The perils of positioning yourself as 'an open source version of a well-known SaaS'
It’s relatively common among open source startups to see a project described as ‘an open source X,’ where X is an established, well-known, closed-source software, usually SaaS of some kind. This introduction does have some benefits, because I immediately know I should be comparing the open source project to the established SaaS product. But it makes me cringe, because it’s limiting if your intention is to build a financially viable company around your open source project.
I’m going to pick on Cal.com, mostly because I don’t know them personally and they’ve been in the news. I’m sure they have a fabulous product, and in fact if you visit their website they do not call themselves ‘an open source version of Calendly.’ However, I’m picking on them because that’s how I’ve seen them described in the news and on social media.
*Apologies if the Cal.com founders find this article. I just needed a good example and you’ve been in the news.
Anyway, let’s unpack what happens when you describe your project and/or company as “an open source Calendly.” Suddenly, everyone thinks that your product / project is exactly identical to Calendly, and the only differentiator is that it is open source. In other words, it’s like you stole Calendly’s source code and put it on GitHub.
It’s also imporant to note that open source has both positive and negative connotations. So, in this example, I would assume:
It is free
It is hard to set up
The documentation is meh
It has a similar UX to Calendly, which I hate (that’s why I use a different calendar tool)
Of course, there are some benefits baked in to open source. So, I’ll also assume:
It’s extendable
It can be self-hosted
But the bottom line is that I’m going to assume that other than being open source, it is essentially the same as Calendly.
I went over to Cal.com’s website, and in fact they have a number of differentiators compared to Calendly. At least one use case — that of developers who are building an app that integrates calendar functionality — makes sense for an open source company but is, as far as I know, not something you can do with Calendly at all, and is a totally different market from your HR professional just trying to get job applicants set up for an interview.
In other words, once I dig deeper it appears that Cal.com is not just an ‘open source Calendly.’ They are playing in a totally different market, going after use cases that Calendly can not serve, like people who need to self-host for compliance reasons or developers looking for out-of-the-box calendar functionality to incorporate into an application. I’m glad to see that, actually, because it’s a much better strategy. But it’s all lost when someone describes them as ‘an open source Calendly.’
One final note about open source positioning: One of the most perilous aspects of positioning yourself as ‘an open source X’ is that you’re saying “we’re like X, but free!” This could be good for adoption, but is problematic the moment you want to release a commercial product of some kind. If you’ve always been just ‘the free thing,’ that’s going to be a hard pivot to manage.