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(co-founded a commercial startup based on an open source project, invest into a lot of open source/commercial businesses) Open sourcing as a strategy works whe

by dotBen 2y ago

(co-founded a commercial startup based on an open source project, invest into a lot of open source/commercial businesses) Open sourcing as a strategy works when there is a lot of developer interest and (usually) a developer is the beneficiary of the software (that doesn't mean the developer is the end user, but take WordPress, even if it's used by a lot of marketers for websites, it is developers who are the ones using it to produce those websites). If your product is CRM/ERP, is there a lot of developer involvement in the provision of the software? And if not, what is the enabling factor for your beneficiaries to be able to take a FOSS package and begin to realize value? Don't confuse positive feedback of "this is cool" etc with positive feedback from buyers and beneficiaries. FOSS B2B software communities work when there is value in not using the commercial version. Why would anyone who needs a CRM/ERP want to use a FOSS product when they would have budget to buy a commercial version and gain commercial support. I would assert that all users of CRM/ERP software have budget - unfortunately they just don't want to spend it on your product and so why would they then want to take the same product for free instead? I think you need to have a clear reassessment of why your business is where it is (where it isn't) and what would change that. Not sure that open sourcing solves that. Good luck.

abbradar 2y ago
Hey, thanks for chipping in! Let me try to answer these questions. The platform for us is almost as much a developer-targeted product as it's a business-targeted product. It gives a developer a relatively easy but quite flexible way of building business apps of all kinds, and modular, so it can be reused later. And the more one builds on it, the more incentive they have for keeping on the platform and the larger potential costs of migration. We also offer modules for free to build upon. The CRM/ERP consultancies usually have cuts from the license fees of the SaaS products they develop on (we are currently no exception). What we want to offer instead is for them to effectively collect the SaaS fees themselves if they host, easily offer "cheap" on-prem installations and give assurance both to them and their clients about the vendor lock-in issues. This may bring more and more development companies, which grows the amount of integrations and solutions on the market, which creates a loop. Finally, the end businesses don't pick CRMs; they pick a consultant who picks a CRM for them. We still see enough ways to monetize the product if it takes off this way. The question is whether our reasoning holds true.

by dotBen 2y ago

abbradar 2y ago

Hey, thanks for chipping in! Let me try to answer these questions. The platform for us is almost as much a developer-targeted product as it's a business-targeted product. It gives a developer a relatively easy but quite flexible way of building business apps of all kinds, and modular, so it can be reused later. And the more one builds on it, the more incentive they have for keeping on the platform and the larger potential costs of migration. We also offer modules for free to build upon. The CRM/ERP consultancies usually have cuts from the license fees of the SaaS products they develop on (we are currently no exception). What we want to offer instead is for them to effectively collect the SaaS fees themselves if they host, easily offer "cheap" on-prem installations and give assurance both to them and their clients about the vendor lock-in issues. This may bring more and more development companies, which grows the amount of integrations and solutions on the market, which creates a loop. Finally, the end businesses don't pick CRMs; they pick a consultant who picks a CRM for them. We still see enough ways to monetize the product if it takes off this way. The question is whether our reasoning holds true.