Open source as a privilege of successful businesses with Tom Wilkie

This week on The Business of Open Source, I talked with Tom Wilkie, CTO at Grafana Labs. We talked about how he had a 10-month run building a startup before ultimately joining Grafana in an acquisition — why he thought that was the right move at the time and how it’s developed since then. But Tom has also had a long career in open source businesses, and we had plenty to talk about.

My favorite quote: “I’ve always seen open source as a privilege of successful businesses, so I want to be a successful business.”

At Kausal, Tom’s most recent startup, the focus was on financial sustainability from the beginning, and they had $100k in revenue in 10 months before the acquisition by Grafana. At Grafana Labs, everything is done with an eye on revenue — yes, there are tons of open source projects and tons of investment in those projects, but it has to be tied to revenue.

Some other things we talked about:

• Starting an open source company with the explicit goal of being a successful business, which is not what Tom sees all open source companies doing

• Why you should probably start with open source code at the beginning if you intend to open source at all, because otherwise your code will get messy and you’ll be too embarrassed to open it

• How integrations are the secret sauce that Grafana Labs monetizes — why that it, and how it allows so much code to stay open source without threatening Grafana’s financial success

• Choosing a SaaS strategy versus choosing an enterprise on-prem strategy — and how you need to be aware of what your competitors are doing when choosing which is right for you.

Thanks for listening! I’m Emily Omier, a consultant who works with company on open source strategy related to positioning and product management. If you’re struggling with your strategy around open source — whether you’re unsure how to differentiate in the ecosystem or not sure what to open source — I can help. Learn more here.