Episode description

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 way that supports their employees and customers. He also shares insights into how to measure an open-source community, and the knowledge gaps that he sees in people who can’t contextualize the data they’re getting on their community. Daniel also walks us through the other open-source business models Bitergia tried before discovering what worked for them.

Highlights:

• I introduce Daniel, who is the Co-Founder and CEO at Bitergia, as he joins me at the Open Source Summit in Bilbao (00:24)
• Daniel describes the work that he does at Bitergia (00:41)
• The story of why Daniel helped to co-found Bitergia during the finalizing of his PhD (01:38)
• How Daniel and his co-founders got by as they transitioned from academia to founding an open-source company, and what the first year of running Bitergia was like (03:28)
• Daniel explains how Bitergia makes money as an open-source company (06:04)
• The main types of customers that Bitergia works with (07:50)
• The metrics that Daniel feels are critical when measuring an open-source community (08:50)
• Daniel describes the knowledge gap he observes in clients who can’t contextualize the data they get on their community (11:16)
• The story of how Bitergia tried other open-source business models before finding what worked for them (13:41)
• Why Daniel feels it is a disadvantage to have his company based in Spain (16:07)
• Daniel shares his growth philosophy for Bitergia (18:47)
• The challenges facing Daniel and his team at the moment (20:21)
• Daniel’s advice to aspiring open-source founders (21:53)
• The most interesting mistake Daniel feels he made in building Bitergia (23:57)
• Daniel shares what he feels is the main difference between starting a company with and without an open-source component (25:33)

Links:

Daniel

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dicortazar/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/dizquierdo
• Company: https://bitergia.com/