Lessons for 3 years of interviewing founders
For those of you who weren’t able to make it Open Core Summit last December, the talk I did is up on the internet and you should check it out. I’ll also embed it below.
This talk is honestly one of my favorites that I’ve done, because as I was preparing for it I was able to sit back and really think about pattern matching. I pulled inspiration both from the clients I’ve worked with and the founders and others I’ve interviewed on the podcast. Here were the main things I talked about:
How open source companies are mind games for everyone.
This usually isn’t something that people say flat out, but it’s between the lines. I don’t think open source companies are necessarily harder than closed-source ones, but they are more complicated, and therefore the opportunities for second-guessing are greater. Also I think open source companies are much, much more of a mind game for employees of oss companies than most people expect, and that’s something founders have to keep in mind.
2. Sell to the government
I just see a pattern that a lot of successful open source companies do a lot of business with governments. Governments like some things that are inherent in open source businesses: transparency, keeping control over data, self-hosting. They also like to pay for enterprise-y stuff like security and support. It’s a winning mix for a lot of companies.
3. There’s more than one way to monetize
We talk a lot about open core or SaaS, but I’m most intrigued by companies that monetize doing neither — because such companies exist, and I’m not talking about companies that do just services, either.
4. The product-project relationship
This is a big part of what I work on with companies, but this is the unifying challenge for all open source companies: How do you understand both the delta between the differentiated value and positioning for your project and product while also having a unifying story around both? This is absolutely critical to success and, to me, the core challenge that makes open source companies different from closed-source ones.
5. Lastly, what’s the business value of your open source project?
Sort of related to above, but there’s a menu of ways your open source project can contribute to your business, and you have to know which ones you’re focused on. Because you don’t do open source for fun or for charity if you’re an open source business, you do it because it has ROI.
Here’s the talk: