About Emily
I help founders of open source startups accelerate revenue growth. Depending on the company stage, the way I help is:
Helping founders figure out the best revenue model, given their open source project’s audience, competitive landscape and relative strengths/weaknesses
Helping founders translate their revenue model into a concrete commercial product
Helping founders get their first customers
Helping founders accelerate revenue growth once they’ve gotten some initial traction by tightly positioning their project, product(s) and entire company brand
I'm a big picture person — I'm really good at helping people zoom out and think about how their project/product helps customers' bottom lines and how their project/product fits into the larger ecosystem. I've worked with dozens of startups and interviewed hundreds of founders, operators and investors on my podcast, The Business of Open Source, and have seen the patterns of what works and what doesn't.
I often tell founders to be clear about their opinions — and that only opinions that some people will disagree with count. So here are mine:
There are pros and cons to building an open source company. In many cases the pros outweigh the cons, but anyone who says there are only advantages to open source companies is lying to you or to themselves.
You shouldn’t have to move to make your startup a success.
Massive project adoption ≠ guaranteed commercial success. Your project and your product have different markets, and success in one does not guarantee success in the other.
Finding the right commercial strategy is not always easy, and you should try to validate your commercial strategy as soon as possible, while you’re still nimble.
If you're the founder of an open source startup and struggling with figuring out your revenue model, your commercial product or the positioning around your existing OSS and commercial product, get in touch.
I also love talking to people face-to-face. If you’re in Paris and have time to meet for coffee (ok, actually I drink tea but you get the idea) and talk about growth strategies, revenue models, positioning and open source projects / open source businesses in general, please reach out and we’ll make it happen. Also don’t hesitate to reach out if you’ll be at a conference I’m speaking at.
I contribute to The New Stack and host The Business of Open Source, a podcast about building a successful open source company. I’m also active on LinkedIn and always happy to connect.
Fun facts about me:
I grew up in Portland, Oregon. I’ve lived in Switzerland, Russia, Spain, France, China and Nicaragua. Now I live in Paris, France.
I was a bartender in Russia, taught English to Spanish civil servants (including the Minister of Tourism) and at the Madrid stock exchange, got a scholarship to study Chinese from the Chinese government and moved to Nicaragua as a single mom to write a book about Augusto Sandino. Fitting, because then Nicaragua slipped to the edge of civil war and I had a ‘drive past loads of dudes with machetes and buy plane tickets at the airport’ trip back to the US. I still hope I can go back and write the book sometime.
I’m a graduate of Columbia University’s Journalism School and Science Po Paris Journalism School.
My hair is naturally curly. You know you were wondering but thought it would be rude to ask.
I speak six languages and worked as a translator for Worldcrunch during and after graduate school.
My late husband was a fine artist. After many years of preparation, his skeleton is scheduled to arrive at the Art Students League of New York in late 2023 so art students can study artistic anatomy from his bones.
Some podcasts I’ve been on:
Under the Hood of Developer Marketing
Talks about positioning for open source startups
Do more awkward user interviews, FOSDEM 2023
How do you know if your project is any good? With Avi Press, for All Things Open 2022
How to talk about your open source project so people get it at All Things Open, 2022
Marketing is essential (and not sleazy) for open source projects at Open Source Summit NA, panel with Jana Iris, Matt Yonkovit and Nithya Ruff
Positioning Developer and Open Source Products for BoldStart Ventures Speaker Series
How to Talk to Business People about Cloud Native Technology at ContainerDays 2021
How to talk about your open source project so people get it at Open Source Summit NA 2021
Applying the principles of product-market fit to open source projects at Linux Foundation Member Summit, 2021, panel with Nithya Ruff, Amanda Robson and Leigh Marie Braswell
Security as Code and GitOps pancake breakfast panel with The New Stack at KubeCon NA 2021
Physical location:
Paris, France
Emily Omier