a16z Podcast

Free Software and Open Source Business

Oct 21, 2019

Armon Dadgar, Cofounder and CTO of HashiCorp, and Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks, dive into the intersection of open source and business. They discuss the delicate balance of monetizing open source without losing community trust. Insights on transitioning to SaaS are shared, along with strategies for engaging cloud service providers. The guests also tackle the challenges of achieving market fit and the evolving role of data in open source, emphasizing innovation and collaboration as key drivers for success in this rapidly shifting landscape.

35:04

Creator website

Episode guests

Ali Ghodsi

Armon Dadgar

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Intro

2min

Navigating Open Source Challenges

10min

Navigating Cloud Services and Open Source

8min

Navigating Product Development Phases and Market Fit Strategies

2min

Navigating SaaS vs. Open Source

7min

The Intersection of Academia and Open Source Software Development

3min

The Evolution of Data and Open Source in Software Development

3min

Today, despite the critical importance of open source to software, it’s still seen by some as blasphemous to make money as an open source business. In this podcast, Armon Dadgar, Cofounder and CTO of HashiCorp; Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks; and a16z General Partner Peter Levine explain why it's necessary to turn some open source projects into businesses.

They also cover the most important questions for open source leaders to answer: How do you keep community engaged while building a business? What new opportunities does SaaS (software-as-a-service) present? And if you are a SaaS business, how should you approach cloud service companies, like Amazon Web Services (AWS)?