Positioning when your OSS and your product are related but different
The open source business model I’ve seen a lot of startups pursuing recently is one I don’t think there’s a good shorthand name for (ack! it’s a positioning problem). This is where the open source project is related to the commercial project or is a component of the commercial product, but the two products serve a fundamentally different purpose and are very clearly in a different market category.
Sometimes the open source project predates the company, sometimes the open source project is created by the company after it’s already raised funding and created a commercial project. Some examples I’m thinking of include Chronosphere (the company, a commercial cloud native monitoring solution) and M3DB, an open source metrics engine (that was previously positioned, as the name suggests, as a database); Nirmata (a unified management plane for Kubernetes) and Kyverno (a policy engine); and Shipa (an application management framework) and Ketch (a deployment engine). In call cases, the open source project is either part of the company’s marketing or part of the company’s credibiilty.
So what does this have to do with positioning?
First of all, I don’t think it’s a good idea to have an open source project purely to be part of your marketing funnel. That’s both because you risk alienating developers, who don’t tend to look kindly on that OSS that are actually a big lead magnet, and also because the target market for the commercial product is not the same as the target market for the OSS. That market different is especially true when the OSS is only a component of a much larger platform.
However, since presumably startups who take venture funding do intend to have revenue at some point, there should be a reason for maintaining the OSS that will provide tangible business benefits in the future. For this to take place, founders should have two goals:
The OSS has to be successful in getting some traction and community
There has to be some link in the target market’s mind between the OSS and the commercial product
Positioning plays into both. You need to position the open source project just as conciously as you would position a commercial product, including paying attention to who is actually using it and what problems they are using it to solve in real life. Second, you need to position the two products relative to each other, so that the OSS’s success can rub off on the commercial product.
To do this, make sure there’s a clear answer — both in everyone’s heads as well as in your messaging — about things like:
What is the relationship, both technical and in terms of value provided, between the OSS and the commercial product?
Why is this particular part of the overall product an seperate open source project? Why would someone want this thing as a stand-alone tool?
How does your experience with the OSS make your company more trustworthy? Why would anyone care about the OSS?
The underlying philosphy behind intentional positioning is that confused customers do not buy. Help your prospects understand what is and is not right for them and how your OSS and commercial product relate to each other, and you’ll shorten the amount of time it takes for them to make the purchase (or decide this is not for them and stop wasting your time).
Need help with this process? That’s what I do.