Neha Narkhede discusses the timeline between open-sourcing Apache Kafka at LinkedIn and spinning out Confluent as an independent commercial company.
Insight
Narkhede: Confluent ignored narrow ICPs to capture the broad Kafka base
“Kafka, you know, that was one of the reasons why we couldn't or we didn't sort of narrowly focus on an ICP like traditional companies do for good reason. It was because, you know, the Kafka adoption base was so broad and for Confluent to quickly convert those …”
Insight
Narkhede: Commercial open-source requires all project creators to found together
“For the success of an open source company, all the creators should be part of it. And when that doesn't happen, you have two companies and they're competing on things they shouldn't be competing on, which mostly comes down to pricing and it's just a race to th…”
Disclosure
Narkhede: Confluent chose not to separate on-prem and cloud sales teams
“We actually decided to not split it. And that was because we ultimately wanted to transition to a cloud first business. So we put in a, instead a lot of thought and a lot of investment in sales enablement you know, internal education of why this is important, …”
What-if
Narkhede: Confluent probably would have failed if it started as SaaS-only
“Would it have just been feasible if we started with a SaaS only offering? And the answer is probably not because, you know, one of the most important things an open source company needs to do is quickly establish yourself as the market leader, quickly establis…”
Assertion Contradicted
Narkhede: Kafka was used by 50% of Fortune 500 when Confluent launched
“Confluent kind of started with a proven technology that was used at, you know, roughly 50% of Fortune 500 companies at that point in time.”
Insight
Narkhede: Transitioning enterprise sales to consumption models is the hardest challenge
“Sales was just a whole different, you know, dynamic. It was The most difficult one to solve for because in the early days, you know, if you're offering a software product, you have the traditional salespeople who are used to selling a subscription-based softwa…”