Embracing Product-Led Growth in Open Source with Kim McMahon

Kim McMahon is the leader of Open Source Marketing & Community at Outshift by Cisco, which is Cisco’s emerging technologies and innovation unit. We recorded this episode at Open Source Summit EU, and talked about Kim’s strategies and tactics related to helping guide users to the correct edition of your product — ie, decide whether the open source option or a commercial option is best for them.

Kim talked about the tricky balance open-source companies must strike between embracing open-source principles and driving revenue as a business, Kim’s tactics for community building and why it’s so important to be clear on why you want to build a community and the outcomes you expect from your investment in community building. 

Highlights:

• I introduce Kim, who is the leader of Open Source Marketing & Community at Outshift by Cisco, as she joins me at the Open Source Summit EU in Bilbao (00:25)
• Kim gives an overview of the talk she is giving at the Open Source Summit, which is on the topic of self-identifying when to shift to a managed version of open-source products (01:35)
• Kim and I discuss the different personas of open-source software users, and the role that product-led growth plays for open-source companies (03:07)
• Why Kim feels it’s critical to not treat your community as a sales database but rather to provide educational content to drive sales of open-source products (09:10)
• Kim and I discuss the challenges of marketing an open-source project and whether positioning truly falls under marketing (10:49)
• How Kim created a feedback loop on her team between sales, marketing, and product to ensure alignment when bringing open-source products to market (13:31)
• Kim walks through her thought process for community building from scratch (17:23)
• How Kim evaluates if a community-building strategy is working or not (24:34)
• What Kim learned about being a part of a community by being a member of a food co-op (28:09)
• Where to connect with Kim and learn more about her work (34:44)

Links:

Kim

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimmcmahonco/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/kamcmahon
• Company: https://eti.cisco.com/