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It's too late. The intent has been signaled. PostHog is leveraging the goodwill of the "opensource" meme for personal profit-seeking. Their intention is literal

It's too late. The intent has been signaled. PostHog is leveraging the goodwill of the "opensource" meme for personal profit-seeking. Their intention is literally to sell this analytics product to a Google/Amazon/Microsoft. If you're going to raise VC with the intent to sell, why even bother going opensource other than to manipulate a percentage of developers who will convert on the basis of "opensource = good".

satvikpendem 6y ago
What's wrong with being open source but also for profit? I'd rather they be open source, make money and be sustainable than be closed source. At least this way I know I can continue using it if any unwanted changes are made, perhaps via someone forking it, and also continue to self host it.
- lmeyerov 6y ago
  Early-stage VC-funded isn't the opposite of sustainable, but it's close. The intent is (generally) to overshoot by mythical-man-month'ing for ~1yr, and on failure, firesale/acquihire to a likely inherently sociopathic bigco, vs keep going. Ex: When hiring folks, you're pitching a fat VC-dependent salary and promise of IPO-or-sale, and as that pressure increases & expectation solidifies, if revenue doesn't grow artificial growth levels (2-4X YoY for 3-5 years straight), you're now facing layoffs + non-giant compensation. Morale plummets, senior staff disappears, etc. Founders will feel the same. There are additional inherent reasons why this is the default, such as a now-broken cap table. I'm for it and wish them luck, but it's asking for an internal + external disaster to delude yourself, team, and users relying on you about such a fundamental assumption. (It's a very different story if there's already a popular federated OSS project not reliant on the founders+VCs lucking into reliable recurring revenue, and hey, the startup may be the lucky 1%.)
  - satvikpendem 6y ago
    Sure, it might be better to bootstrap their product then rather than taking VC (which I know is the point of the article but I digress). Actual revenue will validate whether their product can work or not, and VC can definitely obscure this validation.
    - lmeyerov 6y ago
      Sounds like I was unclear. VC-funded is a structurally and historically bad path to sustainability. Picking an unsustainable path is OK! People can now have a high salary while working at a risky business operations venture! It's easier to hire better people! I do deep tech, and VC-funded is almost necessary there. VC requires the product to not be good, but so crazy good that you can raise $3M -> $10M -> $20M over 4-5yrs... or close shop. Which is OK! My caution is for founders to setup up employees & users with misleading expectations as you're getting out the gate: Messaging sustainability when you just lit a timebomb. This particular topic can lead to all sorts of heartache for your team & users as reality hits, and sets up a bad cultural precedent for future ones.

satvikpendem 6y ago

What's wrong with being open source but also for profit? I'd rather they be open source, make money and be sustainable than be closed source. At least this way I know I can continue using it if any unwanted changes are made, perhaps via someone forking it, and also continue to self host it.

lmeyerov 6y ago
Early-stage VC-funded isn't the opposite of sustainable, but it's close. The intent is (generally) to overshoot by mythical-man-month'ing for ~1yr, and on failure, firesale/acquihire to a likely inherently sociopathic bigco, vs keep going. Ex: When hiring folks, you're pitching a fat VC-dependent salary and promise of IPO-or-sale, and as that pressure increases & expectation solidifies, if revenue doesn't grow artificial growth levels (2-4X YoY for 3-5 years straight), you're now facing layoffs + non-giant compensation. Morale plummets, senior staff disappears, etc. Founders will feel the same. There are additional inherent reasons why this is the default, such as a now-broken cap table. I'm for it and wish them luck, but it's asking for an internal + external disaster to delude yourself, team, and users relying on you about such a fundamental assumption. (It's a very different story if there's already a popular federated OSS project not reliant on the founders+VCs lucking into reliable recurring revenue, and hey, the startup may be the lucky 1%.)
- satvikpendem 6y ago
  Sure, it might be better to bootstrap their product then rather than taking VC (which I know is the point of the article but I digress). Actual revenue will validate whether their product can work or not, and VC can definitely obscure this validation.
  - lmeyerov 6y ago
    Sounds like I was unclear. VC-funded is a structurally and historically bad path to sustainability. Picking an unsustainable path is OK! People can now have a high salary while working at a risky business operations venture! It's easier to hire better people! I do deep tech, and VC-funded is almost necessary there. VC requires the product to not be good, but so crazy good that you can raise $3M -> $10M -> $20M over 4-5yrs... or close shop. Which is OK! My caution is for founders to setup up employees & users with misleading expectations as you're getting out the gate: Messaging sustainability when you just lit a timebomb. This particular topic can lead to all sorts of heartache for your team & users as reality hits, and sets up a bad cultural precedent for future ones.