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DEVELOPER WEEK 2024
IRINA NAZAROVA
CEO @ Evil Martians
WILDEST DREAMS
OF MAKING PROFIT
ON OPEN SOURCE
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DEVELOPER WEEK 2024 2
OPEN
SOURCE
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DEVELOPER WEEK 2024 3
Web technologies
dominate software
development...
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Web technologies
dominate software
development...
...thanks to
open source
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COMMERCIAL OPEN SOURCE
SUCCESS STORIES
Only those that match my color
scheme…
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npm-stat.com
Jan 2017 Oct 2023
What’s the red line?
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npm-stat.com
Jan 2017 Oct 2023
PostCSS, built by Evil Martians
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Internal COSS:
Product development consulting for dev tools
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MAINTAINER’S GUIDE
TO COMMERCIAL
OPEN SOURCE
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There is no guide
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Three passions to
help you
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PEOPLE
PASSION #1
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THE #1 HUMAN IN YOUR
LIFE
How to
fi
nd one?
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DEVELOPER WEEK 2024
Сoworker, ex coworker, classmate, friend,
spouse, collaborator, co-maintainer, customer,
fan, hater, competitor
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TECH IS FOR HUMANS
Technology can be awe-inspiring, but it will only change lives
when turned into a product. Project vs. product
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CUSTOMERS VS.
CONTRIBUTORS
Recognize your customers as a new audience,
not equal to contributors, and how it a
ff
ects:
– product
– documentation (guides, wizards)
– marketing
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YOUR AUDIENCE
– people whom you know and have empathy for
– people who know you and recognize you as an
expert
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Fall in 💜 with your
audience
NOT YOUR PRODUCT
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HOME ASSIGNMENT
– Create a calendar link with
fi
xed # slots per week and send to your
potential or current users to learn from them. Don’t pitch, listen. Learn
their pains. Let them surprise you. Take notes.
– Use their words to describe your value proposition to the next user,
but also on website, repo, documentation, marketing, etc.
– Build for them, and not only for yourself.
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UNCERTAINTY
PASSION #2
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OPPORTUNITY IS RISK
Entrepreneurs are professional risk takers.
You learn it by doing.
Embrace it and enjoy it!
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EXPERIMENT
An experimentation framework, like Lean
startup, helps navigate the uncertainty.
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LEAN STARTUP
Plant a bunch of “seeds” to collect a bunch of
learnings.
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BUILD AN MVP
MVP is a tool to validate a product hypothesis
quickly without an upfront investment.
👩🎤 🍏 👩🔬
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BUILD AN MVP
MVP is a tool to validate a product hypothesis
quickly without an upfront investment.
👩🎤 🍏 👩🔬
〔👩🎤 🍏 👩🔬〕
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DEVELOPER WEEK 2024
👩🎤 🍏 👩🔬
20 people you know Figma prototype
Meet them for co
ff
ee and
give them your laptop
Readers of a subreddit Landing built with Framer
Record sessions with
PostHog, track signups
Attendees of a meetup Presentation Track signups and questions
Emails of CTOs of speci
fi
c
companies
GitHub page
Track signups and
responses
EXAMPLES
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NEXT STEP: PAID PRODUCT
👩🎤❗ 🤚🍏🤚 💸
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NEXT STEP: PAID PRODUCT
〔👩🎤❗ 🤚🍏🤚 💸〕
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VC FOR RISK SHARING
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VC FOR RISK SHARING
Most VCs at early stage are looking for:
– Team, ideally repeat founders
– Big market: a small chance to build a billion-revenue
business
– Velocity: quick iterations, growth and buzz (OSS
metrics)
– Revenue potential: you tried selling and it worked
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1 BN REVENUE?
2023 revenue:
MongoDB $1.3 bn
GitHub $1 bn est.
Elastic $310 mn
Gitlab $150 mn
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SPEED
PASSION #3
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WEEKLY IS TOO SLOW
Run several experiments per week.
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WEEKLY IS TOO SLOW
What are you learning this week?
1. Marketing. Is the pain big enough? Convert users of OSS into
paid product. Iterate on marketing/sales.
2. Activation. Is the medicine easy to take? Are people activating?
Simplify, remove friction. Simplify signup, docs, let them get
value.
3. Retention. Does the medicine work? Are people using the
product for anything, do they still use it after 1 month? Iterate
on the product–not to perfect it, but to create value for at
least one but real use case.
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Microsoft used to have a 10 minute rule
in the old days:
in 10 minutes a customer had to unwrap
the CD with the software and do
something useful or exciting with it.
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OSS METRICS
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COMMIT TO VELOCITY
Useful mechanisms:
– Launch week every 3 months
– Weekly newsletter/stream
– Build in public
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BUT FOR WHOM?
You can also bootstrap at your own pace:
– charge for special features, custom solutions
and integration of your open source, and
broader consulting
– keep your day job
– keep learning
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KEEP GOING
🏃
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ARE YOUR DREAMS
WILD ENOUGH?
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DEVELOPER WEEK 2024
https://discord.gg/KSvyCTrFSA
Follow/DM on Twitter:
@inazarova
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