I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "only vaguely." The fact that passionate developers are building developer tools has a lot to do with why we've been successful.
Chris, the CEO, has spoken at length about this topic. He and I built another site prior to GitHub where there was very little correlation between our interests and the product we were building. Not surprisingly, our hearts weren't in it and we threw in the towel.
All of this said, just because you're working on something you're passionate about doesn't immediately mean you're bound for success; it just helps tremendously.
Chris, the CEO, has spoken at length about this topic. He and I built another site prior to GitHub where there was very little correlation between our interests and the product we were building. Not surprisingly, our hearts weren't in it and we threw in the towel.
All of this said, just because you're working on something you're passionate about doesn't immediately mean you're bound for success; it just helps tremendously.