In a captivating discussion, Solomon Hykes, CEO and co-founder of Dagger and Docker, shares insights from his journey in container technology. He highlights the unique challenges of Docker's explosive growth, emphasizing that a vast community doesn't guarantee monetization success. Solomon reveals his strategy at Dagger, focusing on early monetization ideas. He also reflects on the balancing act between open-source ideals and practical business needs, showcasing the importance of community while navigating competitive pressures.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Docker's Origin and Impact
Solomon Hykes co-founded Docker, the company behind software containers.
Docker became a standard for packaging and deploying applications, attracting a large ecosystem.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Unintentional Open Source
Both Docker and Dagger started without an open-source focus but pivoted.
Docker's open-sourcing was a strategic move to establish a standard for container technology.
insights INSIGHT
Growth Over Monetization
Docker initially didn't prioritize monetization due to existing funding.
Focusing on growth was more critical than revenue generation in the early stages.
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In 'Crossing the Chasm', Geoffrey A. Moore explores the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, which includes innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. He highlights the significant gap or 'chasm' between early adopters and the early majority, where early adopters are willing to sacrifice for the advantage of being first, while the early majority waits for evidence of productivity improvements. The book provides strategies for narrowing this chasm, including choosing a target market, understanding the whole product concept, positioning the product, building a marketing strategy, and selecting the most appropriate distribution channels and pricing. The third edition includes new examples, strategies for digital marketing, and connections to Moore's subsequent works like 'Inside the Tornado'.
Inside the Tornado
Geoffrey A. Moore
This week on The Business of Open Source, I have the first episode I recorded on-site at KubeCon Salt Lake City (and the only full-length episode), with Solomon Hykes, CEO and co-founder of Dagger, and co-founder of Docker.
One thing Solomon mentions briefly but that is very important is that there are limits to what can be learned from Docker’s story, simply because the situation was so unique. Docker experienced explosive growth, at least some of which was due to having the right technology at the right time. This kind of explosive growth is very rare, though, and it brought it’s own set of challenges. The point being that while most companies will struggle to get enough adoption, Docker struggled to monetize effectively but got so many chances to try again just because it had a massive community.
The hypothesis — or actually, lack thereof — behind creating the original Docker open source project.
How having a massive community does help — but also doesn’t guarantee you’ll be able to build a financially sustainable company
When you build a massively successful technology or standard, you’ll attract competition — and in the case of Docker, the competitors were savvy companies who’d won the previous cloud wars and ultimately were quicker to figure out how to monetize Docker containers than Docker itself
What Solomon is doing differently at Dagger compared to Docker, one of which is thinking about monetization much sooner
The open source movement was founded on such explicitly anti-commercial principles that companies building in the space would often not be intellectually honest about the fact that they were building both a software to give away for free as well as a business that needed revenue. Docker tried too hard to please everyone, including those who felt that open source should be pure and non-commercial — at Dagger, they’re much more transparent and upfront about the fact that it’s a company with commercial ambitions.
Solomon also talked about the difference between components and product, and how designing products requires control, including the ability to just say no without explaining yourself.
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It was fascinating to hear Solomon talk about the lack of intellectual honesty around who pays for the development and maintenance of a lot of open source projects, because that precise topic was the focus of two panels I moderated at KubeCon, one during the main conference and one during CloudNative StartupFest.
If you’re struggling to articulate how your product and project are different from each other (and others in the ecosystem) and why someone should pay you, you might want to work with me. Reach out!
The Business of Open Source 
