 Hi, this is Yozap Limbhardtia, and welcome to another episode of Teofila Stock. And today we have with us, once again, Matt Gankovic, the host or head of open source strategy at SCARF. Matt, it's great to have you on the show. Great to be here, great to be here again. If you look at the modern technologies, it's all from clouded technologies to AML. What role do you see open sources playing in these modern technologies? Open source is the core of every technology that exists out there. There are open source components. Even if you have closed source, proprietary, or cloud services, they're relying on open source as part of its DNA to build that product. They're borrowing from open source, they're using it, they're utilizing it. None of the software that we're seeing today would have existed if it wasn't for open source being widely available and inspiring people to maybe take a chance on something a little new or a little different. So I see it as absolutely vital to the ecosystem, even if you are building something that isn't pure open source, you're still gonna be relying on it, whether it's for building out servers, building out your cloud infrastructure, building out your development environments, you're gonna have a plethora of open source you rely on. Can you also talk about why folks even in modern times rely on, you know, or, you know, you start the company a project as an open source project versus closed source technology because we have seen not too much tiny chunk where a lot of folks, they are changing the licenses or, you know, they are making their code base not compatible with a lot of cloud providers. So there is some kind of fear there, but still we see a majority of folks still go with open source why. So I think that that's a couple of different reasons. I think probably the primary reason is it is easily accessible for people to start in the open source base and get feedback early on. And so if you're gonna start a project, you wanna get some people involved, you're typically not starting a project with the end goal in mind to commercialize this. You're starting a project because you have an idea that you think other people can benefit from and that you wanna bring out there and share with people and you're passionate about. And so you start in that mold. I think that there are some companies though that have started with the idea we're gonna go open source and those are typically driven more by investors or more by kind of the market. At this point in time, you know, open source is a critical component for a lot of investment strategies. So I think a lot of people gravitate towards open source companies or recommend people look at open source as a model because it brings benefits to not only the founders but the investors as well. What you have seen many either talk to folks or of course in this ecosystem, you have been around from project to product. So I think that, you know, what you see is when people start off they don't necessarily have the thought to commercialize. Like I said, it's a small portion do but let's take those aside for a second. You're starting off building something for yourself in a lot of cases. So you'll start with a need that you see maybe at your company, maybe at your job, maybe, you know, in the community you see a gap, maybe you use some technology that just didn't quite do what you wanted it to do. And from there, you start to fill in the gaps and you'll attract other people who have a similar mindset. But this is where it's interesting because that phase, it can gain a lot of traction fairly quickly with people who think like you. But moving beyond that kind of smaller group to a more widely accepted market share or more widely accepted across the community is often a challenge because a lot of owners and a lot of maintainers start with thinking everyone else thinks like them and they don't. And so getting from that initial project to an actual product requires you to think a little bit outside the box and understand what the market is looking for, not just what you are. And that is an issue that a lot of founders do have a challenge with early on. They make that assumption that everyone thinks like them, they're gonna have the same thought process and that leads them to develop software and develop the different components around it for people like them. And that's a big gap that they need to overcome. And when they do overcome it, that's when they can start to attract more outside think, they can be a little bit more diverse in their thought process and it can help the project grow and scale and then eventually meet those different plateaus. We didn't scarf what kind of open source culture is there and as a head of open source software, is your role overlapped with the same kind of open source program office or is it different? I'm a little different because officially I'm the head of open source strategy, slightly different. So from an OSPO perspective, an OSPO is really about helping people realize the culture and understand how to utilize open source software internally and then contribute externally. What's interesting about the OSPO is every OSPO that I've talked to, their role is to find a little different. So they're not as cookie cutter as you might think. So it is a bit of a challenge. My role is more about getting people interested in open source software in general, helping people build more established businesses, be successful in their open source projects. Our mission is really to help people understand what they can achieve from an open source perspective, how they can build a sustainable business around it and build something that lasts forever. And so it's a bit of marketing, it's a bit of DevRel, it's a bit of strategy, it's a bit of everything. In the OSPO thing, that is more of a program management function or a project management function where your responsibility is to make sure that everyone is aware of what open source can do for them, that they're following the processes and the cultural things and the cultural norms. Internally from Scarf's perspective, we have long had roots in the open source community. Our product is really designed, our platform is really designed to help people measure adoption and usage of open source and measure their user bases. So it's been kind of ingrained for our company from day one. I'll go back to the point of as companies, which you start as open source company, but as we look at the first, second, third, fourth generation of developers, executives, actually in today's world, almost everybody knows the importance of open source, actually the whole community that I have on LinkedIn, our Twitter is open source folks. But as companies kind of attract new, next generation of either developers or employees do or if Scarf also, do you see that you do have to remind them or have this focus on hey, we are open source company or you feel that after a certain point, it really doesn't matter. What I'm trying to understand is that the whole evolution of a company is starting from a kind of founder who is also the creator. And then as you talk about investors, everything else, but after a couple of years, when they're like for the fifth generation of employees, what kind of challenges can we run into? Or you're like, no, it's very established, there's no problem whatsoever. Well, I think that oftentimes what you'll see is that this evolution of a company, right? So you'll start off with that CEO who is the maintainer. He's very passionate from day one. He's gonna do everything in his power to make sure that he's connected to the community and part of that community. As you start to get towards that next level, you start to realize that you need to take your passion and turn it into something that's monetizable, especially if you're taking outside funding. You know, you're gonna be looking at things like, how do I reach the million dollars in ARR? How do I reduce my churn? How do I gain efficiency? And sometimes that doesn't translate into those same passionate things for the CEO. And you'll see a lot of pressure from investors to bring in outside influence. So as a CEO, if you're technical, you are from the engineering standpoint, you've been developing code all your life, you probably don't have a deep background in sales and marketing. So if you are, you'll do it just because you're the only person, but that doesn't mean that you feel like you're in a good space. So what you'll do is, as soon as you get your next round of funding or you start to grow, you're gonna be looking for someone to take on a role that is going to take that off your plate. You're gonna look for someone who's an expert in sales and marketing. The problem that you run into is a lot of people will hire smart, passionate people from those areas, but they're not smart and passionate in the open source space or they're smart and passionate in a different type of open source company or at a different stage or level. And when you bring them in, that changes your culture. And I've seen this time and time again from a lot of open source companies. It's actually one of the 10 mistakes that I see over and over again is you'll hire someone who you think is a good fit. You'll trust them. You'll say, oh, you are the sales person, you're gonna be able to do this. They'll come in, they'll ruin the culture. That's not just sales, it could be engineering, it could be marketing, it could be customer success, it could be HR because they don't follow those same sort of passions. And this leads to a lot of people later on looking at exploring changing licenses. They're changing types of different policies towards their open source community. Maybe they shut off contributions because you start to look at how do we turn this into a business and you're starting to listen to some of those folks who come from an outside organization who may have done that before, right? It's difficult when you don't have an open source pedigree or even if you do, if your open source culture is very different when you come in. And great companies like Red Hat, sometimes people from Red Hat don't fit into some of these open source startups just because the size is so vastly different and the culture's so different. What we've also seen as we talked about there's some layoffs happening, a lot of companies, you know, opens as you talk, I mean, a lot of my friends who are, you know, open source program offices or they have been leading open source apart at some of these very large open source or large companies, they have been laid off and they are joining a lot of companies which we either never heard of or they are not known as traditional open source company. At the same time, we have seen a lot of non-open source folks like, you know, the previous Red Hat CEO who actually turned right into what it is, he came from Delta. So we do see a lot of movement happens. And sometimes it can be paused to, when you look at it, what are you observing there? Yeah, so I think that there's actually a couple of different things, you're right. So you don't want to just get stale in how you're thinking about things. So you do need to get other people into the ecosystem but you need to be mindful of who you're hiring and this is where I think culture trumps everything else. So when you're hiring someone, having the same sort of cultural, you know, like, expectations or the same sort of like philosophies or even if they're slightly different, you can appreciate them and you think that it fits into the community, that's a great thing. But oftentimes what you'll find is you're hiring someone who, you know, you're hiring because they're smart, they can sell themselves well but they don't fit what your ultimate plan is or maybe you don't know what the plan is so you just kind of give that up and that can take you into very, you know, concrete different ways. The thing with Red Hat is, you know, when Red Hat did bring in, you know, the former CEO from Delta, there was already an established culture, he just, you know, tapped into it, made it better, right? There was already an established process on how they're going to, you know, build the business. They were already successful. He just made them way more successful, right? And I think that that's where the difference is when you're starting up, especially in these smaller companies, you know, every hire that you bring is going to change your culture, right? And so if you are a, you know, hiring your second person, there's two. That means that 50% of your culture is going to be influenced by that second person. And so the earlier you're hiring, the more impact they're going to have and you just need to be mindful of that. And I've seen this time and time again where when you go hire especially executives who have been part of the executive teams at other companies, they bring their whole teams in, right? You'll see them, you know, like, oh, sales team. Oh, I need this guy to run this department, this guy to do this, this guy to do this. We'll go, okay, great, hire him. So you bring in an entire team that's ready to go, but sometimes that team doesn't necessarily match not only your culture, but your plan, how you're going to go to market, how you're going to sell to people. And that often causes clashes and that can set you back years, if not, you know, totally, you know, put the company off of the trajectory that they were on. Matt, thank you so much for taking time out today. And of course, talk about this topic. This is a topic, you know, we can sit for hours and talk, there is no end to it. But really, I appreciate your insight there and I'd love to chat with you again. But let's not make sure, let's make sure that there's no gap like this one. Like we shouldn't talk more often, not every two years. So, but anyway, thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me on.