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Open Source as a Business (EuroPython 2013)

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Avatar for David Cramer David Cramer
July 02, 2013
Programming
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Open Source as a Business (EuroPython 2013)

Avatar for David Cramer

David Cramer

July 02, 2013

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Transcript

  1. OPEN SOURCE David Cramer twitter.com/zeeg AS A BUSINESS Tuesday, July

    2, 13

  2. This is a story about Sentry Tuesday, July 2, 13

  3. Tuesday, July 2, 13

  4. Tuesday, July 2, 13

  5. It started with a "How do I.." Tuesday, July 2,

    13

  6. django-db-log (2008) Tuesday, July 2, 13

  7. Basically awful, yet DISQUS found value in it Tuesday, July

    2, 13

  8. django-sentry (2010) Tuesday, July 2, 13

  9. Tuesday, July 2, 13

  10. Sentry (2011) Tuesday, July 2, 13

  11. Tuesday, July 2, 13

  12. Sentry (Today) Tuesday, July 2, 13

  13. Tuesday, July 2, 13

  14. Maintained by the Community Tuesday, July 2, 13

  15. Tuesday, July 2, 13

  16. Officially we maintain clients in PHP, Python, JavaScript, and Ruby

    Tuesday, July 2, 13

  17. Realistically we only write Python Tuesday, July 2, 13

  18. An unfortunate truth Tuesday, July 2, 13

  19. Tuesday, July 2, 13

  20. All is not lost! Tuesday, July 2, 13

  21. A large ecosystem of developers Raven.NET chef-sentry-handler heka-py-raven logging (R)

    metlog-raven nagios-sentry pyramid_sentry raven-asc3 raven-cfml raven-cpp raven-csharp raven-erlang raven-go raven-grails raven-java raven-js raven-node raven-objc raven-osx raven-php raven-python raven-ruby raven-sh raven-ssas sentry-assign sentry-bitbucket sentry-campfire sentry-facebook sentry-github sentry-groveio sentry-hipchat sentry-irc sentry-irccat sentry-jira sentry-jsonmailprocessor sentry-notifico sentry-notifry sentry-pivotal sentry-plugin-ipaddresses sentry-sprintly sentry-sprunge sentry-trello sentry-youtrack symfony-amg-sentry-plugin Tuesday, July 2, 13

  22. The value of open source is not in others maintaining

    your code Tuesday, July 2, 13

  23. The community builds things we cannot or will not build

    ourselves Tuesday, July 2, 13

  24. Companies get value in recruiting efforts and visibility in the

    technology world Tuesday, July 2, 13

  25. On To Business Tuesday, July 2, 13

  26. Why start a company? Tuesday, July 2, 13

  27. "You should create an AddOn out of Sentry" - @craigkerstiens

    (Heroku) Tuesday, July 2, 13

  28. "Beer money? That can't be that hard!" - Overconfident me

    Tuesday, July 2, 13

  29. Three months later I spent Christmas building @getsentry on Heroku

    Tuesday, July 2, 13

  30. While waiting for Heroku's AddOn validation we decided we could

    collect money using Stripe Tuesday, July 2, 13

  31. Two days later we finally had our first paying customer

    (Feb 28, 2012) Tuesday, July 2, 13

  32. Shout out to @mattrobenolt Tuesday, July 2, 13

  33. (who also wrote raven-js and raven-node) Tuesday, July 2, 13

  34. Our Guiding Principals Tuesday, July 2, 13

  35. #1: Nothing is Free Tuesday, July 2, 13

  36. We must create a sustainable hosted platform, but always remember

    people can host it themselves Tuesday, July 2, 13

  37. #2: Don't Over Charge Tuesday, July 2, 13

  38. We bill based on what costs us money There is

    no per-seat, or per-project pricing Tuesday, July 2, 13

  39. #3: Open Source First Tuesday, July 2, 13

  40. We will not fork Sentry and the only private code

    is our subscription management and billing Tuesday, July 2, 13

  41. #4: Our Ideas are Best Tuesday, July 2, 13

  42. Listen to feedback, but never compromise the platform by adding

    features just because they're requested Tuesday, July 2, 13

  43. "Lean" Tuesday, July 2, 13

  44. Early on our entire mission was simply "Don't spend any

    money" Tuesday, July 2, 13

  45. If you continually take a loss it's hard to prove

    that it's worth driving forward Tuesday, July 2, 13

  46. Heroku helped us get launched by covering our bill for

    the first three months Tuesday, July 2, 13

  47. SoftLayer put us into their incubator program giving us $1,000

    in credit per month Tuesday, July 2, 13

  48. Most importantly we were charging from day one Tuesday, July

    2, 13

  49. OnPremise vs OnDemand Tuesday, July 2, 13

  50. We don't try to compete with customers who want to

    host it themselves Tuesday, July 2, 13

  51. We focus on minimizing costs by targeting small to medium

    sized businesses Tuesday, July 2, 13

  52. Making the platform work for every type customers is extremely

    challenging Tuesday, July 2, 13

  53. Example: We need to manage quotas but the self-hosted version

    probably doesn't care Tuesday, July 2, 13

  54. Solution: (Try to) make everything extensible so @getsentry just hooks

    into public APIs Tuesday, July 2, 13

  55. Lessons in Pricing Tuesday, July 2, 13

  56. People are willing to pay a lot more than you'd

    expect Tuesday, July 2, 13

  57. Companies are willing to pay more than individuals so target

    them Tuesday, July 2, 13

  58. Charge more for features which are primarily targeted at organizations

    Tuesday, July 2, 13

  59. We quadrupled our original pricing (for companies) with minimal increase

    in cost Tuesday, July 2, 13

  60. Larger companies are much larger in cost (based on our

    architecture) Tuesday, July 2, 13

  61. Over time we've decided that our focus should be smaller

    companies Tuesday, July 2, 13

  62. The primary downside to focusing on more, smaller customers is

    the cost of customer support Tuesday, July 2, 13

  63. Growth Tuesday, July 2, 13

  64. We have absolutely no idea how it works It's been

    a little magical for us Tuesday, July 2, 13

  65. We try to build a product that we love Which

    in turns leads to a product our users love Tuesday, July 2, 13

  66. Our belief is that the care we take with our

    product leads to a successful viral and organic growth Tuesday, July 2, 13

  67. In turn we're going to focus on content marketing Which

    translates to us writing useful blog posts Tuesday, July 2, 13

  68. Seriously though we have no idea what we're doing so

    we iterate like everything else Tuesday, July 2, 13

  69. We're Not a Real Company Tuesday, July 2, 13

  70. Sentry is still a side project Tuesday, July 2, 13

  71. We built Sentry at DISQUS entirely because we had problems

    we wanted to solve Tuesday, July 2, 13

  72. The entire time my co-founder and myself have been full-time

    employees at other companies Tuesday, July 2, 13

  73. I personally spend lots of weekends and evenings "working" on

    @getsentry Tuesday, July 2, 13

  74. That time spent has made some great things possible both

    for DISQUS and individuals Tuesday, July 2, 13

  75. "If you do what you love you'll never work a

    day in your life" Tuesday, July 2, 13

  76. Thank You! Tuesday, July 2, 13