Software-services company GitHub has raised $100 million in a round led by venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, the company said, marking GitHub's first outside investment and Andreessen's largest funding so far.

Andreessen partner Peter Levine will take a board seat at the profitable 4-year-old company, which has 1.7 million users for its software-development hosting services.

SV Angel, the firm run by Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway, is also an investor in the round.

The unusually large first-round funding for a start-up reflects business-oriented companies' relative ease in raising capital compared to consumer companies in the wake of the messy Facebook initial public offering in May.

With the cash, GitHub said it will be able to expand faster and better compete with companies such as Sydney-based Atlassian, which has raised $60 million from Accel Partners.

"This money is really going to help us explore innovating around software development," said GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner. He expects the 100-employee firm to hire more engineers, designers, and technical writers.

The cash will also help the company build marketing and sales capability, Levine added.

GitHub charges for hosting private software-development projects. Hosting is free for open-source projects, in which programmers generally collaborate on a volunteer basis to develop the software.

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