Insight
Sijbrandij: Buyer-based open core best aligns revenue with community contributions
“So we ended up charging based on the buyer. For features that are used by an individual contributor, we put them in the open source code base. For features that are the focus of an executive, we put them in the highest paid version. That works really well beca…”
Disclosure
Sijbrandij: GitLab commits to never moving free features into paid tiers
“Some specific promises that we make are that we won't move features from free code into a paid tier. We won't artificially limit or delay features for the free tier. For example, in our code base, we're not putting a limit on repositories, user size, or perfor…”
Insight
Sijbrandij: Open-source companies should avoid heavily recruiting from their own community
“Over time, you should focus your active recruiting efforts elsewhere to avoid depleting your wider community.”
Disclosure
Sijbrandij: Majority of GitLab-built features will be open source
“We will actively contribute to the open source code with the majority of features built by GitLab Inc. Being open source.”
Insight
Sijbrandij: Consulting margins are too low to reinvest into software products
“We tried consultancy, but consultancy doesn't let you have high margins. Those high margins are needed for you to be able to invest back into the product, to pay for work that is unpaid otherwise.”
Disclosure
Sijbrandij: Up to one-third of GitLab's core team are company employees
“Up to a third of the core team are people that are also GitLab Inc. Team members, with the rest being part of the wider community contributions.”
Insight
Sijbrandij: Making open-source features proprietary quickly destroys community goodwill
“For example, the quick, the quickest way to lose goodwill is to make an open source feature proprietary.”
Assertion Supported
Sijbrandij: GitLab achieved 58% YoY revenue growth and 97% retention
“Revenue growth is 58% year over year, and our dollar-based growth retention is 97%.”
Assertion Supported
GitLab's S-1 filing reported net retention exceeding 150%
“And in our S-one filing, we talked about
Our net retention. It's the money that customers spent with us, and it's grown more than a 150%, which means that if a cohort of customers is spending a hundred dollars with you last year, they're now spending a 150 dol…”
Assertion Supported
GitLab.com revenue is more than doubling year-over-year
“We also see enormous growth of GitLab.com. It's more than doubling in revenue year over year”
Assertion Supported
Sijbrandij: GitLab merged 335 community contributions monthly in 2021
“And from January to October of this year, we've merged on average 335 wider community code contributions each month, a significant accelerant to our development efforts.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sijbrandij: 50% of GitLab community contributions come from paid users
“Looking at GitLab's wider community contributions from January to October of 20 21, where 50% of them came from users in our paid tiers.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sijbrandij: GitLab donations topped out at $1,000 per month
“We started with donations. They topped out at 1000 dollars per month. It wasn't enough to sustain the business.”
Assertion Supported
GitLab has shipped monthly releases on the 22nd over 100 consecutive times
“Yeah, so we had, since the beginning of GitLab, we released a new version on the 22nd of every month, and we've done that for more than a hundred times.”
Assertion Supported
GitLab received over 300 contributions in its first year
“And GitLab received over 300 contributions in its first year.”
