On May 27 and 28, the Open Source Founders Summit, co-organised by Luxembourg-based Passbolt, took place in the heart of Paris. Kevin Muller, founder and CEO of Passbolt tells us more about why companies around the world are increasingly embracing open source and how companies and Luxembourg can best leverage its advantages.
Is the open source movement on the rise? If so, why?
The open source movement is definitely on the rise. Everyone uses open source technologies on the daily without necessarily knowing it. For instance: Android is open source and represents 70% of the mobile market. When you browse the web, open source technologies like Nginx, MariaDB, Linux power a large majority of the websites that exist worldwide. If you are using Chrome to browse the internet, it is powered by Chromium which is also open source.
For those interested in AI, some of the best-performing LLMs like LLaMA and Bloom and others are also open source. In Europe, we now have our first open source unicorns with companies like Odoo that are rapidly gaining market shares against giants like SAP. In other terms, open source is already everywhere and winning, and we see this trend accelerating. Even companies that were historically against open source such as Microsoft are now fully embracing it.
Open source adoption is accelerating for a large variety of reasons but mostly it is because it accelerates innovation by providing more transparency, flexibility and control. At Passbolt, we like to compare open-source software to organic food. We believe that if people have an affordable choice, most software will eventually be open source. Interestingly, the European Union has already implemented directives to promote open-source software to strengthen its digital sovereignty.
You recently participated and co-organised the Open Source Founders Summit which gathered 75 open source founders from around the world. Why was it important that such a summit took place?
We decided to organize this summit with Emily Omier (open source podcaster and positioning consultant) after realizing that while commercial open source companies (COSS) are really good at building communities around them and their projects, there is actually no community for open source companies founders.
However, most COSS companies face similar challenges when it comes to community management, Go-to-Market strategies, sales and marketing approaches, etc… and these challenges are usually quite different from what you would see in non open source companies. Bringing these founders together in the same space so that they can talk about their problems, and share their lessons learnt and best practices seemed like a real value add for everyone.
The value created through interacting with other founders and sharing lessons learnt without filters is something we experienced first-hand at Passbolt whenever we participated in startup acceleration programmes such as Luxembourg’s Fit4Start, or Google for Growth for instance. It tremendously accelerates the learning curve in the sense that you might be struggling with some problems that other founders have already solved, and a simple 15-minute conversation can completely unblock the situation. It’s a win-win for everyone. I would add that being a founder can feel lonely, so gathering and winding out about mutual challenges has somehow a positive therapeutic effect.
In the end, the Open Source Founders Summit was a success. It brought together the founders of some of the most iconic open source projects out there and we received some very positive feedback. We had a dozen founders who flew directly from the US to Paris for the summit and they already indicated that they wish to participate again for the next edition.
What are some of the main challenges open source founders face today?
COSS founders tend to struggle with problems such as fundraising, community management, conversion and monetization strategies or even licensing issues.
For fundraising for instance, open source strategies are still widely misunderstood by european VCs who are more accustomed to traditional SaaS businesses with top-down sales strategies, while many COSS companies rely on heavy community building, Product Led Growth (PLG) and bottom up motions. These PLG Go to market strategies, while being highly effective and cost efficient are also less predictable which is perceived as a risk from European VCs for the reason that they are more risk averse than their US counterparts.
Because COSS models are often misunderstood, founders do not always get access to appropriate coaching or advice which can be detrimental to them and their company growth.
What things did you learn at the summit that you would like to implement at Passbolt?
We learnt a lot in terms of community strategies, content marketing best practices, etc., but if I had to pick one I would say that our most important learning is in terms of sales strategies. Historically, whenever we raised funds we always were quite challenged by European investors about the fact that we do not have an outbound sales team. When you hear this feedback several dozen times, it somehow creates a doubt in your mind. What we learnt there is that many founders went through the same experience, and we realized that the most successful open source companies we talked to, with ARR above 50m EUR, had all decided at some point to stop outbound outreach to focus on more organic channels.
What is something you wish more founders not active in the open source ecosystem knew?
They should know that open source often is a fantastic Go-to-Market strategy. I and my co-founders are always happy to help other founders explore whether an open source strategy can make sense for their business. So they should definitely be in touch.
Are there any open source initiatives you’d like to highlight for our readers?
There are quite a few, but here are some of our favourites:
- FOSDEM, the annual open source developers and enthusiasts conference in Belgium
- Pass The Salt: the conference for open source cybersecurity in Lille, France.
- All things open: One of the biggest open source gatherings, in Raleigh, US.
In Luxembourg, Hack.lu and Voxxed Days have also a few interesting tracks about open source.
Passbolt is also organizing this year the international CakeFest, the annual CakePHP developers convention. It will happen in Technoport this 24th to 26th July.
Additionally, we see more and more open source companies participating every year in the Fit4Start acceleration programme in Luxembourg and this is very encouraging. I personally believe that Luxembourg has the potential to become the first incubator in the world for open source startups and there are already a few initiatives and discussions in that regard.
