Friday Webinar: Positioning for open source startups

Many startup founders, open source or closed source, struggle to describe their product and company in a way that makes sense. They struggle to narrow down their target market, instead focusing on massive segments that make it hard to really speak to the unique pains that the product solves.

But open source startups face some unique challenges. First of all, they too often succumb to the temptation to position themselves as “an open source version of X” where X is a market leader. They make open source their only differentiator, leaving them with a flimsy rationale for any commercial product.

They’re also some unique challenges at the intersection of product roadmaps and positioning — just a reminder, positioning is not just about marketing. There’s a business risk involved in making an open source product that’s too good. On the other hand, some people might (rightly) feel like certain features are unethical to hold back for the paid version — this was a view expressed to me recently in regards to security. A security-related open source project should never withhold key security features from the open source project. But then what does need to go into the paid version?

All of this is a long introduction: I’m doing a free webinar on Friday about positioning for open source startups. I’ll cover how positioning intersects with the open source business model you choose, specific strategies for positioning your project(s) and products so you can get the most mileage from both of them.

Interested? Know someone who could benefit? Here’s the link to join. See you at 9am PT on Friday!