Despite how fast open tech is growing, the mental models for founders trying to build enduring businesses on open foundations still haven’t been defined. Crucial frameworks such as what aspects to keep open versus what to keep closed, how to leverage community and the power of co-creation, etc. are still being formulated.

In this second episode of the Backdrop Podcast, Joey explores these frameworks with three experienced operators. Joseph Jacks, the founder of OSS Capital—one of the few VCs focussed exclusively on open tech, Peer Richelsen, the co-founder of Cal.com—an open source alternative to Calendly, and Sascha Mojtahedi, co-founder of Parallel—a trading card game with an internal economy built on Ethereum.

This episode was recorded as a part of 100.builders, a four week program to support people building open tech in crypto and AI.

Chapters | Timestamps:

00:00:00 Intro
00:06:27 The definition of an open tech company definition.
00:09:55 Open source technology
00:11:31 Why Parallel is unique
00:15:49 Product differentiation in open source
00:20:14 Mental models for open source
00:22:55 The Open source renaissance
00:29:25 Information asymmetry
00:34:09 Does code quality matter?
00:36:47 Competition and forks
00:41:13 VC funding and product viability.
00:43:19 Raising money for open source.
00:47:07 Not everything has to be a VC backed

Relevant Links:

• Backdrop - backdrop.so
• Backdrop on X - twitter.com/withBackdrop
• 100 Builders - 100.builders
• Joey on X - twitter.com/joey_debruin
• Joseph on X - twitter.com/JosephJacks_
• Peer on Twitter - twitter.com/peer_rich
• OSS Capital - OSS.Capital
• Cal.com - Cal.com
• Parallel - parallel.life

The Backdrop podcast is produced by the team at Spectral.