Strategies for Open Source Startups – Emily Omier

Interview with Emily Omier, Open Source Business Strategy Consultant

Walid : it’s the new season of Projets Libres!, it’s the first recording since September.

We’re really excited today because first of all I’m not alone in doing this interview, we’re going to meet someone who has already been in the podcast, it’s Raphaël Semeteys who is Devrel at Wordline, who is one of my former colleagues at work and with whom we spend a lot of time talking about business models and free software governance. And that’s good because that’s tonight’s theme! And if you want to know more about him and also if you want to have an introduction to what we’re going to talk about today, I invite you to listen to episode 9 of season 2 which is called Introduction to the economic models and governance of free software that we did with Gonéri Le Bouder and Raphaël Semeteys.

So there you have it, and today I’m really excited because our guest of the day is Emily Omier. I don’t know if you know her but I met her, in fact she was the one who contacted me, and I started listening to a big part of her podcasts called The Business of Open Source. And I have to make a confession, which is that usually when I listen to podcasts well I do other things but when I listen to Emily’s podcasts I stop and take notes. Emily, thank you very much for accepting my invitation and welcome to the Free Projects podcast!

Emily : Thank you too, thank you for having me.

Presentation by Emily Omier

Walid : To begin with, I’m going to ask you for listeners who don’t know you, can you start by introducing yourself, telling us a little bit about who you are and your background, please?

Emily : I have an unconventional and quite complicated background. So I never know exactly where to start. First of all, I’m going to say that I’m American, so I’m sorry for the accent, the mistakes in French that you’re going to hear. So, I was originally a journalist, I studied journalism, but after a while I started doing a little journalism in the field of technology. And after a while, I don’t know if all listeners know it, but in fact it’s quite hard to make a living as a journalist. So after a while, there came a time when I told myself that it doesn’t work anymore, I have to change the strategy a little, my strategy of making a living, of paying bills.

So I started doing communication for technology companies. As I had already had experience as a journalist, so I already knew the field, I worked more for companies in the field of Kubernetes, so it’s super tech actually. There aren’t many people who have communication skills and who can understand what they’re doing, these kinds of companies. So for me it was just a matter of taking an interest in what they do and that’s it, I was doing the communication for them. That’s also how I got into the field of free software because there are plenty of companies in the cloud-native field that are also open source companies.

And at the beginning I only did communication and it wasn’t really important to me if a company was open source or not, because I only did communication. But I started to do rather strategic things for the companies as I went along. Address slightly more important issues. And then, I started to see that there were strategic questions for open source companies that didn’t exist, for companies that didn’t have an open source project on which the company was based. In fact, I had thought for quite a while, maybe for a year, to say to myself, “Should I focus on open source boxes rather than Kubernetes boxes?” Because, in fact, if we are in the mold of the Kubernetes world, in fact, we think that it is only there that there are open source boxes, which is not the case at all. But on the other hand, there are a lot of discussions that take place at events, such as KubeCon, for example, which talk about open source boxes, about open source strategy, as if there were no other open source boxes in other fields.

So there you go, I said to myself: “well no, I think it’s more the strategic issues for open source companies that I find interesting and that’s also where I think I can bring more value for customers”. Precisely because there is no one who only focuses on open source companies. And so that was, I don’t know, about 4 years ago. Well now I work with companies in the field of Kubernetes but who do a little bit of everything. I work with all types of open source companies. That’s what I find super interesting actually. It’s the fact that we can have a company that is based on an open source project, that is in a field, I don’t know, that makes a platform to manage events. And another one who does infrastructure, like my former customers in the field of Kubernetes. There are still similarities, if we talk about strategic issues, positioning issues, product management issues that are unique to open source companies. And so for me, in fact that’s kind of how I got into the open source field, just because I saw a hole in the ecosystem and so I got into the hole.

Walid : yes, it’s very interesting because your podcasts talk a lot about this and I hadn’t necessarily heard a lot of discussions elsewhere around these subjects, and we’ll come back to it later, that’s what I find really interesting.

Raphaël : yes I have a question because you’re American, you’re based in Paris, your clients are all over the world, why Paris or how?

Emily : ahhhh…

Raphaël : I don’t know. Well, it may be a long question, but…

Emily : I didn’t… Well yes, you can ask me, it’s just that I don’t exactly have professional reasons.

Raphaël : well then it’s okay.

Emily : I studied in Paris, 12 years ago, I did a master’s degree at Sciences Po, and I had always intended to return to Paris in the future. I returned to the United States after finishing my studies. I had always thought, in the future, maybe I’ll be able to go back to Paris. So, a year and a half ago, I decided that the time had come and that’s it.

Raphaël : Okay.

Emily : There are other elements as well, but hey. In short, I think it’s not exactly super professional.

Raphaël : Okay, but your customers are good everywhere? wordwilde

Emily : yes, I have clients in Europe and I have clients in the US. Here, I’m going to say that I sometimes find European clients more interesting because they have the disadvantage of not being in the United States and especially not being in San Francisco. So if you have a company, which has raised funds, which is in San Francisco, you have a huge advantage. On the other hand, if you have a company that makes a technology that is extraordinary and you are based in Spain, in a small town, not even in Barcelona, you can still create a super interesting company. However, you don’t have the same advantages. And so, all the subjects I discuss with my clients are even more important for this kind of company, because they have a much finer margin of maneuver and because it’s having a positioning and a product management strategy that is really excellent, it changes everything if you don’t have any other advantage. And so I really find that the European ecosystem is very, very interesting because of that.

The type of companies Emily Omier works with

Walid : There’s a question I was asking myself: do you work with companies that are young or do you work with companies that already have a product and need to see more clearly about their strategy?

Emily : With both. But often it’s with companies that already have a product and a project too. For me, what is interesting is the relationship between the two. So either project and you’re developing the product that goes with it, or, and this happens too, you already have a product and you want to create an open source project, but you don’t know exactly how to do it. You don’t know what you’re going to put in the open source project, so that can happen too.

On the other hand, there are companies, especially companies that have raised funds, that have only one project, just the project and nothing else. They say “now we are completely focused on the project, we will address the subject of products in two years”. So in this case, it’s not the time to work with me. Because for me, it’s really the tension between the two that interests me.

Who contacts Emily Omier?

Walid : Basically, it’s company founders who contact you?

Emily : Very often. It’s not just the founders. I also sometimes get contacted for the people in charge of the products, sometimes the people in charge of sales. It happens to me too, it’s the two positions, apart from the founders, that are more likely to contact me.

Walid : Clients call on you when they have raised funds or do you work with companies that are more likely to bootstrap (Editor’s note: a company that grows on its own funds), who are just starting out and who have not raised funds?

Emily : Both of them contact me. If it’s the beginning of the company, they’re going to bootstrap. They have two people who work for the company, well in fact they may not have the means to hire me. On the other hand, if it’s a company that is a little less young and has bootstrapped, then they can already have the means to pay me. So it’s just a question of means. Because it’s true that creating an open source company is not easy. And at the beginning, if you don’t fundraise, it can be complicated.

Difference between a society that owns and free?

Walid : What makes the big difference between a company that makes open source and a company that makes closed source of the owner? What do you see as a big difference?

Emily : If you do closed source, it’s much less complicated. Is that clear. You make your product, it’s much less complicated. It must be said, it must be admitted that it is not easy to create a company, even if you only do closed source. So it’s still… Even so, it’s not super simple. But there are fewer decisions to be made. There is no tension between project and product. You have fewer stakeholders.

So that’s one of the specificities of open source projects or open source companies, is that you have a community that is still important. You have users… First of all, you also have users, because not all users are part of the community. There are people who will download software, they will use it, but they have no interest in being part of a community. After that, you have contributors.

Basically, there are many other people, many categories of the stakeholder. In addition, if you do closed source, it doesn’t exist. In fact, there is this tension to manage between product and project: you are doing something that is free. You still have to invest in the creation of the project. That’s not free. In fact, using it is free, but creating it is not free. Either it’s time, but you pay someone to do it. And so, we also need to have the business results for this investment in open source.

And that, I think, is one of the biggest challenges for companies based on open source, is to know what exactly is the expectation we have of the project. What will we have as a result for the business of the project? It’s not a super cynical point of view, it’s not saying we’re going to monetize every member of the community, it’s not like that. But do we want more transparency? And so because of having the project, we’re going to have more transparency for customers and therefore we’re going to have less trouble getting contracts signed because customers can look at what’s in the code.

It can still be a result for business. Will we have leads (Editor’s note: prospects) who will come directly from the project? If that’s what you want, what can you do to get them? Here we don’t have enough to have more. So you still have to define the results you want from the project and have them in mind. So that’s a super difficult question. Then you also have to decide what is the feature you put in the project.

The diversity of models

Walid : That’s right, that’s one of the other points that I find quite interesting, it’s the diversity of all the models that there are and I guess that in fact the discussion is very interesting with the projects of knowing whether the projects will rather want to make an open core model, will they rather want to make one model rather than another, what type of license they are going to put etc. So that’s case-by-case discussions depending on what the projects want, I guess?

Emily : Well yes, actually, I hadn’t even talked about the license. But if you do closed source, you don’t care about the license, in fact, it’s not even a question you’re going to ask yourself. But if you’re doing open source, it can be a super important question. Even if you stay, I guess we stay in open source licenses. But if we take a license that is super permissive or a license that is more CopyLeft, it can play a huge role in the development of society. So, it creates difficulties, either difficulties or opportunities that are different, that don’t exist in closed source. Yes, the diversity of models is one point. The diversity of areas in which there are companies based on open source software.

I’m surprised by this diversity. For example, I organized a conference for the founders of open source companies, Open Source Founders Summit is called. And so we used a platform to manage ticket sales that is open source. It’s a company that is based in Germany and the founder of the sudden, he knew thanks to the fact that we used the platform, he knew that there was this conference and then I spoke with him also on the podcast.

But if we think of a platform to sell tickets, it has nothing to do with a tool to manage containers with Kubernetes. In fact, it has nothing to do with it and it is this kind of company that is completely ignored for the discussion about the open source boxes that exist in the infrastructure field. Also, it’s super interesting because they have a model that is more SaaS. Even we used the SaaS thing, we didn’t want to host it. And for most customers, they don’t care because it’s open source.

I asked the founder, he said 80% of people, customers, they don’t care, either they don’t care, or they don’t know. It’s not even a question. On the other hand, there are 20% of people who know it and for whom it is super important that it is open source.

How to communicate your strategy and to whom?

Raphaël : Does that mean that when you support your clients in the strategy, there are many different aspects to look at or questions to ask? You talked about positioning, business plan, license. Is there also this communication aspect in fact? How do we communicate this strategy and to whom? Are the messages the same precisely because you say that there are many different stakeholders, do you have to adapt your communication, are there specificities?

Emily : Yes, and here I must say that I have changed the support I do recently a little bit to emphasize less positioning and more product management. Because in my opinion, positioning is part of product management. And there are other issues that are also part of product management that are super important, especially for open source companies. And so that’s pretty much what I’m doing now. In terms of communication, do we need to have messages that are different? Yes and no. We still have to have a message that represents the whole of society, that is coherent, in fact that’s the most important thing.

After that, yes, if we’re going to create a marketing campaign that targets potential customers, it’s going to be different from a campaign that we do that targets the community. This is also one of the specificities of open source companies because the expectations and needs of open source users are not the same as those of customers. The market is not the same. So that’s also one of the specificities. In fact, you necessarily have two markets that may be overlapping, maybe not. And knowing how much the markets overlap, well that’s super important.

And where they overlap and where they don’t. So yes, we have to change the message a little bit, depending on what we are aiming for. No commercial purpose.

The change of licence

Walid : The notion of community and the relationship between the community and the company that carries it, it’s a recurring topic on your podcast, you talk about it regularly and it’s something that I find really very important, especially in a world like now where you have companies that start with a model and with free licenses and that benefit from people’s contributions and in the end they change model and say “ah well it’s great in fact now we’re going to take a license that responds more to the Open Source Definition” and all the problems that it poses. Another thing, I don’t remember who you were talking about, which was very interesting, is the role of the community when you sell the company, how you explain it. I find it really interesting, because these are subjects that are not often discussed. The role of the community in making your project grow. And then in the end, you also need a product, people have to pay for it, but it still has to coexist.

Emily : Yes, exactly. I’m not going to say that a founder who changes licenses is bad, that he’s a bad guy. I don’t think so, I think in most cases, it’s because it’s a company that hasn’t managed to find financial sustainability with an open source model. And in my opinion, actually, if we can’t find the success of sustainability, then it’s better to change the license than to go bankrupt.

And quite often, I’m not going to say in absolutely every case, but quite often, actually, that’s both options. Either we close the company because it doesn’t work anymore, or we change the license. And so for me, it’s every time I see a change of license, for me it’s disappointment. Not because I think the leaders have done something wrong, but rather because it’s a failure. And I think that in most cases too, for them, it’s also a failure. It is seen as a failure of the model.

Free by conviction vs free by transparency

Walid : Earlier, you spoke in your different cases at the beginning, you said that there was a notion of transparency. In fact, the question I was asking myself about this is that you have founders who set up companies that want it to be free software because for them it’s important and you have people who are going to set up a company and who are going to make free software for a question of opportunity.

Emily : Oh yes, both exist.

Walid : And it’s not necessarily the same for you when you work with this type of person?

Emily : Is it necessarily the same for me when I work with a company? Well yes a little bit, just because if it’s really philosophical from the founders’ point of view, that it’s open source, we put it in the strategy. But it’s also because I think it’s super important to know and assume the point of view of the company, that is, the founders. Why did you create this company? And to communicate.

Because quite often, it can be a point of differentiation between the different companies. But it doesn’t change much. In both cases, we have questions of tensions between products and projects. It’s often in the case where the founders want it to be an open source company, it’s often the project that comes first and then we build the product. In the case where the founders don’t care but see the opportunities in open source, it’s often the other way around. It is often the product that comes first and then the project that comes after.

But after that, the strategic questions are in fact the same. I would have said, in my opinion, founders who see opportunities in open source rather than those who want to do just because they necessarily want to do open source. I think sometimes it’s easier to work with them because for them, in fact, that’s exactly it. In fact, you have to create the link between the project and the product, between the project and the results of the business, and that’s the main thing. They haven’t thought about that yet.

But the founders who say to themselves, no, I just want to work on open source, for them it’s a bit complicated because we make open source, because we make open source, because we are people who make open source and not necessarily because we see results that will make the company grow.

A clear strategy for deciding whether a feature goes into the project or product

Raphaël : but precisely in this strategy, and finding the right cursor or the right positioning in the tension between project and product, because sometimes we don’t have the strategy on the first try, are there tests, or how do you support them, the strategy is defined all at once, or there are tests, Then we change our strategy, we readjust the cursor. How do we decide to do this and what do we base ourselves on to say “well it will be this, there finally we have to modify it”, what are the criteria I don’t know?

Emily : If we start with positioning, it’s a strategy and it’s also in the product management strategy in general: it’s a strategy that we can change but we shouldn’t change all the time. So we change them… Let’s say we revise them every year, every six months maximum, but it’s not something we’re going to change every month for example.

Because here we are really talking about the foundation of the company, what are we going to build, why are we different from the other options? What is the result that we are going to bring to the customer? And if we change this subject every month, every week, we’re going to go in all directions. In fact, I do pre-term support, but I mainly do one-off support. We do workshops together, I conduct interviews with clients and with the community. And based on that, and also based on the experiences of the managers, because they also have a lot of conversations with users and customers, we make a strategy together. And then, if something changes in the ecosystem, it’s always a time to look at the positioning once again. For example, tomorrow, you had done something and there weren’t many people, not much competition. Tomorrow, it’s Google that launches something that is competitive with your product. There, you have to see the positioning, you have to see the strategy, even if you just did it a month ago. But if nothing changes, or if not much changes, you stay with a strategy, you revise it, but you’re not going to change it all the time.

Raphël : And so in relation to that, or in relation to the fact that the strategy is a success… Well, obviously there is the financial aspect for the company to work, we have seen a little competition, where it crosses, it will grow. There is competition, there are perhaps things that are also specific to measure, to monitor as a point of vigilance, because it is open source?

Emily : So, you first, there’s the issue of external, internal communication. For example, if you have a feature, you know what you want to do with that feature, it’s a feature that you haven’t added to the product yet: can all the people in the box tell where it needs to go? Is that in the project or in the product? Because ideally, everyone, even the marketing intern who just arrived, can easily say “this is a community feature and this is a paid feature. So everyone, the customers, the interns who just arrived yesterday, know exactly the difference between what your company is doing and what the competitors are doing. That means where is the difference exactly.

And so if someone asks you why I have to choose your product over others, you can explain exactly. If someone asks you who should choose the product and who should choose the project, you can also give an answer. And that’s hard because there are still a lot of founders who can’t give an answer to this question. Who is more suitable to be a customer and who is more suitable to be a user of the project?

So if you can do all of that, you’re going to have growth. But it’s also, it’s about having internal alignment, but also let’s say external alignment with all these stakeholders that you have in the community. Do the people in the community understand that this feature goes in the community part and this other feature must be in the paid part?

Walid : It seems to me to be a really important point because if you use an OpenCore product, I use it every day, the fact that the company communicates very clearly on this, it means that I don’t have to ask myself questions about “why is this feature in the version in the paid plan?”. I know. And so there are products that I’m pretty happy to use them in because from one version to the next, they improve the core of the project and I can use it, I have new features. And everything that is undertaken, there is a list that is defined of everything that goes into it.

Emily : Yes.

Walid : and I had found a very interesting example, unfortunately I didn’t look at the tweet at the time, I don’t remember what project it was. Anyway, there was someone in the community who sent a Pull Request on the project and said here I want to add the X feature, there are lots of people who vote, who make comments etc. The person spends a lot of time doing the thing and everything. The Pull Request is perfect, it’s never integrated and a few months later there is someone from the company who says “your thing is great but our vision is that it’s in the company version” and he closes the pull request. In terms of communication, it’s really not good. If it had been explained from the start, the person would have known that in any case, his thing would never have been integrated?

Emily : yes, that’s not the only case. It happens all the time. In fact, this is one of the fears, I would have said, of the founders of open source companies.

It’s that the community will create the feature they want to have, rather in the paid version. And what are we going to do the day it happens? Because it will happen in any case. If you have a community, it will happen. But precisely, if we communicate well, and if we say, after we still have a team, we have to pay salaries, if we don’t manage to get customers, we can’t pay salaries, and so we have to have functionality that is still payable. Afterwards, I also find that it’s reassuring for the community because if it’s well communicated, we’ll put … We are aiming for the customer version, this market, this kind of customer. We are targeting another market for the community version. It’s reassuring precisely because that way, the community understands, will try and understand… It’s not going to be abandoned because the company has a strategy, because it’s less likely that open source is going to be abandoned precisely because it exists, there’s a coherent strategy. And also that if someone ever goes from being adapted to open source to, I don’t know, changing jobs, the company will have needs that are different, which are more likely to be in the paid market, this person will know what to do.

Open Source companies that are successful?

Walid : There’s a question I’d like to ask you for you. Are there any examples of open source companies or projects that from your point of view are successful?

Emily : That’s super interesting because, is your question about projects or companies?

Walid : shall we say the companies?

Emily : Okay. Precisely, this is one of the questions that is super interesting in the field of open source because if we talk about simple companies, it’s easy, you see, this is a huge company with huge profits, so it’s a success. For open source projects, deciding what success means is a strategic matter. Because there are also open source companies that have a project that is not zero, which is a normal project. These companies don’t give a damn about the community, because it’s for transparency, perhaps. And so in this case, the company can be completely successful. In fact, there is a company called Artefactual, which makes software for archivists, especially national libraries, but also health systems. If you have to have archives from the last fifty years, here it’s a national health system for example, that’s a lot of archives. So, for them, the importance of being an open source company is more transparency than having a community of users, having people who will contribute. That’s not super important to them. So there are plenty of examples of success, but it’s not the same models.

I consider that Artefactual, for example, is an example of a success. It’s not a big company, it’s 40 people. It’s completely bootstrapped, I don’t think they have a great profit. They are rather flat every year. On the other hand, it’s a company that is completely open source and that is not young, which is 20 years old I think. So who has managed to find financial sustainability.

After that, we can also talk about the rather big companies. Odoo is the European example. It’s an open source company that makes OpenCore.

Walid : It’s all the more interesting because Odoo, I interviewed the people who work on the Odoo Community Association, where there is the open source counterpart for people who want to develop open source modules, and which is finally an alternative that means that if you are going to use the Odoo Enterprise version, you can use it, You have all the modules and everything, but if you want to use the open source part, you can use this open source part. It’s all the more interesting that the two actually exist and coexist.

Emily : Yes, exactly. Odoo is also a great example of a company that is not in the field of infrastructure, which is rather at the application level.

Walid : And what do you think, for example, of companies like GitLab ?

Emily : another example of a super success. I can’t say anything else. What I want to say about GitLab is that the founder of GitLab talks a lot about open source models. And I find that this is where I have a different point of view than the founder. Because often the founders of open source companies, they have had one experience, two experiences and so they think that they have found the model that works. On the other hand, I work with a lot of companies, I talk to a lot of founders and I see that in my opinion there are several models that can work. You have to choose the model that is the most suitable. The most suitable for the market because there are markets that are different, ecosystems that are different.

So, I’m just going to say that I think the founder of GitLab, he really thinks that he has found the model that works to create an open source company. And I think in my opinion, he has found a model that works, not the only model.

How can you take a step back from your model as a founder?

Raphaël : Yes, because you mentioned the notion of ecosystem and it’s true that when you define a positioning and a strategy, it’s in a given field, in a given environment. How can founders have a project, they can take a step back to try to perceive this ecosystem? And to see it energized or created around it, to federate it both in community and business terms.

Emily : Actually, taking a step back is a disadvantage of working with someone like me. Not necessarily me, but in fact, having a person who comes from the outside. Even me, if I’m going to work on my business, sometimes I need to talk with other people who may have a different point of view. So that’s often the case, especially if we’re talking about positioning, but also, positioning in my opinion, as I said, it’s a big part of the strategy to product management, you have to have a point of view that’s a little bit distanced.

In fact, what it is, you can’t do it or it’s very difficult to do it if you’re too much into it. You’ve already decided what you’re doing, so you can’t see the other options that exist because it’s too close. So how can we do it? Really, doing it on your own is very hard.

The impact of the type of financing on the development of the product?

Walid : If you have funding, does the fact that you have these funds, VCs for example, do they impose conditions on the model you are going to use, on the type of license, etc? Does the fact that you have certain funding mean that you won’t be able to do certain things?

Emily : It depends, I would have said in most cases, not necessarily. But for example, if you only want to do services, it will prevent you from raising funds. So it’s true, if you want to create a product, well no, not necessarily. You always have to choose good VCs, because they’re going to be partners in the best of cases.

And it’s true that it can be important to work with partners who have at least a little bit of knowledge in open source, and not only in open source, but in business, in the business side of open source. But no, apart from the fact that, in fact, if we raise funds, we still have expectations to make a product, and not just support, and not just service.

Walid : Do you have any other questions, Raphaël?

Raphaël : more of a remark, it’s that there are several models, there are several ways to succeed, and in fact, the VC, having external funds, it’s a way that corresponds to a model. You don’t have to have a VCI to succeed as a VCI…

Emily : If you want to build a huge open source company that’s going to be the next GitLab, to do it without raising funds, it’s going to be complicated. But again, that’s the question: what is success? Precisely, what do you want? In fact there are plenty of questions that are… It’s business questions, business strategies, but it can also be a personal question. What do you want? Well sometimes, even when I accompany the companies, the founders, I ask the founders, well what type of company do you want to build? It also plays a role in the strategic decisions you make.

You have to make strategic decisions that are good for the company, but that are rather aligned with your goals as well, your professional objectives. And so, what are your professional goals? Well, that’s a personal question, because I’m going to have professional goals. Maybe I’ll build a box of this type, that type. It depends on me, my goals and my values. So for me, a success is a company that manages to have financial sustainability.

So if you have a person who creates his open source software, who manages to make a living from it, maybe it’s because he does consulting like me, but who is based around the project: that’s already an open source company, and that’s a success. It’s a success if that’s what that person wants to do.

Does Emily Omier work differently with European and American companies?

Walid : There’s a question that Raphaël and I were asking, which we find quite interesting, that’s where you were talking about the founders and everything, we were wondering what was the difference you saw, the big differences you saw between American companies and European companies. That is to say, do you work in the same way with founders who are European or founders who are American? What changes for you in your work?

Emily : Not much. I work in the same way with European founders and American founders. There are also many founders who live in the United States who are not American. So I would have even said more than half of the founders I know in my professional network who live in the United States were not born in the United States. But the way we work is exactly the same. We have the differences, as I said, I think it’s even more important for European companies to have a management of… a product management strategy, a positioning that is excellent. I also find that… That’s it, we’re going to get into the staff. I think it’s also interesting to work with entrepreneurs who have stayed in Europe, precisely because they are often a little older, well older means 30 or 40 years older. Well, that means they often stay because they have a family, well in fact other responsibilities, they can’t give up all their lives just to have an adventure in San Francisco. And that created constraints that, in my opinion, are super interesting.

Well, often, in fact, it’s even more important to have the right positioning. So, I find that there is a difference between the European founder who will stay in Europe and the European founder who will move to the United States. The difference is often age (Editor’s note: laughs). Not only that, but that’s often what it is.

Walid : well yes, I didn’t expect this answer, it’s great.

How did Emily Omier start The business of Open Source podcast?

Walid : So the other topic I wanted us to talk about pretty quickly, because it’s a topic that interests me a lot, is your podcasts. When did you start making podcasts? What made you start making podcasts?

Emily : It was an “uncooked” idea, as we say in English. It was just… I had talked with other people who do consulting, there was one person who said, “It’s a good idea to do a podcast, and so I know a guy who helps you start podcasts”, and I said to myself, “Oh great, that’s a good idea, I’m going for it”.

So really, actually, it wasn’t very well thought out. I hadn’t prepared. I know people who took two years to prepare the podcast, to buy all the best stuff. I didn’t do that. It was… Originally, I had also studied journalism, so making a podcast is… It still fits into my experiences as a journalist. So I wasn’t afraid. There are people who are afraid to talk to people, to do interviews. It doesn’t scare me. And so, there, I… Well yes, that’s right. I started in February 2020.

Walid : 2020, in the middle of Covid.

Emiiy : I had started the podcast… The first episode I think was in April, which I launched maybe in May. But so I had decided to do the podcast before Covid, but for a month. And so, once I started the process, I finished it, making the podcast. So it wasn’t very well thought out actually, but now it’s been more than 4 years.

The choice of guests on the podcast and the impact on Emily Omier’s business?

Walid : How do you choose your guests? That is to say that you already know them or are they in fact people you want to know more about and you interview them to find out more? And then the second thing is, does the podcast actually support your business? Because in fact in the end it makes you known and so afterwards it allows you to have work in the end?

Emily : yes, now it’s sure that the podcast supports my business, that’s completely safe. I have clients who have come to me just because they heard the podcast. I also have guests that I met through the podcast. It’s either people I’m looking for, people or clubs that I’ve spotted and therefore I invite them, or they come to me. And often, even people who do press relations will often offer me guests. Often these are pretty bad proposals. Sometimes it’s super interesting proposals, it’s not the fault of the guests… It’s just it’s the job of press relations to make proposals that are not always great. But so it means that now as the podcast is quite well known and there aren’t many podcasts that address the subject, that I address in my podcast, so there you go, I often have people who come to me. In addition, I think that having a podcast, that… Well, in fact, I said that it was badly thought out at the beginning, well I think that… In fact, that’s right, I’m used to thinking afterwards, to see how something is like. But suddenly, having podcasts forces me to talk to people and it gives me an even broader vision of the ecosystem. Because I work with a lot of companies, but I talk to even more founders because I have a podcast every week.

So that means that I still do 52 interviews every year on the field of open source business. And so it’s been 4 years now. So it’s still a lot of learning that I wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t done the podcast.

Preparing podcast episodes

Walid : Do you do a lot of preparation? Because even if you’re not the one editing and taking care of everything, preparing a podcast and recording it and everything, it takes time. For example, have you spotted someone, do you know exactly what you want to talk about with them?

Emily : No. That’s a point of improvement that we could make on my podcast. Because now, I don’t do a lot of preparation. What I’d like to do with the podcast is have two conversations with each person. Because often, you have to talk with the person to find out about topics where you could dig even deeper. Because often, the topics that are the most interesting are not the topics that we’re going to know, I don’t know, just by looking at this person’s LinkedIn. So, you really have to have already had a conversation with this person. Have guests appear twice on the podcast, so there you have it. And often I do that, sometimes there are guests who were invited three years ago and I do a second interview with them, but no, I don’t do a lot of preparation.

Walid : I was convinced that you did a lot of preparation, given the quality of the recordings.

Emily : I wouldn’t have said it at all… I do a lot of preparation. I’m spending a week (Editor’s note: read).

Walid : No, but on the contrary, it’s very interesting because I almost do too much preparation. And I also know that it has the exact opposite effect.

The Open Source founder Summit

And the last point before we leave, we talked about it a little bit earlier, is the Open Source Founders Summit, so it’s a trade show that was held in Paris this year. And I wanted you to explain to us very quickly what it was and why you did it and with whom.

Emily : Okay… Where to start. So I had the idea of doing a conference in mind for a year and a half. I had even put in fact, I had applied for a visa to come to France, I had put in the visa application that I was going to give a conference in France. So I spoke with Remy Bertot, whom you know.

Walid : yes, which I had on the podcast too (Editor’s note: here).

Emily : Yes, exactly. We had discussions a year ago. In fact, Passbolt is a former client of mine, so we ended up at All Things Open. So we talked for a while and I said “listen, I had an idea to do a conference, what do you think?” And he said, “ah I also wanted to do a conference, so if we did it together”.

So that’s kind of how it was, it was the birth of Open Source Founders Summit. I think we both found that it was missing in the ecosystem. I do a lot of conferences. In fact, I’d like to travel a little less. But actually, I do a lot of conferences in the field of open source and it’s often very concentrated in technology.

It’s quite normal actually, these are conferences that are for open source developers. But that means that there is no room or very little room for business issues. After that, there are also startup conferences, but open source startups are a minority, but extreme, a tiny minority of general startups. So you’re not going to have a lot of talks on issues that are specific to open source startups.

If you go to a conference, a trade show that is aimed just at startups, that means for whom business really starts, and you won’t have it either in an open source show at FOSDEM for example. You’re not going to have a lot of conferences on open source business. Besides that you’re not going to… The conferences you’re going to have, which will address business topics, are not going to be in depth. It’s always the same talks. Here are the three models for creating an open source business.

In fact, everyone, in each conference, we have a speaker who is different, but the theme is exactly the same. And so, there wasn’t something that was really aimed at founders who are already experienced. In fact, people who already have experiences, who know what the problems are, but who want to share the learnings they have made. Who want to be able to ask other founders for advice on issues that are specific to open source. Because they are not necessarily going to have a network that is full of people who are specialists or who have experience in open source on the business side.

So there you have it, we created Open Source Founders Summit. It was in May in Paris. I think it was a success. It was super successful actually. It was more successful than I had expected. And so we had 75 people who came from everywhere. It was just founders and executives in open source companies. And so, yes, we had in-depth conversations about the issues that are specific to open source companies.

Now, we are preparing the second version which will appear next May, on May 19 and 20, 2025.

Is France good for Open Source?

Walid : I have one last question that comes to me like this. I wonder if you see people from everywhere, does it actually look nice in France to do open source or is there better elsewhere?

Emily: That’s a good question. I know that there is a lot of public support for open source in France. Is it easier in France than elsewhere? I don’t know. Managing a company, if you have a bakery, I think it’s more complicated in France than in the United States. But that’s just because having a company in France I think it’s more complicated. I don’t have an answer, I don’t know (laughs).

Walid : You have countries like France, Germany, etc. where indeed there is plenty of the state that finances. The software I was on was massively subsidized by the State, by local authorities, etc. He would never have become what he was if it had not been for this public support.

Emily : yes, that’s true. I think that the public support that exists in France, and as you said earlier in Germany as well. And also as a customer. that’s also an advantage of being in Europe. not only in France. It’s that there are a lot of public entities that only buy free software. This means that they buy support contracts or who are customers of companies based on open source because in fact they have the need, it’s in the law, to use only free software. So that’s an advantage, it exists as far as I don’t know in the United States.

Yes, it can create an advantage, even if you do a lot of things by video, I think that if you have a very small open source company and you can travel, see a client who is in the town hall of your city, that’s still a huge advantage. I do find that the public market, public entities are often a very good market for open source companies. Because these are often entities that have enough budget to pay for something, that need transparency, and that have a lot of concerns about data control. And so that’s the advantages of open source. And even then, they often don’t want to manage on their own. So they’re going to buy a support contract. Because they’re not super tech. They’re not crazy developers who want to work at a San Francisco-based startup.

These are not people with a super high level of skills, so that’s an extremely important market for open source companies.

Walid : We’ve come to the end of our questions. Listen, thank you very much, it was really very interesting. Subjects that are indeed not discussed much, so I was really happy to have you with us.

For the listeners of the podcast, I encourage you to go and listen to episodes to get an idea if you are interested in this subject. We will talk about economic models and governance again in future episodes. It’s going to be completely different but also very interesting. So there you go, stay connected and share this episode if you liked it and leave comments too, if there are things and other topics you want us to talk about, I’d be very interested to know if you have any clarifications, topics to dig a little deeper, that would be really cool. Well listen, thank you both for being here tonight and see you soon be well.

Emily : Thank you….

Raphaël : thank you

Emily : Goodbye

This episode was recorded on September 19, 2024.

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