www.morconsulting.c
Building an open source Data
Science company
EuroSciPy 2013
Ian Ozsvald @IanOzsvald MorConsulting.com
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Ian@MorConsulting.com @IanOzsvald
EuroSciPy2013
Goals
• Excuses for O/S in business (to make a
better future)
• “How do I start a Consulting company?”
• “How do I start a Product company?”
• Does your employer make open source?
• Who contributes to open source?
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Ian@MorConsulting.com @IanOzsvald
EuroSciPy2013
About Ian Ozsvald
• HPC/NLP/ML in London for 15 years
• MorConsulting.com (9 years O/S only)
• Teach PyCon, EuroSciPy, EuroPython
• ShowMeDo.com
• IanOzsvald.com
• StartupChile
• Self-published two books (and a 3rd?)
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Ian@MorConsulting.com @IanOzsvald
EuroSciPy2013
Open Src in business
• RedHat (1993)
• Enthought (2001)
• 10Gen (2007)
• Continuum (2012)
• Logilab
• Elphel, RaspberryPi
# talk to Didrik, Peter, Nicholas, Mike
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Ian@MorConsulting.com @IanOzsvald
EuroSciPy2013
Open Source != Magic Unicorn
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/origamiancy/6137631442/ CC-BY
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Ian@MorConsulting.com @IanOzsvald
EuroSciPy2013
Marketplace for ideas
• NoSQL vs SQL
• Scikit-learn vs wise.io
• psyco/shedskin->PyPy/Numba
• Multiprocessing/Disco/PiCloud
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Ian@MorConsulting.com @IanOzsvald
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Benefits to companies
• Visibility, publicity, trust
• Easier on-boarding for new users
• Improves code quality (tests, docs)
• It benefits the community ← big deal!
• Easier hiring
• Helps with reproducible science?
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Ian@MorConsulting.com @IanOzsvald
EuroSciPy2013
Benefits to individuals
• Demonstration of skills, interests,
communication quality
• You gain experience (coding/teaching)
• 3 billion people coming online...how do
you stand out?
• A chance to stay ahead during rapid
evolution
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Ian@MorConsulting.com @IanOzsvald
EuroSciPy2013
Licensing
• LingPipe have a range of licenses
• Please add a license (MIT...)
• No license==confusion
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Ian@MorConsulting.com @IanOzsvald
EuroSciPy2013
Consulting lessons
• Do something people want (be specific)
• Why do they want a short-term person?
• Find 5 paying customers (sanity check)
• Bigger customers for longer are better
• TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU DO
• Partner with good recruiters
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Ian@MorConsulting.com @IanOzsvald
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Product building lessons
• Build something people need
• Find 5 paying customers
• TALK ABOUT IT
• Maximise learning – why would they pay?
• Don't code (much)
• Start by yourself (take risks early)
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Ian@MorConsulting.com @IanOzsvald
EuroSciPy2013
(my) failure modes
• Poor market knowledge
• Wrong evidence for market (only 1 real
customer)
• Market too cash-poor (ProCasts)
• Projections too optimistic (ProCasts)
->work in a domain you know!
• (forgetting to make re-usable IP)
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Ian@MorConsulting.com @IanOzsvald
EuroSciPy2013
Current experiment: annotate.io
• Brand Disambiguation for Tweets (“apple”)
• MVP was a 5 page PDF
• Super niche->blogging & presenting
• Open source MIT (github.com/ianozsvald):
• social_media_brand_disambiguator
• Goal: Visibility and data licensing
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Ian@MorConsulting.com @IanOzsvald
EuroSciPy2013
Thank You
• Contribute and Experiment!
• Ian@IanOzsvald.com
• @IanOzsvald
• MorConsulting.com
• Annotate.io
• GitHub/IanOzsvald