Open Source Consulting & Advisory

I’ve been an enthusiastic contributor in the Open Source community for over 25 years. During my career, I’ve worked with and on Open Source software from multiple angles: as a builder, user, seller, customer, and investor. I’ve seen projects grow and falter. I’ve seen how licensing and business decisions can both destroy or boost projects and their communities. Though the biggest killer of promising projects and businesses is probably blind spots (challenges that were not expected or well understood).

I was the first engineering hire when Grafana Labs was founded. I was never a founder, board member, or executive, but I worked directly with its exceptional founders, executives and leaders. It’s where I learned how to build Open Source software and enterprise OSS businesses the right way. I learned about productive collaboration with communities, with customers, and with colleagues regardless of which department they’re in. I also learned the subtle interdependencies between GTM, engineering, and support, and what it really takes to build, launch, and sell products. It takes many revisions of products, their positioning, and licensing strategy (among others).

After 9 years I left Grafana and started exploring many cool OSS projects and people building them. It turned out I have some relevant experience that is complementary to their own expertise. So I started investing in cool projects and refining my thesis on commercial Open Source models, including Open Core, Source Available, and Fair Source. (see Fair Source: the next best model for commercial open source?)

Cool Open Source Software - and the people that build them - deserve support and funding.

• For funding, sometimes the answer is Venture Capital. Sometimes it’s staying independent and bootstrapping, or using donations or endowments (e.g. OSS Pledge, Open Source Endowment, etc)
• For support, sometimes you just need a free friendly chat for advice. Sometimes you need a consultant, or an advisor. I’m happy to help in any way I can.

I don’t claim to be the world’s expert, but the few startups that worked with me were glad they did, so I decided to launch a consulting business. If this sounds interesting, check out the Consulting/advisory page for more details.