Founder Profile
Tom Preston-Werner
Last reviewed: October 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya
Who is Tom Preston-Werner?
Tom Preston-Werner is a founder of GitHub, Inc., which was founded in 2008 with Chris Wanstrath, P. J. Hyett and Scott Chacon.
- Company founded
- GitHub, Inc.
- Founded
- 2008
- Co-founders
- Chris Wanstrath, P. J. Hyett and Scott Chacon
Background
Tom Preston-Werner came from open-source software. He created Jekyll, the static site generator, and wrote the Semantic Versioning (SemVer) specification, both of which are widely used by developers.
Founding Story
Tom Preston-Werner is a co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer of GitHub. A software engineer and open-source creator, Preston-Werner was instrumental in formulating GitHub's product architecture, semantic versioning specifications (SemVer), and TOML configuration language. As GitHub's CEO from 2012 to 2014, Preston-Werner negotiated GitHub's historic $100 million Series A investment from Andreessen Horowitz and spearheaded the company's early enterprise expansion. Preston-Werner's passion for open-source software and elegant system design helped establish GitHub's well-known brand. He created Jekyll (the static site generator that powers GitHub Pages), popularized Semantic Versioning, and evangelized the power of Git to millions of developers around the globe.
Tom Preston-Werner was born in 1979 in Dubuque. Education: Dubuque Senior High School; Harvey Mudd College.