Open Source, Sovereign Cloud, & Business with Nextcloud Founder & CEO Frank Karlitschek
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Description:
Frank Karlitschek shares his open source wisdom and lessons from building Nextcloud. In this episode, we touch on hot topics like the sovereign cloud, avoiding cloud lock in, building and growing a successful bootstrapped open source company, dealing with consumers and large enterprises, and more! Frank has been in the open source industry for many years and has a unique perspective on what works and what doesn't. This is episode 16 of the Hacking Open Source Business Podcast!Thumbnail:
Transcription ⌗
In this episode: 00:00:00 Coming up next on the podcast: VC Expectations 00:00:47 Intro: Welcome Frank, CEO of Nextcloud 00:01:39 Learning about Nextcloud 00:02:44 Branding as the open source version of X 00:03:43 Where did you get the idea for Nextcloud? 00:04:57 Business or Project? What was the end goal? 00:06:13 Deciding on business, pricing, & support models 00:08:03 Figuring out the core demographic, planning for growth, and sometimes getting it wrong 00:09:17 Why is the sovereign cloud important 00:11:05 The first contributor, accelerating contributions, and hiring contributors 00:12:29 100% bootstrapped, no external investors 00:14:07 How do big organizations or governments affect the roadmap for an open source project? 00:16:22 Lessons learned from dealing both with consumers and businesses 00:17:36 What advice would you tell your younger self? Don’t accept the way things are! 00:20:15 How do you decentralize the cloud? 00:21:36 Cloud lock-in 00:22:25 Rapid Fire Questions! 00:23:01 Favorite open source tool 00:23:21 First Linux distro 00:24:27 Conference walk up music 00:25:36 Favorite beverage 00:26:27 What is new and exciting in the open source space 00:27:38 Thoughts on AI & Copilot 00:29:39 Favorite food 00:30:01 Thank you!