Founder Profile
Chris Wanstrath
Last reviewed: October 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya
Who is Chris Wanstrath?
Chris Wanstrath is a founder of GitHub, Inc., which was founded in 2008 with Tom Preston-Werner, P. J. Hyett and Scott Chacon.
- Company founded
- GitHub, Inc.
- Founded
- 2008
- Co-founders
- Tom Preston-Werner, P. J. Hyett and Scott Chacon
Background
Chris Wanstrath taught himself web development and worked at CNET before GitHub. He was an active open-source developer in Ruby and created the Mustache templating language.
Founding Story
Chris Wanstrath is a co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer of GitHub, Inc. In 2008, alongside P. J. Hyett, Tom Preston-Werner, and Scott Chacon, Wanstrath co-founded GitHub to solve the friction of open-source collaboration. Serving as GitHub's first CEO and returning to the role between 2014 and 2017, Wanstrath guided GitHub through its hyper-growth phase from a bootstrapped startup into a global technology leader with tens of millions of developers, culminating in the $7.5 billion acquisition by Microsoft in 2018. Wanstrath's hacker ethos and deep devotion to developer craftsmanship shaped GitHub's core product DNA. He championed the 'Octocat' brand identity, remote-first engineering culture, and the belief that software development should be collaborative, transparent, and fun. His leadership established GitHub as the home for the global open-source community.
Chris Wanstrath was born in 1985 in Ohio. Education: St. Xavier High School; University of Cincinnati.