Consulting & advisory

I have worked in the Open Source community for over 25 years and in the Open Source industry for almost 20. In particular, I learned a lot as a founding engineer at Grafana Labs, an open core business which I helped grow from 0 to unicorn, while aligning with healthy open source projects and communities.

Now, I advise startups (especially seed to Series B) and founders exploring open source business models.

I can help with:

• Choosing an Open Source business model that fits your product and stage
• Making clear licensing decisions that protect your business and your community
• Turning your project into products, supporting GTM (Go-To-Market) in harmony with engineering
• Building a healthy community of users and contributors
• Strengthening internal culture and operating practices as you scale
• Preparing for fundraising, and knowing when not to
• Surfacing blind spots and risks
• Choosing future-proof technology and architecture

Reach out on LinkedIn or by email (first name + last name at gmail) if you’re working through one of these challenges. I’m happy to start with an initial conversation, and if useful, we can discuss a formal advisory or consulting engagement.

“Dieter helped us stabilize the commercial open-source foundation at Naftiko by asking the hard questions around why we are doing open-source in the first place, and what truly differentiates our open-source offerings from our commercial offerings, bringing his experience to the table when our company needed it the most.”