Garima Kapoor, COO and co-founder of MinIO, joins me to share her journey from investor and advisor to co-founder of MinIO and the wealth of knowledge she’s amassed along the way. In this episode, Garima explains how her experience in finance and belief in the power of open source helped MinIO to break into the data storage market. She also reviews the challenges she faced as a first-time founder and what others can learn from her mistakes and take away from some of their own. Since Garima start...
Feb 07, 2024•39 min•Ep 190•Transcript available on Metacast Today I’m joined by Federico Wengi, who is a Partner at SquareOne VC. In this conversation, Federico sheds light on the conversations he’s had with many companies who consider making the pivot from a closed-source business strategy to an open-source strategy. Federico explains why it’s so uncommon for businesses to make that pivot, and lays out the challenges businesses face when they consider taking on such a change. Federico also gives a great example of a company that did successfully complet...
Jan 31, 2024•33 min•Ep 188•Transcript available on Metacast How can we get founders of open source companies together to share ideas, share strategies and tactics and build a community not just of open source practitioners, but of open source business owners? We create a conference/summit/retreat to bring them together to learn and to work on their businesses together. At least that is the bet that Remy Bertot and I are making In this episode, I talked with Remy about Open Source Founders Summit , a summit they're organizing on May 27th and 28th, 2024 in...
Jan 29, 2024•12 min•Ep 189•Transcript available on Metacast Ben Haynes, the Founder and CEO of Directus, created an open-source project while working at his own agency in 2004. In this episode, we explore how he went from maintaining an open-source project to building an open-source company with a solid product-led growth strategy, and how he’s achieved success in the enterprise segment even as a small organization. Ben expands on how he feels open-source is the best way to start a business, and also reveals why timing and transparency can be both your g...
Jan 24, 2024•41 min•Ep 187•Transcript available on Metacast Peer Richelsen is the Co-founder of Cal.com, an open-source calendar scheduling tool. This week, Peer and I discuss his personal experience with needing a customizable scheduling tool, the big leap from taking donations to running a profitable business, and the thought process behind seeking VC funding. Peer also talks about the major advantage of starting with only a paid version of the product in order to build a small community of super users. Lastly, I pick Peer’s brain about how he feels be...
Jan 17, 2024•34 min•Ep 186•Transcript available on Metacast Birthe Lindenthal is the Co-founder and CMO of OpenProject, a web-based project management system. On this episode, Birthe and I discuss the inception of the company, how being open source directly benefits both the business and its customers, and why the connection to their community is so strong. Plus, Birthe talks about the motivation she feels when contributing to something larger than herself, including the joy of knowing NGOs use her product for free. We also discuss the unique challenges ...
Jan 10, 2024•33 min•Ep 185•Transcript available on Metacast Didier Lopes, Co-founder and CEO of OpenBB, joins me to share the story of how OpenBB went from receiving 4000 GitHub stars in the first 24 hours of the project to a fully funded company launching new monetization initiatives. Didier and I chat about his background, what led him to start OpenBB in his spare time, and his vision for the company's future. He shares the story of teaming up with his co-founder, why he loves working in the open source ecosystem, and how his team continues contributin...
Jan 03, 2024•36 min•Ep 184•Transcript available on Metacast Loris Degioanni is the CEO and Founder of Sysdig, an open-source company working to make cloud deployment more secure through the use of runtime insights. Loris and I sit down to discuss the bet Sysdig is making to position itself as a leader in cloud security, how Loris leverages the power of a useful tool to create a brand, and the framework he uses to decide what should be open source and what should be paid for. Loris also shares an in-depth history of his previous company, Wireshark, and hi...
Dec 27, 2023•38 min•Ep 183•Transcript available on Metacast Bob van Luijt is the CEO and Founder of Weaviate, an open-source vector database company that helps contribute to the advancement of AI technology. Throughout this episode, Bob and I discuss the complexities of moving from an open-source project to building an open-source company, and the challenges that come with monetization strategies. Bob shares insightful anecdotes around why it’s important to be careful that you’re measuring the right things for the right reasons, and also emphasizes the i...
Dec 20, 2023•40 min•Ep 182•Transcript available on Metacast Ben Rometsch is the CEO and Founder of Flagsmith, an open-source feature flagging platform. In this conversation, we explore how he landed on the idea to develop an open-source feature flagging project and how that has snowballed into running a full-time SaaS company. Ben describes the challenges of creating a SaaS company from the ground up, especially when it comes to pricing and monetizing. We also discuss the importance of understanding and choosing the right licensing for your product. High...
Dec 13, 2023•40 min•Ep 181•Transcript available on Metacast Max Howell is the CEO of Tea, a revolutionary open-source project that is seeking to help open-source contributors get paid for their work through crypto. Throughout our conversation, Max explains how he’s created some prolific open-source projects but was still unable to monetize them to the point where open source could be his full-time job, and how that provided the inspiration for Tea. Max and I discuss the importance of re-framing open-source projects in business terms of value, and not sim...
Dec 06, 2023•40 min•Ep 180•Transcript available on Metacast Nicolas Höning is the Co-Founder and CEO of Seita, an open-source energy optimization and digitalization company. Nicolas took an unconventional path to founding an open-source startup, and throughout this episode he describes how creating a greener world through open-source software is more than a business endeavor for him - it’s a personal mission. Nicolas describes perfectly the challenges that open-source founders face, and is transparent on the decisions he’s still weighing when it comes t...
Nov 29, 2023•36 min•Ep 179•Transcript available on Metacast Jono Bacon’s passion for building communities has been a driving force in a career taken him from Canonical to GitHub to founding the Community Leadership Core community accelerator. In this episode, Jono shares his definition of community , how a community can create a movement and the differences between the two. We also get a bit of insight into how he developed his passion for building communities and why he continues helping companies build and support theirs through the Community Leadershi...
Nov 22, 2023•39 min•Ep 178•Transcript available on Metacast Michael Cheng is an M&A Specialist who has had an extensive career that includes a former stint at Facebook as a Product Manager and his current role as a Lawyer. In this episode, Michael returns to the show to have an in-depth discussion around acquisitions. Michael shares his thoughts on why most acquisitions leave everyone involved feeling unsatisfied, and what he thinks should be done by both parties to mitigate the high failure rate of acquisitions. We also chat about the common grievan...
Nov 15, 2023•38 min•Ep 177•Transcript available on Metacast Lars Kamp is the Co-Founder and CEO of Some Engineering, the makers of Resoto. In this episode, Lars describes what he’s learned from founding and working at multiple start-ups, as well as the main differentiators he’s experienced founding his first open-source startup. Lars describes his though process when it comes to selecting co-founders, and illustrates why it’s even more important to be discerning when selecting investors. Lars and I also discuss the advantages that open-source gives to fo...
Nov 08, 2023•34 min•Ep 176•Transcript available on Metacast Amanda “Robby” Robson is a Partner at Cowboy Ventures and the co-host of the Open Source Startup Podcast. In this episode, Robby shares insights on what she’s looking for in open-source founders to potentially invest in, including the importance of being able to manage both your community and your paid model simultaneously. Robby and I also discuss the importance and pitfalls of choosing a monetization strategy, as well as the dangers of having too many monetization models too soon. Throughout o...
Nov 01, 2023•33 min•Ep 175•Transcript available on Metacast Daniel Izquierdo is the Co-Founder and CEO at Bitergia, an open-source company that provides software development data and analytics. In this episode, we connect at the Open Source Summit in Bilbao to discuss how he went from working in academia to co-founding an open-source company. Throughout our conversation, Daniel shares interesting anecdotes on the unique journey he’s taken to build Bitergia, including why they haven’t focused on growing fast so much as they have focused on growing in a wa...
Oct 25, 2023•30 min•Ep 174•Transcript available on Metacast Leszek Manicki is the Engineering Manager at Wikimedia Germany. In this episode, we connect at the Open Source Summit in Bilbao to discuss what he has learned being a part of Wikimedia movement and how that inspired his talk at the summit, How Not To Make Open Source. Throughout our conversation, Leszek describes the challenges Wikimedia has experienced in trying to get more contributors to their projects while also having a high security standard and a complex architecture. He also describes wh...
Oct 18, 2023•22 min•Ep 173•Transcript available on Metacast Brian Proffitt is the Senior Manager of Community Outreach at Red Hat’s OSPO. In this episode, we connect at the Open Source Summit EU to discuss how Brian uses events to drive both lead generation and community-building efforts. Throughout our conversation, Brian describes how measuring the ROI of an event can be tricky and why it’s important to look at events as a long game strategy. We also discuss why events provide some of the most valuable feedback when testing your positioning and messagi...
Oct 11, 2023•33 min•Ep 172•Transcript available on Metacast Kim McMahon is the leader of Open Source Marketing & Community at Outshift by Cisco, which is Cisco’s emerging technologies and innovation unit. We recorded this episode at Open Source Summit EU, and talked about Kim’s strategies and tactics related to helping guide users to the correct edition of your product — ie, decide whether the open source option or a commercial option is best for them. Kim talked about the tricky balance open-source companies must strike between embracing open-source...
Oct 04, 2023•36 min•Ep 171•Transcript available on Metacast Alexander Krüger is the Co-Founder and CEO of United Manufacturing Hub, an open-source company that develops software for the manufacturing industry. Throughout our conversation, Alexander describes the unusual path he took in going from a services-based consulting company to a product-led company. He also describes the opportunities and challenges of selling open-source software to an industry that has historically been slow to adopt new technology, as well as his choice to hone a go-to-market ...
Sep 27, 2023•31 min•Ep 170•Transcript available on Metacast This week I’m chatting with Steven Renwick, CEO of Tilores. As you’ll hear in the episode, we connected when I mistook Tilores for an open-source company. Steven graciously agreed to come on the show to discuss why they decided against making the product open source — which is actually a conversation worth having, and one that open source founders should probably have more often. There are a few options for companies building SaaS tools to solve problems for engineers and enterprises, from open ...
Sep 20, 2023•36 min•Ep 169•Transcript available on Metacast Philippe Humeau is the CEO and Co-Founder of CrowdSec, an open-source security company with a very unique business model that doesn’t fit the usual open source patterns. Philippe talked about how to focus on providing a fair exchange of value between maintainers / open source companies and users, and how to monetize a project that is providing value for free. Philippe also talked about why he thinks open-source founders are under more pressure to get their business model right at the start, tips...
Sep 13, 2023•40 min•Ep 168•Transcript available on Metacast Samuel Stroschein is the CEO and Founder of inlang, an open-source company that is looking to not only make localization easy for developers, but also to help companies achieve revenue growth through localization. I was particularly excited to talk to Samuel because, back in my way back past, I was a translator, so I’m always interested in solutions that exist to facilitate translation; but also because localizing software is a good example of the intersection between business problems and techn...
Sep 06, 2023•32 min•Ep 167•Transcript available on Metacast Kevin Muller is the CEO and co-founder of Passbolt, a security-first, open-source password manager, and he joined me to talk about the risks of having too much time and money, the value of getting trashed on social media and why he values in-person interactions with the team. There were a lot of interesting pieces to pick apart from this episode. First of all, Kevin talked about the importance of not commercializing too early. I think he's the only founder I've ever heard say something along tho...
Aug 30, 2023•35 min•Ep 166•Transcript available on Metacast Tim Chen is a Partner at Essence VC and also the Co-Host of the Open Source Startup Podcast. Through these channels, he has the opportunity to speak with a broad variety of open source startups. Throughout our conversation, we explore the patterns that Tim sees in the open source startup space. Tim talked about how too many founders take the decision to build an open source company too lightly and the path that he would take if he were to start a venture-backed open source startup tomorrow. We a...
Aug 23, 2023•39 min•Ep 165•Transcript available on Metacast Franz Karlsberger is the CEO of Amazee.io, an open-source platform that seeks to make developers’ lives easier by abstracting their day-to-day workload. Throughout our conversation, we explore what it means to join an open-source start-up as an external CEO, and why Franz put so much emphasis on go-to-market strategy. Franz also walks through the importance of knowing what open-source business model your company will follow, and how to measure the success of an open-source project. Listen in as ...
Aug 16, 2023•34 min•Ep 164•Transcript available on Metacast It’s kind of a cliche, Vlad A. Ionescu, founder and CEO of Earthly , says, but his first attempts to build something really awesome focused on amazing technology. With hindsight, he doesn’t think it’s so surprising that those efforts weren’t successful. It’s not that passion doesn’t matter, but rather that he had to learn to build things that inspired passion from both the market and the builders. We also talked about: Leaving a job, blowing through his savings, going back to a job before findin...
Aug 09, 2023•43 min•Ep 163•Transcript available on Metacast Markus Düttmann, a former Principal at Nauta Capital , is steeped in the European open source scene. From his beginnings in theoretical physics, Düttmann’s hard pivot into venture capital funding granted him a spot in the developing tech world as a connoisseur of the culture and a champion for start-ups. He even contributed to Nauta Capital’s European Open Source Report detailing the state of the ecosystem as of October 2022. On this episode of the Business of Open Source, listen to his insight ...
Aug 02, 2023•24 min•Ep 162•Transcript available on Metacast This week Shanea Leven, CEO and Co-Founder of CodeSee , joins me to chat about demystifying code bases and building an effective team. In this episode of The Business of Open Source, Shanea and I discuss the origins of her company, CodeSee, how it morphed from a training course to a SaaS product, and how they contribute to open source even though CodeSee is not an open source company. Shanea also shares valuable insight into working closely with your spouse, the importance of communication and e...
Jul 26, 2023•34 min•Ep 161•Transcript available on Metacast 
