Can you bootstrap?

Yes, you can. Tomorrow I’ll share some of my own observations about open source companies that bootstrap, but today I wanted to share a very good talk on the subject, from Ann Schlemmer, CEO of Percona.

My favorite line from this talk: “I am a capitalist.” It’s good to have people like Ann in the open source ecosystem who are like, “let’s make some MONEY.” But she is also frank about how some of the choices they’ve made at Persona do not maximize profit — but that’s ok, and it’s all possible because it is a bootstrapped company.


Emily Omier