Levine: Delaying open-source business models makes future monetization significantly harder
Peter Levine · a16z Podcast | AMPLab, the Power of Open Source, and the Future of Systems Software · Jan 2, 2019 · at 41:20
Peter Levine, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), explains the monetization hurdles open-source software startups face when transitioning to commercial entities.
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“If you don't have that early, what starts, and you don't know what that is, then potential customers and partners don't know what you're going to charge for in the future and all that, and it makes it, the longer you go on without having a model, the harder it is to roll back some of those things, like in a year from now, so I'll go, oh, well, we're going to charge for that, and everyone's like, well, we've been using it for free for a year, like you can't charge for that anymore, and so it, being able to lead With the crumbs along the way and saying, okay, here's what we're going to be doing. Get ready for this. Kind of gets the community you know, preconditioned to kind of understand what the model is going to be.”
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