The Business of Open Source
Episodes
Changing Your Price Anchor with Anais Concepcion
11 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a new episode of The Business of Open Source today! It’s been a while. I talked with Anais Concepcion about a program she’s been testin...
Earning Trust with Tom Hacohen
08 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Tom Hacohen, CEO and founder at Svix. We kicked off the conversation by talking about why Svix ...
Go-To-Market for Open Source Companies with Quentin Sinig
24 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Quentin Sinig, who has been the first “business” hire at three open source companies; Strap...
Open Foundations with Or Weis
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke to Or Weis, the CEO and co-founder of Permit.io. Or is a serial entrepreneur who has had a long care...
Straddling open source software and the hardware industry with Rob Taylor
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Rob Taylor, CTO/CSO and founder of ChipFlow. Although ChipFlow is unambiguously a software comp...
The double-edged sword of big initial customers with Taco Potze
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week I’m back from vacation and I have a new episode of The Business of Open Source, with Taco Potze! Taco is the co-founder and CEO of Open S...
Build for Dual Audiences with Pablo Ruiz-Muzquiz
02 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Pablo Ruiz-Muzquiz, CEO and co-founder of Penpot. We started out by talking about the transitio...
Managing community contributors with Alya Abbott
25 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source I talked with Alya Abbott, COO of Zulip, about managing community contributors. This is a hot topic for open ...
Building a Dual Growth Flywheel at GitLab with Nick Veenhof
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Nick Veenhof, Director of Contributor Success at GitLab. GitLab has probably the most well-arti...
Solving Universal, Persistant Problems with David Aronchick
11 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with David Aronchick, CEO and founder of Expanso, about luck and timing, building into universal tru...
David and Goliath in the CMS Market with Thomas Schedler
28 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Thomas Schedler, co-founder and CEO of Sulu. Sulu is a small, bootstrapped company that spun ou...
Open Source Firmware for EV Charging Stations with Marco Möller
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source I spoke with Marco Möller, CEO and co-founder of Pionix. This was a fabulous conversation about a company th...
AI-generated Code Copied from Open Source with Julian Coccia
07 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Julian Coccia, CTO of ScanOSS, about selling access to data while making open source software. ...
How to be Successful when Donating a Project to the CNCF with Liz Rice
30 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today on The Business of Open Source I spoke with Liz Rice, Chief Open Source Officer at Isovalent, which is now part of Cisco. We addressed two subje...
Open Source Manifestos with Vincent Untz
02 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source I talked about Open Source Manifestos with Vincent Untz, CTO of Centreon. The entire conversation focused on ...
How a Rebrand Increased Sales with Lukas Gentele
26 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Lukas Gentele, the CEO and co-founder of LoftLabs. Here’s some of the things we covered: Th...
Fundraising and M&A for Open Source Companies with Daniel Jarjoura
19 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on the Business of Open Source I spoke with Daniel Jarjoura, an investor at Avolta who specializes in developer-facing companies, and who wr...
Products, consulting, and open source with Andrew Martin
12 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source I spoke with Andrew Martin, CEO and founder of Control Plane. Control Plane is ultimately a consulting compa...
How Technology Decisions Impact Growth with Misha Bragin
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Misha Bragin, co-founder and CEO of NetBird. This was also the first episode I recorded in 2025...
Open Source and AI Coding Assistants with Ty Dunn
26 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Ty Dunn, founder of Continue.dev, which is an open source AI code assistant. We had a fabulous ...
The CFO's View of Open Source Companies with Eileen Doody and Karen Walker
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source I had a slightly different conversation: I spoke with the CFOs of two open source companies, Sysdig and Perco...
Thinking Hard about your License Choice with Ivan Burazin
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Ivan Burazin, the CEO and co-founder of Daytona. First of all, Daytona was one of the sponsors ...
Bootstrapping an Open Source Company with Ludovic Dubost
29 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I talked with Ludovic Dubost, founder and CEO of XWiki about the long history of XWiki, which he started in ...
Building an Open Source Company for Long-Term Sustainability with John O'Nolan
22 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with John O’Nolan, the co-founder of ghost.org. Before further ado, John is going to be one of spe...
The Complicated Calculus around Donating a Project to a Foundation with Omri Gazette
15 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the last episode of The Business of Open Source recorded at KubeCon Salt Lake City, I spoke with Omri Gazitt, co-founder and CEO of Aserto. Aserto...
A Massive Head Start on Product Development with Open Source with Martin Mao
10 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This special episode recorded live at KubeCon Salt Lake City last November is with Martin Mao, CEO and co-founder at Chronosphere.We talked about how ...
Finding Product-Market Fit with Wei Lien Dang
06 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Happy new year everyone! There was a short break for Christmas + New Years the past two weeks, but this week I’m back with a fabulous episode with W...
Maintaining Control of your Brand with Ramiro Berrelleza
18 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I have a special episode recorded on-site at KubeCon NA this fall, with Ramiro Berrelleza, the CEO of Okteto...
KubeCon Special Episode: Changing Culture with Software with Cole Kennedy
11 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on the Business of Open Source, I have an episode recorded on-site at KubeCon SLC last month with Cole Kennedy, co-founder of TestifySec. We...
KubeCon Special Episode: Managing the Tension between Product and Project with Bobby DeSimone
04 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who pays for the future of infrastructure? In this special episode, I spoke to Bobby DeSimone, founder and CEO of Pomerium, about how he feels like in...
KubeCon NA Special Episode: The Connection Between Community Engagement and Revenue with Mark Fussell
28 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Mark Fussell, CEO and co-founder of Diagrid and co-creator of Dapr, in a special episode record...
ATO Special Episode on Product Strategy with Elias Voelker
26 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this last special episode of The Business of Open Source recorded at All Things Open, I spoke with Elias Voelker, VP North America for CheckMK. We ...
Applying the lessons from Docker with Solomon Hykes
20 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I have the first episode I recorded on-site at KubeCon Salt Lake City (and the only full-length episode), wi...
ATO Special Episode with Nithya Ruff
13 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this special episode of The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Nithya Ruff, director of Amazon’s Open Source Program Office (often referred to...
ATO special episode with Peter Farkas
12 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this special episode recorded at All Things Open, I talk with Peter Farkas, CEO and co-founder of FerretDB. We talked about about MongoDB and the l...
Selling Peace of Mind with Bhaskar from YottaDB
06 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s full-length episode is with Bhaskar, founder of YottaDB. This episode was recorded on-site at All Things Open last week, and we covered ...
ATO Special Episode with Tatiana Krupenya of DBeaver
05 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This special episode of The Business of Open Source with Tatiana Krupenya, CEO of DBeaver, was recorded on site at All Things Open 2024. It’s a sho...
Behind the Scenes of the Open Source AI Definition with Stefano Maffulli
30 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Stefano Maffulli, Executive Director of the Open Source Initiative, about the definition of ope...
Price Anchors of Zero Dollars with Anais Concepcion and Paul Fitzpatrick
23 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Anais Concepcion and Paul Fitzpatrick , the co-CEO of Grist Labs and CTO of Grist Labs. We talk...
Getting people to use the features you already have with Eric Holscher
16 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Eric Holscher, co-founder of Read the Docs. We had a really far-ranging conversation that inclu...
Open source companies' reputation problem with Chris Holmes
09 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Chris Holmes, co-founder and CEO of Greymatter. Greymatter is deeply involved in the open source ec...
Building your product with your customers with David Höck
02 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on the Business of Open Source, I spoke with David Höck, co-founder of Vendure. We talked about switching licenses from MIT to GPL, the way...
Finding and losing product-market fit with Allard Buijze
25 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I talked with Allard Buijze, the CTO and founder at AxonIQ. We talked a lot about the importance of open sou...
Friendly Competition within the ClickHouse Ecosystem with Robert Hodges
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Robert Hodges, CEO of Altinity. This is a great example of an open source company that is built...
Feature prioritization and customers' perceived value with Brad Micklea and Jesse Williams
11 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Jesse Williams and Brad Micklea, co-founders of Jozu and each with a long history of experience...
The Importance of Clear Frameworks for Product vs Project with Jimmy Zelinskie
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Jimmy Zelinskie, co-founder and CPO of Authzed, which is behind SpiceDB. We kicked off the dis...
Product market fit for project and product with Galeal Zino
28 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on the Business of Open Source I had Galeal Zino, CEO and founder of NetFoundry, which creates OpenZiti. One of the most interesting things...
Complicated pricing and competition against the big players with Raphael Michel
21 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Pretix founder and CEO Raphael Michel has a completely different philosophy about what he is building compared to the big players in the event / ticke...
Creating an ecosystem with Ashraf Samhouri
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on the The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Ashraf Samhouri, the CEO and co-founder of Activepieces. Activepieces didn’t start as an...
Testing 17 different income streams with Per Ploug Krogslund
07 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Per Ploug Krogslund, who is currently senior director of developer programs at Docker, and wh...
Open source as a privilege of successful businesses with Tom Wilkie
31 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Realistic pros and cons of working with foundations with Mike Milinkovich
24 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source I spoke with Mike Milinkovich, executive director at the Eclipse Foundation. We had a wide-ranging conversati...
Controlling your own narrative in a hot market with Vinoth Chandar, founder of Onehouse
17 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Vinoth Chandar, the founder and CEO of Onehouse and the creator of Apache Hudi. We took a prett...
Thoughtful open source strategies and nailing the OSS/product relationship with Joe Duffy
10 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Joe Duffy, co-founder and CEO of Pulumi.We kicked off the conversation by talking about why Pul...
How to save your company with a license change with Tyler Jewell
03 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Tyler Jewell — for the second time, now. Last time I spoke with Tyler, he was an investor at ...
Complementary Projects and Products with Justin Cormack
26 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source I have an episode I recorded on site at AI-Dev in Paris with Justin Cormack, CTO of Docker. We finally get ar...
Excellent Open Source User Experiences with Karthik Ranganathan
19 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Karthik Ranganathan, founder and co-CEO of Yugabyte. This is the second time Karthik has been o...
Ensuring the Difference in Value between Project and Product is Big Enough with André Eriksson
12 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with André Eriksson, founder and CEO at Encore. We talked about how open source develops trust, som...
Open Source Internal Startups with Saurav Pathak
05 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source I spoke with Saurav Pathak, chief product officier at Bagisto, about a very different kind of business relati...
Improving Your Value Prop Exponentially with Tanmai Gopal
29 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source I spoke with Tanmai Gopal, co-founder of Hasura. We talked about how Hasura grew out of Tanmai’s previous c...
Using Open Source for Trust, not Growth, with Reshma Khilnani
22 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source I spoke with Reshma Khilnani, CEO and founder of Medplum. Medplum is an open source electronic health record ...
The Difference between Code and Product with Adam Jacob
15 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Adam Jacob, founder and CEO of System Initiative and formerly the CTO and co-founder at Chef. W...
A Buyer's View of Open Source Companies with Mark Boost
08 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I had a very different sort of guest — Mark Boost, the CEO and founder of Civo. We talked not only about M...
Trying All the Open Source Business Models with Brian Fox
01 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Brian Fox, co-founder and CTO of Sonatype. In addition to having a really interesting discussio...
Aligning with User + Customer Needs with Rod Johnson
24 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source I had Rod Johnson, founder/CEO of Spring Source and creator of the Spring Framework (as well as board member ...
Taking a hard look at what community means and if every OSS company needs one with Deepak Prabhakara
17 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with BoxyHQ co-founder and CEO Deepak Prabhakara. We talked about a number of things, from BoxyHQ’...
Getting Your Pricing Model Right-ish with Alex Olivier
10 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the second episode that I recorded on-site at KubeCon EU in Paris, I spoke with Alex Olivier, CPO and co-founder of Cerbos. This was not a general ...
Nailing Customer Acquisition with Patrick Backman of MariaDB and OpenOcean
03 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, I had a dilemma: should I prioritize the episode where I spoke with one of the MariaDB co-founders, in which we discuss setting up a founda...
Ensuring a Project's Long-Term Survival with William Morgan
27 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I have an episode recorded on site at KubeCon EU in Paris with William Morgan, CEO of Buoyant. We had a fabu...
From Project to Profit with Heather Meeker
20 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source I talked to Heather Meeker, General Partner of OSS Capital and author of From Project to Profit, How to Build...
Delivering Value Quickly in the Observability Space with Pranay Prateek
13 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source I spoke with Pranay Prateek, co-founder of SigNoz. Pranay talked about why open source is important to SigNoz...
OSFS Special Episode: Being a Strategic Acquisition Target as an OSS Company with Thomas Di Giacomo
12 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this special episode to promote Open Source Founders Summit, I went deep with Thomas di Giacomo about how open source companies can position themse...
Buyer-Based Open Core with Zach Wasserman
06 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Zach Wasserman, co-founder and CTO of Fleet. This was a fabulous episode for many reasons, but ...
The Evolving Relationship between Apache Cassandra and DataStax
28 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Slightly different The Business of Open Source episode today! I spoke with Patrick McFadin and Mick Semb Wever about the relationship between Apache C...
OSFS Special Episode: A Deep Dive into GTM with Frank Karlitschek
22 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the Open Source Founders Podcast, I talked with Frank Karlitschek, CEO and founder of Nextcloud. Frank is going to be talking speci...
Staying Completely Open Source with Ann Schlemmer, CEO of Percona
21 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Percona CEO Ann Schlemmer. This episode was recorded on site at State of Open Con in London, ou...
How to decide what goes into project and product with Mike Schwartz of Gluu
14 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of The Business of Open Source, I talked with four-time entrepreneur Mike Schwartz, CEO and founder of Gluu as well as the host of Ope...
OSFS Special Episode: Peter Zaitsev Talks Sales
12 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As part of the preparation for Open Source Founders Summit, I’m interviewing both our speakers and our attendees for a special podcast that’s hype...
Staying True to Your Community and Your Bottom Line with Garima Kapoor
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Garima Kapoor, COO and co-founder of MinIO, joins me to share her journey from investor and advisor to co-founder of MinIO and the wealth of knowledge...
Making the Critical Pivot from Closed to Open Source with Federico Wengi
31 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I’m joined by Federico Wengi, who is a Partner at SquareOne VC. In this conversation, Federico sheds light on the conversations he’s had wit...
Emily Omier and Remy Bertot Talk About Open Source Founders Summit
29 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How can we get founders of open source companies together to share ideas, share strategies and tactics and build a community not just of open source p...
Timing the Evolution of a Successful Open-Source Project with Ben Haynes
24 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ben Haynes, the Founder and CEO of Directus, created an open-source project while working at his own agency in 2004. In this episode, we explore how h...
The Human Cost of Increasing Freemium Users with Peer Richelsen
17 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peer Richelsen is the Co-founder of Cal.com, an open-source calendar scheduling tool. This week, Peer and I discuss his personal experience with needi...
Balancing Community and Monetization in Open Source with Birthe Lindenthal
10 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Birthe Lindenthal is the Co-founder and CMO of OpenProject, a web-based project management system. On this episode, Birthe and I discuss the inception...
From 4,000 GitHub Stars to a Successful Open Source Business with Didier Lopes of OpenBB
03 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Didier Lopes, Co-founder and CEO of OpenBB, joins me to share the story of how OpenBB went from receiving 4000 GitHub stars in the first 24 hours of t...
How Useful Tools Create Brand Identity and Community with Loris Degioanni
27 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Loris Degioanni is the CEO and Founder of Sysdig, an open-source company working to make cloud deployment more secure through the use of runtime insig...
The Common Catch-22s of Open-Source Startups with Bob van Luijt
20 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bob van Luijt is the CEO and Founder of Weaviate, an open-source vector database company that helps contribute to the advancement of AI technology. Th...
From Open-Source Side Project to Enterprise SaaS Solution with Ben Rometsch
13 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ben Rometsch is the CEO and Founder of Flagsmith, an open-source feature flagging platform. In this conversation, we explore how he landed on the idea...
Monetizing Open-Source Contributions Through Crypto with Max Howell
06 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Max Howell is the CEO of Tea, a revolutionary open-source project that is seeking to help open-source contributors get paid for their work through cry...
Creating a Greener World Through Open-Source Software with Nicolas Höning
29 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nicolas Höning is the Co-Founder and CEO of Seita, an open-source energy optimization and digitalization company. Nicolas took an unconventional pat...
Creating a Movement through Community with Jono Bacon
22 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jono Bacon’s passion for building communities has been a driving force in a career taken him from Canonical to GitHub to founding the Community Lead...
Mitigating the Risks of an Acquisition with Michael Cheng
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Cheng is an M&A Specialist who has had an extensive career that includes a former stint at Facebook as a Product Manager and his current r...
A Second-Time Founder’s First Foray Into Open Source with Lars Kamp
08 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Lars Kamp is the Co-Founder and CEO of Some Engineering, the makers of Resoto. In this episode, Lars describes what he’s learned from founding and w...
Advice for Open-Source Founders from a Seed-Stage VC with Amanda “Robby” Robson
01 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Amanda “Robby” Robson is a Partner at Cowboy Ventures and the co-host of the Open Source Startup Podcast. In this episode, Robby shares insights o...
Bridging the Knowledge Gap on Community Data with Daniel Izquierdo
25 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Izquierdo is the Co-Founder and CEO at Bitergia, an open-source company that provides software development data and analytics. In this episode,...
How Not to Make Open Source with Leszek Manicki
18 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Leszek Manicki is the Engineering Manager at Wikimedia Germany. In this episode, we connect at the Open Source Summit in Bilbao to discuss what he has...
Getting The Most Out of Open-Source Events with Brian Proffitt
11 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Proffitt is the Senior Manager of Community Outreach at Red Hat’s OSPO. In this episode, we connect at the Open Source Summit EU to discuss ho...
Embracing Product-Led Growth in Open Source with Kim McMahon
04 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Kim McMahon is the leader of Open Source Marketing & Community at Outshift by Cisco, which is Cisco’s emerging technologies and innovation unit....
Shifting a Go-To-Market Strategy from Services to Product-Led with Alexander Krüger
27 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Alexander Krüger is the Co-Founder and CEO of United Manufacturing Hub, an open-source company that develops software for the manufacturing industry....
A Case Against Starting Your SaaS as an Open-Source Company with Steven Renwick
20 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week I’m chatting with Steven Renwick, CEO of Tilores. As you’ll hear in the episode, we connected when I mistook Tilores for an open-source ...