As I am happy to report a number of people have responded on my initial challenge of 3+3 lessons on building open source business, I wanted to post the links so far, enjoy:
Stephen Walli, an Open Source Expert
Michael Tiemann, President of Open Source …
[Read more]Mårten responded right away to my challenge . (thank you Mårten), his responses below:
1) Team
A superb team is a must in all start-ups. The special thing with open source startups is that they may have a history as an open source *project* before becoming a commercial business. The team must understand how to master this evolutionary transition.
2) Innovation
It’s not enough to be less expensive, or faster, or the same as others but open source. There has to be a genuine, value-adding innovation that users and customers get a new benefit from.
3) Participation
The strength of open source lies in massive participation by
users worldwide. It takes special dedication and skill to build
an
architecture of participation.
-1) Open source as the silver …
[Read more]As open source and open source business is rapidly becoming mainstream as witnessed e.g. by the latest estimates from IDC , I felt it was an appropriate time to try to get some feedback from entrepreneurs and experts in this space about some of the do’s and don’ts they have learned over the years building open source businesses.
But first my own observations:
3 Success factors / best practices:
1) Solid value proposition
Pretty obvious, but it is surprising how difficult at it is to explain your product or service offering concisely and compellingly.
2) Business model that supports healthy margins
There are challenges in the open source business where you are competing against incumbents with an offering that typically seems to be priced lower, or at least in my experience I …
[Read more]I will now and then blog in English as sometimes there is a need for people to comment in English. To get things started I asked several questions from Ignacio Correas of Warp , one of the leading Open Source companies out of Spain.
1. How did you get started?
The idea of founding a consultancy company specialized on open source technologies came from six guys which were probable the best Linux experts and most active open source advocates in the region. A year before, I had left a good job in Finland to try to start the same kind of company in Zaragoza, so when they asked me to join in as the non-geek member of the team I could not resist.
Before founding Warp we applied to become a part of CEEI, which is a incubator for innovative companies funded by the regional government and which gives some grants and support for its members. On the other hand, …
[Read more]