Mikkel Kim
| Mikkel Kim | |
| Occupation | Software entrepreneur |
|---|---|
| Known for | Co-founder of Gitdot |
Mikkel Kim is a software entrepreneur and co-founder of Gitdot, a developer tools company building an alternative to GitHub aimed at open-source software maintainers. Gitdot was part of Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch.[1]
Career
Kim co-founded Gitdot alongside Paul Bae. The two previously worked together at Async.dev (also known as Async Inc.), a software company whose products included tools for automated code research and execution.[2]
Gitdot positions itself as "a better GitHub" and describes its mission as providing an opinionated platform for high-quality open-source software development. The company identifies the dominance of GitHub as a monopoly problem in the open-source ecosystem and aims to offer a competitive alternative with a distinct set of design priorities.[3]
The platform's planned feature set includes a high-performance Git server written in Rust, a CI/CD system designed to be secure by default and locally testable, and an issue tracker oriented toward the needs of project maintainers rather than issue submitters. The company has stated that it will not pursue feature parity with GitHub but will instead focus on reliability and a curated experience for a smaller number of users.
Gitdot has taken several deliberate positions that distinguish it from established platforms. The company has stated it will not include an AI coding assistant, will not feature vanity metrics such as repository stars, and will not offer free private repositories — instead making public repositories free while charging for private ones. The company has described AI as "an implementation detail, not a feature" and has questioned whether common open-source platform conventions, such as star counts, genuinely serve maintainers.
The company announced a target launch date of March 31, 2026, and committed to publishing weekly developer logs detailing both progress and the reasoning behind product decisions. Gitdot is categorized in the developer tools and B2B sectors.
References
- ↑ "gitdot – Y Combinator". 'Y Combinator}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.
- ↑ "Paul Bae - async.build". 'Async.dev}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.
- ↑ "Gitdot". 'Gitdot}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.