GitHub

GitHub is the code hosting platform where 100+ million developers store 420+ million repositories. The company demonstrates three biological principles that matter in business: protecting human keystones, metabolic transformation through strategic acquisition, and moderating power law distributions.

The keystone lesson: GitHub had an engineer who was the only person who fully understood their Git storage architecture. Through comprehensive documentation, cross-training, and relationship redundancy, they ensured continuity when the engineer took parental leave. This is keystone protection - recognizing when a single entity is disproportionately critical and building resilience before they disappear.

Microsoft's 2018 acquisition represented metabolic transformation. For Microsoft, GitHub was investment in 'new feeding grounds' as the company shifted from license-based software to subscription and cloud services under Satya Nadella. GitHub also illustrates power law moderation: in open source, 1-2% of contributors typically generate 80%+ of commits. GitHub lowered barriers through simplified pull requests, created recognition systems (contribution graphs, badges), and 'good first issue' labels. This moderated extreme concentration while preserving innovation diversity - showing that platforms can shape participation patterns through thoughtful design.