuit and is creator of Karate Labs, is brought up and Justin wonders if he’s involved in this venture or if there are others. [00:09:37] A question comes up regarding if the growth of the projects has been tracked with the money that GitHub has given to developers, if they’ve been able to quit their jobs since the money was given to them, and if those projects have improved. [00:15:35] We hear the focus of the GitHub sponsors, the Accelerator, and the M12 Fund. [00:19:57] Justin brings up the difficult issue of how to deal with developers that build these critical pieces of software, but they don’t want to deal with the responsibility and wonders how Naytri and her team deal with this issue. [00:23:18] There’s a 10-week course for the accelerator program and we hear how it works, and if it will be available to everyone in the future on GitHub. [00:29:28] Naytri explains how the communities are being funded. [00:32:47] A point is brought up about how long can these st