Work with me
If you’re the founder of an open source company and you’re struggling to differentiate your project and product in the competitive ecosystem, I can help. Here are the different ways I work with companies.
One hour strategy call — $750
Do you have a problem you’d like to talk through and think I can help you make progress in a one hour call? This option is ideal for situations where you have a specific question or, for example, need to prepare for an event, and want someone who understands open source business models and businesses to help you make progress on a specific issue.
Product Strategy Workshop for Open Source Companies
Product strategy is business strategy, especially for open source companies. When we work together on product strategy, the final outcome / deliverable is a product roadmap that is for both internal and external consumption. Yes, it’s a deliverable! And what should it do?
Get your entire team aligned about:
The company’s place in the ecosystem you play in
The differentiated value your project and your product delivers to users / customers
A single set of priorities
The difference in value and outcomes that can be expected between the OSS and the commercial product
Who the target market is for the project and product, and how the two do (or don’t) overlap
The framework for how to decide what to prioritize in project and product development
What your open source project and your commercial product are each supposed to do for your business
Communicate all of the above ⬆️ to your open source community, your customers and your investors! And why would that matter?
Get your customers, your potential customers and your users excited about your project and product’s direction
Help your community understand whether they are a best fit for project or product
Assure your OSS community that you have a real commitment to open source as well as a plan for financial survival
Communicate to your investors that you have a real plan to make OSS work for your business and build a financially successful software company
The deliverables
There’s a deliverable: A product roadmap, in the style of Product Roadmaps Relaunched. That means it’s a strategic document, not a list of features and dates. The roadmap comes in two versions. One for internal consumption and one as an external communication tool.
Both will be in a Google Slides format.
Here’s what’s on the roadmap:
The core positioning for the company, the project and the product (some people call this a value proposition template or elevator pitch template, it’s a positioning statement to me)
The company’s point of view on the ecosystem it plays in
The specific characteristics of your:
ideal open source user
ideal paying customer
How the ideal user profile and ideal customer profile relate to each other (target, Venn diagram, two circles?)
The pain points your project and your product solve, and were the overlap and divergence between the two exist
The differentiated value delivered by your project and the differentiated value delivered by your product
Features that are under development in your product and project mapped to how they reinforce your differentiated value
How those features should be prioritized
What business objectives the open source project is expected to deliver, and how you will measure how well those objectives are being met
The top priorities for the company in the next 12 months
Who is this for?
This is appropriate for companies who fit at least one of the following three criteria:
You have an open source project and are developing a commercial product
You have a commercial product and are planning to release an open source project that will be a key part of your strategy
You have both an open source project and a commercial product
What pain points does this offering solve?
If you fit the description above and are experiencing any of the following pain points, this offering can absolutely solve what ails you:
You don’t know how you are differentiated from competitors in the ecosystem and what differentiated value you deliver to customers and users
You aren’t clear on the relationship between OSS and commercial product, including what the OSS is supposed to do for your business
You have trouble prioritizing features, and nobody really understands why things are or are not on the roadmap
You feel like your company is misunderstood in the wider ecosystem
You want to really create excitement among users and customers about how you’re unique and where you are going
Why work with me?
Let’s face it, my background is more marketing than product. Well, at least to those people who think of positioning as marketing, and they are wrong.
Over the past several years, the most common feedback I’ve gotten after working with open source companies on positioning is “thank you for the workshop, we’ve just updated our roadmap as a result of our work together.”
At the same time, I’ve become increasingly convinced that the key to making an open source business work is rock solid product strategy. And when done right, sales and marketing get the information they need to do their jobs from the product strategy document. But the product strategy is the starting point for getting alignment between product, engineering, sales, marketing, customer success.. oh, and your user/contributor community.
So why should you work with me? I’ve worked with dozens of companies on positioning, I’ve interviewed more than 200 people on The Business of Open Source and organized Open Source Founders Summit. I haven’t built an open source company myself, so I don’t have the deep, detailed experience from one company that you’d get from a former founder. On the other hand, I have a much larger sample size than company leaders do — or even than most investors do. I see the forest, they are looking at trees.
Fractional chief open source officer
This option is for companies who want ongoing advising related to their open source strategy. The goal of this is to better understand, measure and optimize the relationship between the open source project and business outcomes, and to decrease uncertainty for the founders. This option is best for companies who fit into one of the following categories:
Do not currently have an open source project and are planning to release a major part of their codebase as an open source project
Have an open source project but don’t yet have a commercial product and are trying to figure out what to build
Have an open source project and commercial offering, but don’t feel in control of the relationship between the two or like the relationship is working.
Open source strategy advising requires a 3 month commitment.
Price: $5000/month
In addition to two strategy calls per month and unlimited questions over Slack, I’ll get my hands dirty in this option. This will combine both strategy and hands-on work, and here’s what we’ll work on:
Developing a framework for how to make roadmap decisions for the project and the product
Clarifying the relationship between the open source project and commercial outcomes — answering questions like how the open source project helps the business grow
Iterating on how to improve the business outcomes delivered by the OSS, including what metrics to track and how to move the needle on them
Optimizing positioning of product, project and company
Some of the hands-on tasks I’ll work on:
User and customer interviews
Project and product roadmap prioritization
Sales narrative optimization
Writing website copy and ReadMe / documentation copy
What people say:
“When I read some of Emily’s articles about open source on LinkedIn, I was surprised and intrigued at how accurate her perspective was. There are a lot of misconceptions and concepts about open source, but she clearly understands what’s going on, and we think a lot alike.
As a rapidly growing Series A startup, we needed help with our positioning but weren’t sure where to start. Although our marketing had evolved over time, we lacked a well-thought-out strategy.
I knew we needed to approach our positioning thoughtfully and make sure we did everything right because we had a lot riding on this. It made sense to reach out to Emily and mind-meld with someone who could help navigate our positioning process.
Her workshop was unique because we ended up with a positioning canvas, a set of opinions, a point of view, a positioning statement, and a breakdown of how our features meshed into that statement. She walked us through a set of questions, acted as project manager, and helped us reach consensus.
We left with an artifact, surprising new discoveries, and a written distillation of the workshop. Emily did an excellent job of managing the team, making them feel heard, and getting people on the same page. Ultimately, as CEO, I felt like I was able to absorb the final result and make it my own. My team walked away feeling the same way because everything just made sense.
Emily was the first moment where we actually had positioning and a clear point of view. She helped us understand the importance of the language we use to describe our brand, products, and services.
Customers may have a visceral sense of what you do, but they’re going to use the language you give them. If that language is in the wrong category, or is too complex, or doesn’t convey the value your customer will receive, they’ll be communicating convoluted phrases to everyone down the line who needs to hear clear reasons for working with you. This includes their procurement department, their managers, and the person who signs your contract.
With the shift in positioning and language used to describe our products and services, we’ve received a lot more calls from customers who are speaking the same language as we do. This has resulted in an improved conversion rate in terms of demos booked. If you’re looking for someone to help you get your positioning signed, sealed, and delivered, Emily is well worth the investment.”
— Mike McNeil, CEO, Fleet
Check out more testimonials here.