2. • Often dubbed as “The Joget Guy” at community
events
• Time zone transporter
• Responsible for consulting, training, enterprise
support and community building for Joget Workflow
3. • Open source workflow application builder started by
Malaysians, and gone global!
• Led and managed by Open Dynamics Sdn. Bhd.
• Open Dynamics also incorporated in California, US
• 21 months
• 40,000 downloads
• 800 adopter sites
8. Open Source != Freeware
• “Think free as in free
speech, not free beer”
• Always remember: Source
code is one of the
deliverables too!
9. Given Enough Eyeballs, All Bugs Are
Shallow
• 600 registered community members worldwide
• Beta release is tested in use cases of multiple
localities
10.
11. Viral and Rapid Growth
• 40,000 downloads
• 800 adopter sites
• If 5% of adopters are qualified leads, you have 40
leads to be gunning on, in less than 2 years!
13. Feedbacks for Future Product Roadmap
• No matter how technically cool and advanced your
product is, it’s useless if it doesn’t meet targeted
use cases.
• Large community size
• More use cases
• Product that meets the needs
14. Real Case Study: Joget Workflow
• v1 – “Workflow Management System”
• v2 – “Do More, Code Less”
Users are not just automating
processes, but building application!
• v3 – “Transforms Your Processes into an App”
15. More Brains and More Hands
• Open source ecosystem allows users to help and
contribute:
– Critical bug patches
– Translations
– Documentation
– Forum support
– Plugins
• Ultimately, it benefits everyone
17. Full-Time Commitment
• Running a company, is not the same as running a
part-time project as personal hobby
• To stay committed on the fast track, product
development is a full-time job (same as any other
serious startup ideas)
18. Reality: Everyone Needs $ to Survive
• How to fund:
– product development?
– the operational team before revenue touches break-
even point?
19. Fund Raising
• Convince an Angel to fund your MVP (minimal
viable product) or pre-release.
• Get commercial companies to sponsor your
project:
– Financially, or
– Developers
20. OSS Space is Very Competitive Now
• Your OSS product is competing very intensely with
other OSS options too!
Find your niche, understand
your market viability! It’s a
business after all.
21. Global Product Marketing is Tricky
• Mediums:
– Community-driven evangelism
– Media exposure (TeachCrunch, GigaOM, RWW, O’Reilly
Media, Mashable, and etc.)
– Tech shows as presenter
– Interviewed by relevant tech channels
22. Global Product Marketing is Tricky
• Things get easy if you:
– Are a celebrity developer / successful technopreneur
with proven track record
– Have a celebrity investor in your Board of Advisors
– Have connections with relevant tech medias
23. Free Software … and …
• Free-of-charge POC??
“Can you come to my office
and present to my team?”
• Asian market = Not scalable sales
24. Who is Willing to Pay?
• Reality check: There are some adopters who won’t
pay whatever you do.
• But, there are also some adopters who know
value and will still pay!
25. Who is Willing to Pay?
E.g: xxx,xxx downloads → yyyy adopter sites →
n% qualified leads
26. Paying at The Point of Value
• Dedicated support package with SLA
• Training services
• Consulting services
• Product implementation services
• Complimentary tools that simplify the jobs
• Plugins for enterprise deployment environment
27. Open Core?
• A company produces a product that is mostly
available as open source, but then there are some
closed source components around the open
source “core”.
• Community Edition & Enterprise Edition
• Examples: Jaspersoft, Alfresco, Magento, Pentaho
29. Know Your Customer Acquisition Cost
• What is your total costs of customer acquisition?
– Marketing events
– Google AdWords
– Sales presentations
Avg. Customer Acquisition Cost = Total Acquisition Cost
No. of Customers
Profit per Customer?
31. Education is Already Done by
Successful OSS Pioneers
• Companies like MySQL AB and Red Hat have done
enough education to the enterprise sector on
viable OSS model.
32. The Global Enterprise IT is Putting
Attention on Open Source Adoption
• Accenture survey from 300 large organizations in
both the private and public sector (5th Aug 2010)
finds:
– 69% anticipate increased investment in 2010
– 38% expecting to migrate mission-critical software to
open source in the next 12 months
– 50% are fully committed to open source in their
business
33. Open Source as a Viable Business Model:
Using Jaspersoft as Example
34. JasperReports:
Yearly Adopters Gain
• Total downloads in 2010: 1M (based on Jaspersoft’s CEO –
Brian Gentile’s input)
• Assuming adopter conversion rate is 2%
• New adopters in 2010 = 1M * 2% = 20,000
36. JasperReports:
Yearly Revenue Growth
• Assuming each support subscriber pays $5,000
• New stream of revenue gained from support
subscription, in 2010 = 400 * $5,000 =
$2,000,000
37. $2M Recurring Revenue
• Support subscription is recurring revenue.
• And the conservative figure of $2 million annual
recurring revenue, is just coming from 1 service –
support subscription.
38. Open Source Company Can Make $ Meh?
Undoubtedly, it’s a proven
scalable business model!
