CEO Franz Karlsberger on Joining an Open-Source Start-Up to Scale Growth

The Business of Open Source

Franz Karlsberger is the CEO of Amazee.io, an open-source platform that seeks to make developers’ lives easier by abstracting their day-to-day workload. Throughout our conversation, we explore what it means to join an open-source start-up as an external CEO, and why Franz put so much emphasis on go-to-market strategy. Franz also walks through the importance of knowing what open-source business model your company will follow, and how to measure the success of an open-source project.

Listen in as Franz shares some of his most interesting mistakes, what he’d do differently if he could start over, and why Franz feels open-source is more than just a type of software, it’s a company ethos that affects everything down to the team culture.

Highlights:

• Franz introduces himself and his company Amazee.io, which is a ZeroOps application delivery platform (00:50)
• How Amazee.io went from being a point solution to a platform solution (06:20)
• Why Franz was brought in as an external CEO for Amazee.io to accelerate growth (10:03)
• How Franz adjusted to working at an open-source start-up and what that learning curve was like for him (11:47)
• The importance of open-source at Amazee.io and why it is baked into their core values and ethos as a company (15:30)
• How the go-to-market model differs for Amazee.io’s cloud offering versus their managed offering (17:51)
• Franz describes some of the most interesting mistakes he’s made and what he’s learned from them (23:25)
• Franz’s views on measuring the success of an open-source project (26:29)
• How listeners can connect with Franz and learn more about Amazee.io (32:37)

Links:

Franz

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franzkarlsberger/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/fkarlsberger
• Company: https://www.amazee.io/