1099 - Open Source Digital Solutions with Crowd Favorite's Karim Marucchi

Mar 6, 2022

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In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge talks with the CEO of Crowd Favorite, Karim Marucchi.

Crowd Favorite works with larger Fortune 500 organizations to create what they need to fix their digital problems. Very basically, they create websites. On a deeper level, they help with integrating digital business needs and can address everything from streamlining workflow issues to improving client relations in the businesses they work with. Karim shares that he’s worked with enterprise clients for 27 years, and the one thing that has stayed consistent was that many of his clients weren't utilizing the right technological solutions to address their issues. In short, Crowd Favorite creates bespoke solutions for their clients’ problems.

Karim shares that he became a major proponent for open source technologies after seeing how proprietary technologies were forcing businesses down their own closed road maps. Open sourced technology is both community-based and constantly evolving to serve the user base first. The variety and openness in an open source platform makes for a much more unique roadmap for users.

Karim and Josh also discuss when to avoid open source architecture. One downside is the security issues; when an open source project first starts, it's prone to hacking attacks. The upside to this is that after a piece of technology has the proper infrastructure and testing added, most corrupted pieces of code are already removed before it can spread to other users. Another caveat to using open source software is that the ‘crowd’ might want to go in one direction and your company wants to go in another. The way to address this is to strategically implement the aspects of an open source software that work for your business, and use it in the way that benefits you (even if you’re only using part of a software.)

Karim also shares how he’s helped major brands like Disney transition from building their own proprietary softwares that became money sinks to using open source software, such as WordPress. Josh and Karim also explore how enterprises can work with WordPress. It will run great if you apply the correct infrastructure, he shares. Enterprises need robust hosting and plugins that are to scale in order to use an open source program like WordPress, but when executed in a scalable way, it can do anything.

You can also add on other plugins and softwares to improve the personalization with WordPress – these additions can extend your open source software enough that it rivals other expensive, 7-figure solutions on the market. When you have a deep infrastructure with hosting and security in check, you won’t have issues.

Want to learn more? Check out Crowd Favorite’s website at https://crowdfavorite.com/.

Check out Crowd Favorite on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/crowdfavorite/.

Check out Karim Marucchi on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/karimmarucchi/.

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