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 a Business around your Open Source Project. We talked about some things that I entirely agree with, and then there were some points I challenged Heather on — all in all, it was fabulous conversation. 

Here’s what we covered:

• Why you should think of your project and product as two different products so you avoid thinking of your open source project as a loss leader and get your incentives right
• The differences between supplementary and complementary products, and how the relationship between project and product is often complementary, even in situations where that relationship is non-obvious
• We disagreed about pricing — should COSS businesses have cheaper products than closed-source companies? 
• Why cares about your being open source? 
• Are open source companies more capital efficient? Heather says so, but I’m not convinced. 
• Heather also talked about how they select companies to invest in
• Do open source companies by definition do a better job at paying attention to user / customer demand? 

Check out the episode, and check out more about Heather Meeker here: 

Personal website

OSS Capital

LinkedIn