GTM vs Open Source

A short talk with practical observations and opinions about startups and open source projects.

Transcript

1. GTM vs Open Source Observations and opinions Gareth Rushgrove @garethr
2. Gareth Rushgrove VP Product, Snyk
3. Not a talk about open source software licensing *
4. Open Source: Still not a business model Launch new open source project It becomes wildly popular Profit
5. Profit Launch a new business Launch a new product It becomes wildly popular
6. Launch a new open source project It becomes wildly popular Profit Launch a new business Launch a new product It becomes wildly popular
7. “open source is a channel. Open source is a way that you, in a business sense, get the software out to the people, the people use the software, and then they become a channel, which [companies] eventually try to turn into money.” Adam Jacobs @adamhjk
8. Launch a new open source project It becomes wildly popular Profit Launch a new business Launch a new product It becomes wildly popular Decisions made here Have a big impact here And decisions made here
9. 1. Open source is optional 2. Naming is hard 3. Team organisation 4. Analytics 5. Self-competition This talk
10. Launch a new open source project It becomes wildly popular Profit Launch a new business Launch a new product It becomes wildly popular 1. Should you even open source?
11. 2. What to name things? Company, product, project Same name for the company, product and project Same name for the company and product, different name for the project Different names for the company and product/project
12. 3. How to organise your teams? Everyone To start with it’s easy
13. How not to organise your teams Open Source team SaaS team Avoiding early misaligned incentives
14. 4. What to do about analytics? People complain on GitHub when something doesn’t work Open source project We have real time data on every user interaction and insights into what is and isn’t working Every SaaS vendors “ “
15. Interesting example: Homebrew
16. Interesting example: Hashicorp Checkpoint Your version of Terraform is out of date! The latest version is 1.0.0. You can update by downloading from https://www.terraform.io/downloads.html
17. 5. Avoid or embrace self-competition? All of our open source users will become paying customers! What you may think Status: Closed lost. Competition: Our damn open source project! Your future sales reps “ “
18. Think holistically about open source projects
19. Think about what long term success looks like
20. Questions? @garethr