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>They were also worried about how small the total market cap >I do not think it is impossible to build an open source business (I think Wordpress is an example

by Ros2 10y ago

>They were also worried about how small the total market cap >I do not think it is impossible to build an open source business (I think Wordpress is an example), and I do not need to raise VC. Is the right market here not everything like A16Z told you? The market for wordpress is crazy large with several blog platforms seeing 100+ million dollar exits and it seems no one who gets in this space fails--clearly the market is large. I also look at other open source projects that have "made it" and they just seem to be tackling bigger markets than you are. Is there a chance the market of what you're doing just seems big to you because of personal interest in the product? (Not trying to be inflammatory with that comment)

williamstein 10y ago
I don't see the market I am targeting as huge, and I agree with you that it is probably easier for Wordpress to succeed than SageMathCloud. I'm perhaps too realistic about the potential market for SageMathCloud, which was a reason why A16Z wasn't interested. If I took VC funding I might not have the option to focus on a smaller market.
- akg_67 10y ago
  Just curious, what kind of resources you have and efforts you make in the area of marketing, business development, and sales of SageMath and SMC? Have you taken any external funding for SageMath and SMC beyond grants? The market may not be large enough and opportunity may not be as fast growing that VCs expect, still it may be possible to build a decent size business with SageMath.
  - williamstein 10y ago
    Regarding SMC, right now we are growing our sales slowly but very consistently. Some universities tried SMC last year, liked it, and are significantly expanding their subscriptions this year. However, our top focus right now is on fixing every bug, implementing key features that users demand, and dealing with issues that become clear from support requests, while working hard behind the scenes to build better technical foundations for growth. We have enough users (e.g., often 500 simultaneous active users, and we hit about 1150 simultaneous running projects this week) to give us a good sense that what we are building provides value and is working (or not). Our business model is freemium, and the conversion rate for students using SMC in courses is high. > Have you taken any external funding for SageMath and SMC beyond grants? For SageMath, all funding is via grants, and I have almost no such grants these days (I used to get grants in the early days). There's a grant in Europe called OpenDreamKit that provides substantial funding right now. There's also one new NSF grant that will provide some funding for free open source textbooks built with lots of example using Sage. For SageMathCloud, I did a round of Angel investment about a year ago in order to "bootstrap" things, and hopefully give us the time we need to build the business to be profitable. The Angel investors are a small group of people I know from the mathematics world. Right now the company is not profitable, even with a small number of low-paid developers, so it's critical to have this money to make up for the slack until we have more customers. We can and should do a lot more marketing when the time is right. I hope that time is very soon.
- Ros2 10y ago
  >If I took VC funding I might not have the option to focus on a smaller market. Agree 100% I just wanted to make sure your expectations were realistic based on the what you wrote. I hope the best for you!
- dboreham 10y ago
  Btw nobody clueful goes to meet VC, at lest on the first goaround saying they are looking for funding. Instead they say "were not looking for funding but would be interested to hear your thoughts and open to any introductions you might think appropriate from your network." So you inadvertently signaled "I'm looking for funding" in VC-speak ;)
mercer 10y ago
I don't disagree with your assessment, but I do think 'open source project' is way too vague a concept to really draw conclusions from. In the case of Wordpress, I think a big part of its success is that it is built on the most well-supported technologies on the web: PHP and MySQL. I'm by no means a great programmer but it was relatively straightforward to migrate a Drupal site with a completely different DB structure to a Wordpress redesign. Both use PHP and MySQL. In contrast, my built-from-scratch journalling tool that runs on RethinkDB will take a bit more work - all over the place - to work with some other database (probably Postgres, SQLite or MySQL). It's still relatively simple, but less so than the Drupal->Wordpress conversion. My Horizon app, on the other hand, will basically have to be rewritten if support and development were to stop.

by Ros2 10y ago

williamstein 10y ago

I don't see the market I am targeting as huge, and I agree with you that it is probably easier for Wordpress to succeed than SageMathCloud. I'm perhaps too realistic about the potential market for SageMathCloud, which was a reason why A16Z wasn't interested. If I took VC funding I might not have the option to focus on a smaller market.

akg_67 10y ago
Just curious, what kind of resources you have and efforts you make in the area of marketing, business development, and sales of SageMath and SMC? Have you taken any external funding for SageMath and SMC beyond grants? The market may not be large enough and opportunity may not be as fast growing that VCs expect, still it may be possible to build a decent size business with SageMath.
- williamstein 10y ago
  Regarding SMC, right now we are growing our sales slowly but very consistently. Some universities tried SMC last year, liked it, and are significantly expanding their subscriptions this year. However, our top focus right now is on fixing every bug, implementing key features that users demand, and dealing with issues that become clear from support requests, while working hard behind the scenes to build better technical foundations for growth. We have enough users (e.g., often 500 simultaneous active users, and we hit about 1150 simultaneous running projects this week) to give us a good sense that what we are building provides value and is working (or not). Our business model is freemium, and the conversion rate for students using SMC in courses is high. > Have you taken any external funding for SageMath and SMC beyond grants? For SageMath, all funding is via grants, and I have almost no such grants these days (I used to get grants in the early days). There's a grant in Europe called OpenDreamKit that provides substantial funding right now. There's also one new NSF grant that will provide some funding for free open source textbooks built with lots of example using Sage. For SageMathCloud, I did a round of Angel investment about a year ago in order to "bootstrap" things, and hopefully give us the time we need to build the business to be profitable. The Angel investors are a small group of people I know from the mathematics world. Right now the company is not profitable, even with a small number of low-paid developers, so it's critical to have this money to make up for the slack until we have more customers. We can and should do a lot more marketing when the time is right. I hope that time is very soon.
Ros2 10y ago
>If I took VC funding I might not have the option to focus on a smaller market. Agree 100% I just wanted to make sure your expectations were realistic based on the what you wrote. I hope the best for you!
dboreham 10y ago
Btw nobody clueful goes to meet VC, at lest on the first goaround saying they are looking for funding. Instead they say "were not looking for funding but would be interested to hear your thoughts and open to any introductions you might think appropriate from your network." So you inadvertently signaled "I'm looking for funding" in VC-speak ;)

mercer 10y ago

I don't disagree with your assessment, but I do think 'open source project' is way too vague a concept to really draw conclusions from. In the case of Wordpress, I think a big part of its success is that it is built on the most well-supported technologies on the web: PHP and MySQL. I'm by no means a great programmer but it was relatively straightforward to migrate a Drupal site with a completely different DB structure to a Wordpress redesign. Both use PHP and MySQL. In contrast, my built-from-scratch journalling tool that runs on RethinkDB will take a bit more work - all over the place - to work with some other database (probably Postgres, SQLite or MySQL). It's still relatively simple, but less so than the Drupal->Wordpress conversion. My Horizon app, on the other hand, will basically have to be rewritten if support and development were to stop.