The Business of Open Source ATO Special Episode on Product Strategy with Elias Voelker
Nov 26, 2024
Elias Voelker, VP of North America for CheckMK and an expert in IT infrastructure monitoring, shares invaluable insights on product strategy for open source firms. He discusses the crucial distinction between features in open source and commercial versions, stressing that clear differentiation is key to survival. Elias also emphasizes the importance of the 'why now?' question in sales to understand customer readiness. Additionally, he compares cultural sales dynamics between North America and Germany, offering tips for European companies entering the U.S. market.
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Open-Source Product Strategy
- Open-source companies face a trade-off when developing new features, deciding whether to include them in both open-source and commercial versions or only in the commercial version.
- This decision is based on the target user, with enterprise-specific features going into commercial versions and generally useful features going into all versions, with security features being an exception.
Selling to Experienced Open-Source Users
- Elias Voelker highlights a unique challenge of open-source companies: dealing with potential customers who have extensive experience with the free product.
- These customers might even know the product better than the company's sales team, requiring a different sales approach.
Differentiating Open-Source and Commercial Offerings
- CheckMK's strategy includes adding monitoring coverage features to all product versions and limiting enterprise integrations (e.g., ServiceNow) to commercial versions.
- Features like automated reporting and SLA monitoring are also exclusive to commercial versions, catering to the needs of enterprise clients.