This week Heikki Nousiainen, CTO and Co-founder of Aiven , joins me to chat about building the business, his passion for open source and entrepreneurship, and his hopes for the future of open source in the public sector. In this episode, Heikki and I explore the successes and challenges he and his three co-founders encountered in creating and maintaining their global open source data platform. We discuss how they choose technologies to support, the importance of customer demand, how founders can...
Jul 19, 2023•24 min•Ep 160•Transcript available on Metacast Michael Cheng, Chief Legal Officer at Aalyria Technologies, is a master at strategy and execution for open-source products and companies. From his humble beginning spearheading the open source team at Meta (formerly Facebook), Cheng has honed his knowledge about the interworking of open source and utilizes it to its fullest potential. In this episode of The Business of Open Source, Cheng talks about his time as Meta's lead in open source as well as what it's like to be an individual working for ...
Jul 12, 2023•29 min•Ep 159•Transcript available on Metacast Are you struggling to find a co-founder? Having trouble navigating a relationship with your partners? These are all questions Tanis Jorge, CEO of The Co-founder's Hub , tackles daily in her work. A serial tech entrepreneur and a leading entrepreneur advisor, it is no wonder Jorge has founded and built many businesses, such as Trulioo and IQuiri Inc. On this episode of The Business Of Open Source, I ask Jorge about finding the right co-founder, why legal frameworks are so important, and the hi's ...
Jul 05, 2023•32 min•Ep 158•Transcript available on Metacast From college dropout to developer efficiency guru, Kyle Campbell knows his way around workflow integrations for software companies. He is a fierce proponent of efficient workflows and hopes to spread his experience to any company that can benefit from it. In this episode of the Business of Open Source, Campbell discusses the origins of his Company CTO.ai , its revenue model, and why he created this AI companion for developers. He also talks about being a consultant, running a start up, and when ...
Jun 28, 2023•32 min•Ep 157•Transcript available on Metacast Matt Butcher is no stranger to the ways of ethical philosophy. With a Ph.D. in Religion and Computer Science, he enjoys philosophical conversations of ethical dilemmas. Butcher passionately debates wild theories and paradoxical situations against those not afraid to question reality in pursuit of knowledge. In this episode of The Business of Open Source, Hear how Butcher discusses ethics in the open source world, the grey areas in being an ethical company, and the moral nature of work/life balan...
Jun 21, 2023•37 min•Ep 156•Transcript available on Metacast Dawn Foster, Director of Open Source Community Strategy at VMware, is a champion of community strategy and development. A doctor of Philosophy, Foster is well-versed in the understanding of collaboration and leverages her mountain of knowledge to fight for the health of maintainers in open-source projects. In this episode of The Business of Open Source, Dawn Foster joins me from the Open Source Summit North America to tackle community strategy and contribution growth methods. Foster also touches...
Jun 14, 2023•30 min•Ep 155•Transcript available on Metacast Bart Farrell is a content creator and community leader in the public speaking world. Based in Spain, he has developed a massively popular platform through podcasting and consulting as a nontechnical person in a technical space. In this episode, Farrell breaks down the ins and outs of public speaking. He also discusses the art form of speaking offline rather than online, what to expect when talking to an audience, and what it takes to deliver the gift of gab. Farrell also goes into his struggles ...
Jun 07, 2023•33 min•Ep 154•Transcript available on Metacast Ivar Østhus, The CTO and creator of Unleashed, is a revolutionary in shipping feature management tools and rollouts for companies worldwide. Through hardships, Østhus came into his own in the open source world by relieving the pressure on developers bringing new creations to light in their projects. On this episode of The Business of Open Source, Hear how Østhus discusses the inception of Unleashed and the struggles he overcame in the early stages. He also talks about being a European company in...
May 31, 2023•28 min•Ep 153•Transcript available on Metacast Josh Koenig, Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder of Pantheon, is a WebOps aficionado focused on creating first-class platforms and delivering results. Recognized as a Top 25 Software Products Executive by The Software Report, it is no wonder he is passionate about his ability to discuss and understand the developer experience while fostering relationships with users. On this episode of the Business of Open Source, Koenig discusses the art of fostering opposing community relations and his ideal...
May 24, 2023•32 min•Ep 152•Transcript available on Metacast Daniel Loreto, the founder of Jetpack.io, is a massive believer in transforming how engineers scale their backend for cloud-based platforms. Deeply rooted in the tech industry, Loretto takes great pride in building tools to large usage scales and utilizing them to attend to the needs of his users and community. On this episode of the Business of Open Source, Hear about the inner workings of jetpack.io and its challenges in its history. Also, listen to Loreto's tips for success for a startup, his...
May 17, 2023•26 min•Ep 151•Transcript available on Metacast "Fueling a culture of openness in innovation and research." That slogan is well known to Abigail Cabunoc Mayes, a leader in GitHub's open-source maintainer program. With a background in open science, Mayes felt right at home when jumping to open source and mentoring many developers at the Cloud-based Hosting service. On this episode of The Business of Open Source, listen to Mayes speak on sustainability and resilience in building a platform for developers and what makes a robust and sustainable ...
May 10, 2023•24 min•Ep 150•Transcript available on Metacast Akriti Dokania, a heavyweight in the venture capital business, is a partner at Ridge Ventures. With a background in computer sciences and building a B2B company from the ground up, it is no wonder Dokania is an expert in the complexities of developing software and understanding the lifecycle of a start-up. On this week's episodes of the Business of Open Source, Dokania shows her wealth of knowledge in investing in open source start-ups. She also explains what founders should look for in an inves...
May 03, 2023•23 min•Ep 149•Transcript available on Metacast Stefan Avram, Co-Founder and Head of Growth at WunderGraph , is taking the open source world by storm. With his company specializing in full stack and workflows through API composition, it is no wonder he has fostered a vast community of developers around WunderGraph. On today's episode, Avram delves into the story and creation of WunderGraph. He also recounts how he organized a massive discord community to foster healthy feedback for growth. Lastly, Avram speaks on the hardships of building a s...
Apr 26, 2023•27 min•Ep 148•Transcript available on Metacast Emre Baran is a man on a mission to simplify authorization protocols for software developers. With his company Cerbos, Baran has put in years of dedication to easy authorization and helping build the authorization databases of over one hundred EU companies. In this episode of The Business of Open Source, Emre Baran goes through the history of his company Cerbos. He also talks about telemetry challenges, monetization strategies, and the challenges that made him who he is today. Find out more in t...
Apr 19, 2023•31 min•Ep 147•Transcript available on Metacast Tyler Jewell is an enterprise technology investor and managing director of Dell Technologies Capital , with a hand in many open source companies. A returning guest to the podcast, Jewell shares with us his foresight and knowledge about the past and current history of the open source landscape. Hear about the inner workings of Lightbend and how far Akka open source projects have evolved over the years. Also, listen to Jewell discuss business strategy for open source companies and the common mista...
Apr 12, 2023•26 min•Ep 146•Transcript available on Metacast From software engineer to leading developer products at Facebook, Ron Efroni was familiar with the challenges facing developers. His co-founder recognized the power of Nix to remove the boundaries of development, and together they started Flox to reduce the barriers to the adoption of Nix. In our final episode from the State of Open Con in London, Ron Efroni, CEO and Co-founder of Flox, joins me to discuss the future of Flox and Nix, the amazing community that keeps Nix moving forward, and advic...
Apr 05, 2023•22 min•Ep 145•Transcript available on Metacast Sometimes it seems like our devices can read our minds. While that can occasionally be helpful, it can raise concerns about how much of our personal data is collected. Gael Duval, CEO of Murena, noticed this issue in 2017 and has been working on solutions ever since. In this episode, Gael joins me at the State of Open Con in London to discuss the origins of Murena and how you can protect your data. He also shares lessons he’s learned as an entrepreneur and advice for aspiring founders in the ope...
Mar 29, 2023•19 min•Ep 144•Transcript available on Metacast Peter Zaitzev, the founder of Percona, is an expert on open source strategy and database optimization. With his level of experience in the world of open source, Peter enjoys challenging himself and going against the grain in order to come out on top. On this episode of The Business of Open Source, Peter breaks down his thought process on how he approaches open source for businesses as a consultant and dives into the inner workings of Percona from how they generate revenue to customer retention. ...
Mar 22, 2023•26 min•Ep 143•Transcript available on Metacast Frank Karlitschek has worked in the open source software space since the late 90s when he contributed to KDE. Since then, he’s managed multiple teams and start ups and used his influence to make the internet a better, more secure place. In this episode, Frank joins me at The State of Open Con to share his passion for open source and improving the internet. We discuss his early involvement in open source and how he started his own company. He also shares advice for new founders and encouragement ...
Mar 15, 2023•17 min•Ep 142•Transcript available on Metacast Matt Barker, President and co-founder of Jetstack , has been involved in open source and Kubernetes since the early days of its development. With a long list of open source projects behind him, he decided to hone in on Jestack and with its success, share the knowledge he’s gained over the years as an OpenUK Entrepreneur in Residence. In this episode of The Business of Open Source, Matt joins me from the State of Open Con and shares his initial vision for Jestack and reviews the projects that hel...
Mar 08, 2023•22 min•Ep 141•Transcript available on Metacast In the first of my series of interviews from the State of Open Con in London, I’m chatting with Rob Taylor, CEO of ChipFlow , about the intersection between open source software design and hardware design, bringing community into the hardware space, and how geopolitics could shape the future of open source. In this episode, Rob shares his fascinating hardware and software design background, including his first job working on lighting desks for theaters. Then we delve into his other companies bef...
Mar 01, 2023•21 min•Ep 140•Transcript available on Metacast Josh Thurman, Co-founder and Head of DevRel at Uffizzi, joins me to chat about his journey from Navy Seal to tech startup Co-founder. In this episode, Josh and I discuss his background as a Navy Seal, how he dove into tech and started Uffizzi, and the mistakes and failures he overcame along the way. We also dig into open source as a development model, creating vs. capturing value, and the importance of compatibility with software users are already implementing. Listen to find out what Josh consi...
Feb 22, 2023•30 min•Ep 139•Transcript available on Metacast Nikhil Nandagopal, Founder and CPO of Appsmith , joins me to chat about building trust, the importance of starting as an open source offering, and how the community continues to shape the future of Appsmith. In this episode, Nikhil and I discuss the origins of Appsmith, building a business edition as well as a community one, and the challenges he and his team encountered along the way. We compare the community and business editions, discuss the importance of community and an educational, product...
Feb 15, 2023•20 min•Ep 138•Transcript available on Metacast Adi Gelvan, Co-founder and CEO of Speedb , joins me to share his experience in moving Speedb from a closed source proprietary company to open source with an enterprise offering. In this episode, Adi and I explore moving from a proprietary to an open source strategy. From pros and cons, pushback from team members, and mistakes along the way, listen to hear how Adi and his team handled those challenges and more. Highlights: Adi introduces himself and Speedb (0:47) Why speedb decided to switch to o...
Feb 08, 2023•24 min•Ep 137•Transcript available on Metacast Heather Meeker, General Partner at OSS Capital, joins me to discuss the legal elements of open source, including options for licensing and business structure. In this episode, Heather and I explore the intersection of law and open source by reviewing licensing options, challenges, and common mistakes startups make early on. We also get into less common licensing and business models and what might be in store for the future of licensing in open source. Highlights: Heather introduces herself and r...
Feb 01, 2023•33 min•Ep 136•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Richard, Head of Growth at ngrok, joins me to talk about product-led growth in open source and ngrok’s history in open source. In this episode, Sam and I discuss product-led growth - how it differs from a traditional sales model, what metrics founders can use to track their development, and how to find your activation metrics. We also review what kind of companies would benefit from a product-led approach, who might not, and how companies can avoid mistakes others have made in implementing t...
Jan 25, 2023•28 min•Ep 135•Transcript available on Metacast Jan 18, 2023•29 min•Ep 134•Transcript available on Metacast Georg Link, Director of Sales at Bitergia , joins me to chat about how open source startups can use metrics to keep their communities healthy, why he approaches his role as an educator first, and how a company’s culture impacts the way they sell for open source. In this episode, Georg and I discuss how he started the CHAOSS (Community Health Analysis Open Source Software) project to evaluate the health of open source communities and how to use metrics to gain that understanding. We also get some...
Jan 11, 2023•30 min•Ep 133•Transcript available on Metacast Jonathan Reimer, CEO & Co-Founder at Crowd.dev , joins me to chat about community-led growth and cultivating a community around an open source startup. In this episode, Jonathan and I discuss the differences between community-led growth and product-led growth, review the meaning of community, and explore the challenges of building a community around an open source startup. We also get into how community-led growth can benefit a company, the biggest mistakes startups make around community bui...
Jan 04, 2023•23 min•Ep 132•Transcript available on Metacast Brian MacDonald, Manager of Technical Editing at DigitalOcean joins me to discuss the importance of writing efficient documentation for any product. In this episode, Brian and I chat about his talk at All Things Open entitled Verbs Not Nouns and covering the importance of writing documentation that instructs your users on how to use your product to solve the problem it intends to solve for them. We also cover common mistakes in writing documentation and tips for ensuring yours is effective. List...
Dec 28, 2022•29 min•Ep 131•Transcript available on Metacast 
