Building an Open Source Consulting Company

Building an open sourceconsulting company

Nate Aunewww.jazkarta.com

Open Source Bridge ConferencePortland, ORJune 17, 2009

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/me

• First experience with Linux in 1994

• Founded Jazkarta in 2004 in Boston

• Now 3 full-time staff and 10 subcontractors

• Specialize in Plone and Python

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Topics for exploration

• Marketing

• Pricing

• Contracts

• Project Management

• Services

• Recruiting

• Finances

• Open Source citizen

• your topics?

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Marketing

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Marketing & getting work

• Speaking

• Blogging

• Sponsoring

• User group / consultants group

• Networking

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Pricing

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Pricing / rates

• How much do you want to make?

• What are your costs?

• What will the market bear?

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$100,000 / yr$100,000/yr % 50 wks/yr % 20 hrs/wk

=

$100/hr

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Costs of doing business(overhead)

• Self-employment tax

• Legal fees

• Accounting / bookkeeping

• Office space

• Hardware

• Subcontractors

• Telephone

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Market rates

• What are your competitors charging?

• How much will your customers pay?

• How does the economy affect your bill rate?

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When to raise rates?

• When your customers don't blink an eye when you tell them your rate

• When you have more work than you can handle

• When you have an in-demand skill

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Contracts

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Contracts

• Get legal advice - don't do it by yourself

• Optional scope contracts

• Tools: EchoSign for digital signatures

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Traditional vs. Timeboxed

Optional scope contracts:

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Project management

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Project management

• Agile is aligned with open source development

• 2 week iterations

• 3 person teams (PM, dev, design)

• Tools: ClueMapper, Google Docs, Dropbox

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Resource planning

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Global Team

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Global team strategies

• Group team members in same or close timezones

• Make sure everyone is on IRC and uses it

• Set up a mailing list for each new project

• Skype calls every week to touch base

• Issue tracker (ClueMapper/Trac)

• Version control (Subversion/Bazaar)

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Pros/cons of subcontractors

• Pros

• Only pay them when you have work

• Can find top talent, specialists

• Cons

• More expensive

• Can be difficult to retain if not enough work

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Services

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Services

• Development

• Training

• Support

• HostingRecurring revenue

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Training

• Private onsite training

• Public training

• Training as part of a conference

• Online training

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Support

• Open source = no guarantees

• Retainer = insurance policy

• Keeps the conversation going

• Upsell support before the project is complete

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Hosting

• Easier to support if on servers you control

• Distribute benefits across all customers

• Upselling opportunities

• Steady source of recurring revenue

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Recruiting

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Recruiting

• Read blogs

• Attend sprints

• Elastic staff

• User groups

• Internships

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Finances

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Finances

• Get a good bookkeeper

• Seek next project while still on first project

• Find sponsors to fund open source dev

• Tools: Quickbooks

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Open source citizen

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Open source citizen

• writing documentation

• contributing code

• serving on board

• sponsoring sprints

• organizing user group

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Thanks! Questions?32

Stay in touch

• Email: natea (at) jazkarta (dot) com

• Twitter: twitter.com/natea

• Blog: blog.jazkarta.com

• IRC: irc.freenode.net/natea

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Books & Resources

• e-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

• Manage It! by Johanna Rothman

• Ship It! by Richardson/Gwaltney

• Art of Agile Development by Shore & Walden

• Making Things Happen by Scott Berkun

• Computer Consultant's Guide by Janet Ruhl

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