Open Source Indicators
We are seeing more and more #opensource alternatives to enterprise-grade (closed-source) solutions, Pulumi Corporation to Amazon Cloud Formation, Supabase to Firebase, Timescale to Amazon Timestream, RudderStack to Segment are just a few examples. It is not new; OS software and commercial open source software (#COSS) has been around for many years, but in recent years various OS projects have exploded throughout the world and in Israel (attached is a map showing samples of COSS companies in Israel) mostly #PLG #Devtools. Companies with OS roots have accumulated over $200B of market cap to date. There is a massive increase in new companies, funding and deals, with over ~160 VC deals in 2021 and approximately $4B of VC funding. Investors and founders no longer worry about monetization questions. They understand that if there is a need/ usage/ engagement, you will find a way to monetize it. In today’s world, the biggest concern is the users’ concern, what will happen when the terms suddenly change, like with Docker, Inc a few months ago and is likely to happen with HashiCorp now becoming a public company (hopefully not). The main benefit of developing OS software is that it has the potential to multiply the power of its community and to encourage innovation through collaboration. When you engage the community in your project, it usually means that you are tackling a problem they care about. You can’t beat the speed of innovation that happens when everyone is involved in modifying and moving things forward. Having potential access to a large number of talented engineers around the world who are interested in the problem that the product attempts to solve is powerful. Getting to this power multiplier is, of course, a journey… In the past few months, we met many companies that switched to OS as a differentiation strategy or started as one, and we invested in three OS companies. In most cases, the change benefited the company’s outcome (investment round and traction). OS can be applied in many ways, adding a new dimension to the “regular” discussion of company building. To what extent is the product really OS? Is the community active and vibrant? To better understand OS products and communities, we look at a number of indicators beyond the number of commits or stars, which allows the OS conversation to be streamlined and aligned. Being aware that creating an OS product is much more than just putting together a product, starting with a problem-market fit, gaining community feedback to find out if the problem you are trying to solve benefits others, going through community fit, establishing a collaborative and supportive community to attract contributors, followed by a product-market fit with reasonable monetization. Link to the “open source” indicators Bridgecrew Notifire Permit.io Amplication Appwrite Aporia Redis JFrog Akeneo
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
