Matt Yonkovit: 0:00

Hello everyone. Welcome to another Hacking Open Source business podcast. I'm one of the hosts, Matt Yonkovit, the Hoss here at scarf. And then once again, I'm joined by Avi Press, the c e o of scarf. And today we're joined by Maxim Wheatley, who's from, uh, Merico and Maxim. You are the head of Global Marketing and Sales, correct?

Maxim Wheatley: 0:20

That's correct. Thanks for having me today, guys. Okay. Ah,

Matt Yonkovit: 0:23

glad you're here. So we're gonna do something we've never done before on this podcast. We're gonna flip the podcast on its end. We're gonna try something new. We generally close with rapid fire questions, but today, Maxim, you get to be the Guinea pig to try our rapid fire questions first.

Maxim Wheatley: 0:40

Sounds good. Tomia, being in star tops, I feel like I've made a career of being a crash test dummy, so I bring it own. Matt Yonkovit: Alright, So one of the questions we always like to ask is, is there an open source tool that you use on a daily basis that you just couldn't live without besides your own products? Yeah. Um, I don't know if it truly technically counts as an open source tool in the sense of the tech, um, but in the audience for sure, I'm a big fan of the work being done in orbit. Um, I certainly use them quite regularly to just get a better understanding of what's going on. Um, and of course complimentary to that. Um, big fan of what you guys are doing at scarf as well, yielding, that's all these hidden hitting up tus.

Matt Yonkovit: 1:23

Ah, well, well we love that we do . So if you wanna talk more about scarf at any time, feel free to just jump in . But as we continue with our rapid fire questions, um, you are based in Los Angeles, correct? That's correct. Okay. Favorite restaurant in all

Maxim Wheatley: 1:37

of la. Oh, I discovered a new one recently called, uh, mother Wolf, which is unbelievable Italian food. Highly recommend, um, get your reservation early. Okay.

Matt Yonkovit: 1:48

And if you're traveling, is, is Italian foods your go-to? Like, do you seek out those restaurants or is there some other type of cuisine that you are a

Maxim Wheatley: 1:55

big fan of? You know, I'm a, I'm a big fan. I've been lucky enough to travel a lot in my career and I, uh, always enjoy figuring out like what's the kind of local specialty and finding a great version of that. So I was recently in New Orleans for the Apache Con there. Oh yeah. Um, and I found this amazing, like spicy crawfish pie that was so good. Right. Never gonna find that anywhere else. So, uh, that's, that's usually how I like to fly with.

Matt Yonkovit: 2:19

Yeah. I, I think, you know, when you go to certain places, there's just certain cuisine you have to try no matter what. Right, exactly. Like we, we went, we were just in Brussels the other week and you know, Avi, you were like, you know, ah, I need to find some good Belgium food.

Avi Press: 2:34

The mus and fries were incredible in Belgium. I really, yeah, it was great. and Fasm was a great conference for that note. Maybe we

Matt Yonkovit: 2:41

can dig into that later. Yeah. So, um, Maxim, probably the most important question we ever ask, you know, in this rapid fire round is you're, you know, when you go up on the stage, and I know you're at Apache Con and you got to talk at Apache Con before, when you walk up to the stage, what music would you ask them to play as your walkup music to the stage?

Maxim Wheatley: 3:01

It's a, it's a fun question. I, um, I was joking with a friend the other day about how I maybe have this like relentless. Positive and determined, you know, outlook on life. And I always have James Brown playing in my head, so I think it would be a James Brown song. Um, there's one in particular called The Boss, uh Oh yes. Which is an all time classic, um, excellent pick. I use that as a pump up for the toughest meetings. The biggest presentations hasn't failed me yet.

Matt Yonkovit: 3:30

Oh, wow. So there we go. We got James Earl. We're gonna put together a playlist from everybody who comes on and answers that question. It will be epic. Um, we've got all kinds of eclectic music. Right Avi? No, we do, we do indeed. Yeah. I, I don't Did we ever ask you, Avi, what your walkup music would be? I don't know if we did on the show.

Avi Press: 3:48

Uh, not I, no, I don't think we ever did. I mean, we did, we, we, at scarf, we did this like, internal thing where we were talking about all of us talking about what our, our theme song would be. I don't know if we specifically did any kind of walkup music

Matt Yonkovit: 4:00

though. Are you gonna pick one now? Share with the world? Oh gosh, no.. Avi Press: Oh, I'm not ready to Okay. I have to think about, yeah. Yeah. See that's how the rapid fire goes. We don't know where it's gonna go. Mm-hmm. Um, but Maxim, well, while obvious thinking, and maybe he'll come back to us in a second. Yeah. What's your first experience with open source? What was the first, you know, toe dipped into the open source space?

Maxim Wheatley: 4:22

Yeah. I mean, I, I think like many. Um, my, my real kind of first touchpoint with it was understanding what exactly it was and kind of having my mind blown, right? Like, you, like the three of us here definitely understand this wild reality that 90% of software has some substantial open source element to it. Um, and I think once I learned that statistic, I started digging in kind of looking to understand like, what are the kind of hidden, you know, the kind of hidden heroes that are driving all the things I, I use and I depend upon. Um, that was my first kind of flash bulb moment, but I think my most kind of personal like, uh, oh my God, open sources or some moment was, Um, like many people my age, I grew up playing, uh, Microsoft's age of empires like this great, um, strategy game. Yes, and, um, also like many people I ran away from using Microsoft products and found myself loving my MacBook Pro. Um, and a couple years back, I think it was actually during the pandemic, I found myself with more time, like we all did, and I was like, man, I'd love to play Age of Empires again. Um, couldn't find it for MacBook, but found an open source alternative called A zero a e D. Um, and for, for me, you know, I had played with open source before that, um, but it was the most emotional and kind of fun moment of open source for me in playing this open source version. Learning about the people, building it and maintaining it, you know, donating to the project, um, and really seeing like, this is, this is something special, like this is. A group of people who are passionate about something, who want to make sure it exists, make sure it's accessible, keep evolving it. Um, and, and I think for me that was intensely personal cuz it went beyond, like tools went beyond, SaaS went beyond infrastructure and it touched upon something that I grew up with, um, that I had such a personal relationship with. And for me, um, it's experiences like that that are so exciting. Okay.

Matt Yonkovit: 6:30

Great. That's a great answer. You know, I, I mean, I, I, I do a lot of gaming myself. Um, I've got a steam deck, which now Steam Deck is a hundred percent Linux, so, you know, there you go. So now, now there's several games that we'll play on Linux, just an fyi. Um, always fun. Um, but Maxim, continuing with the Rapid Fire, let's say we're going to a conference, we're at the next Apache Con. We're hanging out, we're gonna go have a chat. What's your drink of choice?

Maxim Wheatley: 6:56

Certainly depends on the time of day. Um, I, you can always find me clutching an iced coffee, um, in business hours, Um, but if we're, if we're getting together in the evening, I'm a big fan of drinking like Frank Sinatra, so I love a, you know, a martini, a bourbon, an old fashioned, or a Manhattan, um, depending on how formal or not the vibe is.

Matt Yonkovit: 7:18

Fair enough. Fair enough. And what do you see as one of the common mistakes people make? In the open source business space, maybe you've talked to other founders, you know, other people in your role, do you see like a common pattern of mistakes that people make?

Maxim Wheatley: 7:33

I, I think one that I see the most often, at least from where I sit in the ecosystem is, is really kind of two things. Uh, I think the first is proceeding with too many assumptions and not finding opportunities to ask questions. Um, and that happens on all levels, right? Um, people getting from something as micro as people getting into kind of arguments in, you know, threads because they've not DMed each other to ask a question. Um, all the way up to, um, not talking with users and really kind of digging for the underlying why for certain behaviors or decision. Um, I, I think the other key thing is, and we see this all the time and I'm mindful to do my best not to be one of these people, is people are of course, realizing the business value of open source more than ever, right? We're seeing this kind of renewed excitement of. You know, oh, this thing can really do something. Um, and it can do something to the balance sheet. It can do something to the growth, it can do something to the business itself. And the, the bad part of that, right? There's plenty of good, but the bad part, I think is you get this kind of exploitative taker behavior. Um, and I, I think you see this mistake all over the place where people are always taking, and they're not being mindful of like, that this is a relationship type thing, right? Where you have to, you have to be giving, you have to be bringing value. You have to find ways to, to bring something to the table, whether it's as simple as like positive energy and, you know, good ideas or something as big as, you know, hosting events or contributing to a project. But I think those people who are not recognizing that balance, um, they, they inevitably end up failing or, or at least being someone that they maybe wouldn't want to be. Okay.

Matt Yonkovit: 9:20

Fair enough. Yeah,

Avi Press: 9:22

that's a very good answer. Um, should we, I think maybe, perhaps we should, um, move towards, uh, it would be great for to hear kind of the elevator pitch about what Merico is, uh, for Li I bet a lot of listeners probably aren't familiar and maybe to contextualize all the stuff that we're talking about.

Maxim Wheatley: 9:39

Absolutely. So, yeah, in, in a nutshell, I always like to say that Merico as a company, we are obsessed with pulling out insights from the engineering ecosystem. Um, be that cohosting issue, tracking C I C D, we as a company exist to extract the data from those things and translate them into useful insights to help companies. And open source projects, build better teams, better code, better products. Um, and as we've grown, we've translated this into a variety of products. Um, but it all started for us with, um, our kind of core product, which is extracting insights from the Git history focused on things like productivity, performance, code quality. Um, but in a nutshell that's what we're focused on, is finding opportunities to extract insights from all of this tool link that delivers software, uh, for companies to build better things. Matt, you wanna go next?, . Matt Yonkovit: So with that, source of the tool set? Yeah, so, um, our, our flagship product, um, is Dev Lake, which, you know, I'm proud to have. Been the kind of person launching it. It's one of the most fun parts of my career, to be honest with you. Um, that's 100% open source, um, under the Apache license. Um, we, uh, we launched it about 14 months ago. Um, and then I think around seven months ago, give or take, we um, end up joining the Apache, uh, software foundations incubator program. Um, and that was in, in part, right, there's many benefits and many costs as well that I could talk to for doing that. Um, but one of the benefits for us was, um, for the community and really kind of signaling to them, right, that this is, um, not just some venture backed startup doing go open source as a hobby or as a bait and switch, right? Like this is open source in the truest standard and always will be. Um, certainly could talk to that too about, um, you know, the frustrations I've seen from the community of, you know, open source in name only, or, you know, suddenly finds an opportunity to. Fork or change it in a way that stops it from being that. Um, so that, that was one big factor for us. Certainly.

Matt Yonkovit: 11:58

So with this, you, you know, Apache was really, excuse me, um, a way for you to give comfort to the community and say like, we're in this for the long haul. This isn't something that will go away. Even if we change our business model, it will still be available under that same license

Maxim Wheatley: 12:17

ex. Exactly, exactly. Because I think what we, it has certainly been my experience having spoken with so many developers, um, who are either true open source, you know, is their whole life and career or, um, even at developers at enterprises contributing to open source. Uh, I think a common concern and frustration they have is, you could almost boil it down. I don't want to accidentally be doing free work for something that's gonna become closed source, um, or is going to be, you know, monetized in a way that isn't harmonious with the reason I'm doing this in the first place. Um, I think that's what those concerns boiled down to. So I think, um, whether you're going to the foundation route, um, or whether you're not, and you're open source as a company, and I, I think it's crucial to find ways to not just communicate that this is true open source, here's why, here's how. And it always will be, you know, I think it's important to be consistently laying down kind of reminders and proof points of your commitment to that to ensure that people can feel comfortable not just contributing to it, but relying upon it. Um, finding opportunities to cook it into long-term strategies or architectures. Um, I, I think that's something, you know, a more kind of subtle mistake that I feel. I see people making frequently is, um, finding ways to kind of, uh, maybe spook their audience or spook the community or, uh, maybe just kind of erode their trust that this is what it's, you know, it's gonna be open source forever and really is, um, I

Matt Yonkovit: 13:57

think where they feel no, no one would ever do that, would they? No. No one would ever say that it's gonna be open source forever and then not stick to that. We haven't seen that before.

Maxim Wheatley: 14:10

Oh, yeah.

Matt Yonkovit: 14:13

But No, that makes a lot of sense. Right. Um, so w

Avi Press: 14:16

was that a, was that a concern that your customers were raising before? What was, was, was Merico started with all these pieces open source from the very beginning, or was that something that you moved towards after

Maxim Wheatley: 14:29

launching? It's a great question. So, so open source has been part of our DNA truly since like day zero. Um, and I'll, I'll talk about a bit why. Um, so I always like to talk about, you know, as a company that's fundamentally an analytics company, right? Um, I, I think the lineage is always important and I think we see a lot of, lot of analytics companies that even if they're well intended, have been kind of born out of a very kind of business centric or HR centric perspective. Um, and, and maybe that's not always wrong, but I don't think it's always right. For sure. And where our company was born, um, our co-founder and CTO Heian, um, based here in California with me. Um, he was conducting research at uc, Berkeley, in their PhD computer science program. And the question he was ultimately seeking to answer is, how do you effectively assess and quantify contribution to open source in a way that could translate to better recognition, more effective compensation, um, and more effective allocation of all of these things, right? Um, not all cons contributions are created equal and not all commits are created equal. Um, so how do you account for that? Um, and that was the, the true kind of birth of the company was the pursuit of this answer focused on the open source kind of funding problem. Um, and as we've, as we've grown, I think like any company seeking to grow to great heights, you know, we have large ambitions that are financial. Um, and figuring out how you harmonize that with wanting to also play this kind of open source approach, um, can be challenging. And, you know, I won't lie that, you know, that we've had it figured out from day one, right? We've, we've vacillated between like looking at different iterations of the open core model, different iterations of the open source model, um, and really kind of everything in between. And I think what we've found, um, is that we can ultimately kind of get the best of all worlds by doing what we're doing today, which is having a product like Dev Lake that is. 100% open source will always be a hundred percent open source. Um, and kind of use that as something that's benevolent for the entire ecosystem. Uh, even for the, you know, for our competitors. I think it's benevolent and useful, um, and that this can, this can ultimately drive the bigger picture for us in many different ways. Um, but I would say for us, kind of going back to, you know, kind of the why open source question that's buried in this, um, I think one big part for us that we've learned on our journey doing kind of data and analytics driven technologies is that especially when you're serving, you know, a engineering audience, um, developers are smart people who want to look under the hood, they're skeptical. Um, if they think that something is maybe doing something incorrectly or hiding something from them, it's gonna arouse their suspicions. And rightfully so. So to really kind of put our money where our mouths are to earn their trust, not just win it, but earn their trust. Um, we knew fundamentally that bringing something truly transparent to the table was, um, gonna be critical for our long-term success. So, so for us going this open source kind of first pathway has, um, re really been our love letter to transparency. In many ways, it's, it's been answering this frustration we've seen in the market littered with many analytics products where, um, you know, people don't like, uh, op solution, they don't like black boxes, they don't like something that they maybe can't trust cuz they can't see how it's working. What better way to solve for that than going completely open source, completely transparent. Um, so that's, that's really kind of what fundamentally led us to this, uh, pathway today.

Matt Yonkovit: 18:32

So Maxim, let me ask you this question. So just to maybe take a step back here, what is the main kind of like business model? What are you, what are you selling from a, a Merico perspective? Um, I know like Dev Stream, dev Lake are open source, but are you monetizing those or are those just components that you use in your product that you're actually selling?

Maxim Wheatley: 18:53

So, it's a great question. So, so today, dev Stream and Dev Lake are open source and Unmonetized. Um, and that will stay the case for some time. Um, as we've been building the Dev Lake community, um, and the user base, uh, worldwide, we've um, identified some opportunities to remove kind of the headaches of implementation and management. Um, we've had certainly kind of some of our larger enterprise users ask for more support than make sense to give for free. Um, and they're happy to pay for it. So we're actually in the process right now of really kind of putting together a product strategy of, you know, what does kind of a managed, hosted version of Dev Lake look like. Uh, so we plan to launch that most likely in Q4 of this year, um, where everyone will still be able to use Dev Lake for, for free as it is today. Um, that will remain unchanged, but we will be debuting, um, uh, a paid solution for those who maybe want to go a bit further, get better support, um, maybe more customization. Um, we're still in the figuring out mode for that. Um,

Matt Yonkovit: 20:02

but, but your main product is Merico Analytics, right? And that that's what most people are purchasing from you today?

Maxim Wheatley: 20:09

That's correct. So, so yeah, to speak to the relationship there, cuz there's so many complex pieces of this, and I'll do my best to articulate it simply. So, uh, so Dev Stream in a nutshell is our answer to the question of, well, if I don't have a strong DevOps tool chain, how do I get started? Uh, dev stream's our answer to that. It's a open source package manager that lets smaller or less mature teams set up, connect and replicate a great DevOps tool chain. Dev Lake is the answer to the question of, well now I've got this tool chain, I've got great processes and a strong team, how do I make sure that we're doing. The right things and that our process is working and that we're not running into hidden bottlenecks, and that when we're finding successes, we know why and can scale them. Uh, dev Lake is the answer to that question. Then we do have our open core, uh, proprietary product, which is Dev Insight, um, which is we're, we're monetizing today. Um, that's much more oriented around kind of, um, contribution analysis, code, quality signals, static analysis, um, reports and kind of permissioning that's more oriented towards kind of the, the executive user, um, in larger companies and the relationship between all three of these things, right, is if, if we execute how we hope we can and, and we are today with Dev Stream, we'll be helping bring the kind of engineering ecosystem at large, up to speed with the latest and greatest with DevOps tooling with Dev Lake. We're gonna help them to maximize the impact of that and get a complete read on their delivery process.. And then our hopeful expectation is that companies that have maximized DevLINK are naturally going to want to start looking deeper, right? They're gonna want to start understanding, you know, what's actually going on in our code base. How good is our code? Um, where are their kind of quality concerns or security risks? And, you know, I think if we play our cards right, they will believe in us. They'll trust us. They'll know, we know what we're doing. Um, they'll continue using DevLINK and then they'll attach dev insights to their process to get, you know, a truly complete picture.

Matt Yonkovit: 22:24

This isn't interesting because this is a very classic open core, but there's a nuance here that I wanted to point out because it sounds like dev stream is part of the infrastructure, the glue, but on its own it's, it's more of just a requirement for you to do everything else. So open sourcing that smaller component is so, is a common tactic a lot of companies will do because it has value as a standalone, but maybe it's not part of the broader product strategy. And that's how a lot of companies start in the open source space is have one or two tools that are ancillary to their product space and then get that out there because they need that for ultimately what they're trying to commercialize.

Maxim Wheatley: 23:05

Exactly. And, and something you said there that I really liked is that, that they stand alone. And I think that's such an important piece, right? Is you don't want to be giving out free printers and then charging thousands of dollars for ink. Um, I think that's baby you

Matt Yonkovit: 23:20

do. I mean, . Yeah. I mean like,

Maxim Wheatley: 23:24

but, but, um, you know, it's something I'm, I'm, I'm very proud of, you know, our whole team for kind of figuring out, and I think is reflective of our own personal values as a collective is that, um, none, none of what we're doing is kind of exploitative in that sense, right? Where it's like you can use those free things on their own, maximize their capability forever, um, without paying us ascent. Um, and I think that's a good thing. However, you know, for those companies that are looking to really become data-driven engineering organizations, um, we have the full set of solutions for them. you know, one of which they can, uh, they can ultimately pay for. Um, but I, I do like that point, right? That, um, it's my personal values that, you know, I love seeing the companies that are, are, are not necessarily kind of creating this kind of, uh, you know, printer and cartridge model that, you know, kind of tricks people into using something that they'll have to pay for to really see value. Hmm.

Avi Press: 24:26

Um, one thing that I, I find very interesting about, uh, the path, uh, that your team has taken with this open source strategy is that with both of these projects, you have donated them to, um, two different open source software foundations. Um, I think a lot of the stuff that you said earlier, you know, with the, you know, the commitment to transparency, these kinds of things, it, it really aligns with those values and it kind of even goes a step further than if you, you know, were just working on them in your own, like GitHub project for instance. Um, , I have so many questions along this front, but maybe what I'll start with, what, uh, is, is going that step further something that has had concrete business impact? Or is it

Maxim Wheatley: 25:11

more of a, um, more, more just value alignment? So I think today I would say the, what I've experienced with our business is that the, the value has certainly been, um, more abstract and less concrete. Um, but I, I do think it's there. Um, I, I think there is kind of this subtle but important kind of, um, Cred, you know, kind of value through credential, um, kind of value through reputation that has helped us to, to maybe grow faster than we might have otherwise. Um, and I think this is especially true for enterprise contributions, um, which is something I think every open source is Exci Project is excited to get. Um, and it was one of my learnings, um, talking with one of our mentors at the Apache Software Foundation, um, Sharon Fogger, um, who's a wonderful woman. Um, she, uh, really kind of educated me on some of the kind of more subtle values of foundation participation. And one of those which really stood out to me was that there's, there's actual kind of legal protections that come for the contributors if they're making contributions to an Apache project. Or a CNCF project, right. Um, versus one that is in kind of open source snowman's land. Um, and this was kind of a epiphany for me in realizing that, yeah, like if you have, if you some enterprise dev making a contribution to a. Project that isn't underneath the umbrella of a foundation and something disastrous happens, right? Like for whatever reason, you're responsible for like a huge enterprise data leak and it results in all these big lawsuits or even criminal prosecution, right? Um, somehow or another you can find yourself exposed to that as a developer. Um, now I don't think this happens all the time, right? But, um, I think it's a real concern. Um, and, and what I learned is that for the most part, um, I can't speak to the legal kind of, uh, subtleties of this, but my understanding is that that's one kind of really important thing that the foundation participation brings to the contributors who help evolve these projects is it gives them that protection to know that if they're proceeding in good faith, making good contributions, they're never gonna be punished for their good work. You know? Um, and, and I think that's, uh, underappreciated. Um, one of the values that has come with that, Hmm.

Avi Press: 27:38

Yeah, I'd be, I'd be curious to, to learn more about the, the mechanics of that. Cuz I was always under the impression that, you know, since open source is provided with, you know, there's no warranty, um, given I'm, I, I'm not familiar with the mechanics that could lead a contributor to wind up in trouble, but I see Matt

Matt Yonkovit: 27:55

groaning, maybe you, you've seen except potentially in Europe with the new legislations that are going on

Maxim Wheatley: 28:00

there. Oh,

Avi Press: 28:01

interesting. Okay. Maybe, maybe that's a, uh, uh,

Matt Yonkovit: 28:05

a topic for the next lawyer that's a whole nother like deep dive . Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, I mean I think that there are, there are some things from an Apache or a foundation perspective that you get as a contributor. Um, you know, legal protections, I'm not a hundred percent sure on either, because it is, a lot of it's as is warranty, so we don't warranty it, use it at your own risk type of a thing. Um, but I think that there is some potential comfort in. ossification, right? Like, oh, definitely. You're, you're, you're behind the organization. You've got the, you know, like if everybody goes after everybody, they're not gonna go after you as an individual. They're gonna go after the organization first or foremost. So I think that, I think there is some benefit to that. Yeah, that definitely makes sense. Definitely. Um, but what, what, what's, what's maybe even more interesting about this is the donation to multiple foundations, which, you know, Apache and CNCF are vastly different. And you know, like, I don't know if you're a part of the decision on where to donate, which of these, but when you're evaluating like, which place each piece of software should end up, how do you make that decision?

Maxim Wheatley: 29:16

Great question. Yeah, it's a really good question. Um, I certainly can't speak to why, why we chose each one. Um, especially with Dev Stream, though I can talk to both. Um, I was part of the decision but not the decision maker. Um, so I just want to kind of caveat my answer with that. Um, But when we, when we kind of came around to looking at this, there were a few important factors that really kind of played a significant role. Um, the first and most basic right is where, where do we maybe already have relationships? And in our case with the Apache Foundation, um, we already had some users who were in the Apache Foundation. Um, we developed some personal relationships with them who became mentors. Um, they were kind of recruiting Dev Lake, specifically Um, and then when we looked to see like, okay, do we agree with them, um, we looked at things like, what, what are the kind of, um, like what are the kind of focus areas and kind of, uh, values in that ecosystem? And do they align with our product? And I think what we looked at in Apache for Dev Lake that we liked, what we saw was it, it did seem like there was a consistent kind of theme of. Kind of quantitative and kind of data driven products that were had kind of aspirations to be infrastructure that are focused on kind of enabling kind of developer productivity or, you know, developer capabilities. And, um, I think for us that that aligned nicely with what we wanted DevLINK to become and is in the process of becoming. Um, so was that kind of value alignment there that made it make sense? And with Dev Stream and cncf? I think, um, there, there were kind of two key factors that were the deciding piece there from my perspective. Um, One very basic one, right, is it's, it's better to get more exposure to a larger part of the community. And rather than putting all our eggs in one basket, um, it made sense to, you know, go to a different foundation to be more visible. Um, that's, that's like a really simple but honest part of that equation. Um, but I think on a higher level, I'm more strategic with Dev Stream and cncf, our vision for dev. is that it can help developers discover like the best tools, right? Um, and the best tools are inevitably part of the, the cloud infrastructure, the cloud native tools. Um, and we felt like it was just gonna be a good home for it, where if we could ultimately turn Dev Stream into this kind of access point to get the best of the CN CF ecosystem and beyond, um, and maximize their capabilities, um, and make sure they're discovering these things in a very crowded space, um, we, we felt like that would be a good home for it. So, um, so I think for us it came down to, you know, some basic personal things, some values, things. Um, we certainly looked at the nuances of the licenses. Um, that's something I can't really speak to in much detail. Um, but we're fortunate where we have a lawyer as one of our co-founders, uh, Roland. Um, who took a close look, um, worked with one of our mentors, Heather Meer, who, um, is a well-known expert in that space, uh, to just really understand, um, you know, are these licenses going to be kind of harmonious with our vision for what these things should become in and of themselves, as well as in the context of, you know, our long-term company building. And thankfully, the answer to both seem to point to yes, and we've been happy with the, the experiences on both ends so far.

Avi Press: 32:56

Maybe let me, uh, one, one final question on, on this, um, um, topic of foundations, maybe a little bit more of a spicy one. When should a, when should a startup or a company not donate a project to a foundation?

Maxim Wheatley: 33:09

It's a really good question. Um, so I'll, I'll start off by answering that with like, what have been kind of my own frustrations, right? I'm, I'm like very happy to talk openly about that. Um, I think on the, on the kind of development and deployment side, right? Um, you, you have to adhere to a governance process related to your releases that doesn't necessarily give you a great capability to like ship off and ship small, um, you know, and, and re kind of be, for lack of less cliched words, like, uh, kind of makes it harder to be truly agile and be truly responsive to your users. Um, I, I know that's a frustration probably shared by everybody. Um, the, the benefits of that though come from a, a rigorous QA process and one that accounts for security and compliance and the user's best interests. Um, so, so classic pros and cons, right? Um, you know, I think another piece, um, that I've found challenging is, Being someone that's focused on growing our technology, um, which falls into sales and marketing, right? Um, you, you have a new set of limitations in how you can speak about your project, um, how you can present it from everything from logos to, you know, branding. Um, and, and that can present some challenges, right? Um, uh, a very, very specific example is being part of the incubator. Um, if we're, you know, showing ourselves as Apache Deli, um, we have to put in parenthesis after incubating if there's line edge or you know, anything public, right? To make sure that we're indicating that like, Hey, this isn't yet a full-blown accept. top level Apache project. Um, it's still in the process of being vetted and developed. Um, and I, I always kind of joke about that, that that's, um, you know, it's like, you know, to use kind of a, a bit of a, a lame, you know, analogy, I would say as a marketer, that's like going out on a date and you're driving a Ferrari, but you've got like a student driver sticker on the back of it, you know, and it's, yeah, it immediately makes you less cool. Um, it makes it feel less legit, um, . So, you know, it's like subtle things like that have been a challenge. Um, but, you know, ultimately good things, I think.

Matt Yonkovit: 35:39

Well, yeah, it's interesting because I've worked with Apache Foundation on, uh, projects before and worked at companies that have had that. And it's interesting because there are certain things that you just don't assume, right? So you donate a project, you're no longer really allowed or should say. The creators of that project, you have to say like the original creators of that project, you know, because then it's, it, it, it's, there's this, these weird rules. And here's the thing. There are people who will call you out on 'em. Mm-hmm. and, and, and it's, and not everyone's consistent about their call out. So it's, it's a very interesting ecosystem. I mean, good and bad. Um, so I, I think that that's, that's a really good analogy though, you know, uh, the student driver logo, . Yeah. You know, um, but, you know, be, be, because you brought up some of the limitations on sales and marketing. I, I don't know, Maxim, did you know that I., you know, because in the open source space, sales and marketing, it isn't always the, the, the hot topic. People don't always love to talk sales and marketing cause it's so technical. So I actually have a sales and marketing hat that I wear sometimes. I don't know if you knew that. Did you know that? Maxim Wheatley: I I didn't. But that makes sense. Yeah. So, so in the open source space, it's, it's the evil super villain hat here. Um, because anytime I talk about sales and marketing, everyone in the ecosystem thinks like, Ooh, icky. You know, I don't like to hear that. Um, but we're all about the open source business stuff here. So we wanted to dig into that. And since you brought it up, it is an apropo time to kind of dig in because your experience in background is more on the sales marketing side and open source is relatively new in the last few years to you.

Maxim Wheatley: 37:17

It is. That's correct. Now

Matt Yonkovit: 37:19

you have to admit coming in from a classic open source or a non-op open source space and coming into the open source space and trying to sell free is, is really weird. Right? I mean, you know, like, how was that experience for you? Like, like I know my first foray into o open source was just that crazy kind of like, how does this work? And nothing works the way that it does in a classic business.

Maxim Wheatley: 37:44

It's, it's definitely an interesting one. And I think in some cases, right, growing these things can, when you're running into obstacles, it can be very draining, right? This idea that you're struggling to, to sell something that's free right. Is so frustrating, right? Where you're like, we're bringing, we're bringing value, we're giving it to you for free. Um, there's no ask and you still don't want to, you know, when you have those moments, right? It's, it, it, it can be very frustrating. Um, the, the thing I would say is like a preamble tool of this too. Cause I. I do see this all the time, right? That people, otherwise very talented people, maybe people who would excel in sales and marketing, um, they, they feel this kind of dogma, you know, or stigma to it. Um, it, it feels a little gross or chy to them. And I'll tell you the truth for, for me, for a long time, it felt the same way. Um, you know, I did my, um, my early career was in venture capital. Then as a kind of technical co-founder building consumer electronics. You know, my academic background is in cognitive science. I never necessarily thought that I would be doing like sales or marketing or being like a business guy, at least in that sense. And what I've really found exciting and motivating as someone doing kind of sales and marketing now, an open source is to think of it so differently, right? I think the mistake people make is when they think of it as this transactional thing. And in that sense, it is gross, right? Um, But instead, um, where we've really found a tremendous amount of acceleration, growth, and excitement is when we take the perspective as a team that instead. we're, we're problem solvers with a particular expertise. And we're consultants looking to enable people. And what I mean by that is rather than approaching our users and saying like, you know, hey, like we want to figure out how to one way or another monetize you, right? Um, instead we're coming to the conversation first ostensibly as sales conversations, right? Um, but we're coming to the conversation. Hey, we've been banging our head against this problem for four years. Um, and then some, we've seen every way it can be done wrong. We've also seen how it can be done, right? And we want to help you avoid those headaches and get it right. Um, that's where we kick off the relationship. Um, and, and for me, you know, it sounds so simple and so obvious, but I, I feel like we, we weren't doing it for a while. I feel like I see so many projects and businesses not doing it today. Um, and that would be my kind of key advice to get around that blockade in both the personal level and a practical level, like personally. Now you're no longer this, you know, cheesy suited, used car salesman. You know, you're a, you're a product oriented person. That's a problem solver. Um, that's exciting. And then when you transition that into a kind of a, you operationalize that, um, you suddenly unlock the floodgates in terms of, you know, your pipeline, your meetings, your schedule, because you're, you're really kind of leading with value. And I think that's where open source can be so powerful, right? Is you're, you're giving them value straightaway. Um, then as you look to evolve that your sales process is showing them how they extract even more value from that, how they can avoid headaches, how they can get it right. Um, and I think if you stay true to that, um, it's, it's quite hard to make mistakes. Um, fingers crossed, you know, I don't feel like . Yeah.

Matt Yonkovit: 41:25

Well it goes to the old, old adage, right? It's, you know, uh, helping will sell, selling won't help. Yes. Right. And you know that, that, that's a really key thing for a lot of folks to understand. And there's something that you mentioned that is also really critical. It's not about, you know, the transactional, it's about the relationship. It's about building a relationship. And we use relationship in a lot of different terms, but it's how do you give them something that they can use without necessarily paying, but then give them, you know, a bit more if they're willing to pay? And how do you figure out where those lines are? And, and a lot of that comes down to trust and how do you get people to trust you? And in your case, like how are you building that

Maxim Wheatley: 42:11

trust? It's a really good question. So I, I've been fortunate enough where in my career, you know, I led a 30 person sales team for a Fortune 200 company. You know, I've had a over a hundred million dollar pnl. So I was doing this at like real scale. And, um, I think the, I think the kind of key thing that I would say is critical to get right, um, and I've coached all my kind of people with this key thing is know, know when to say you can't do something and know when to say that you don't know or don't have a good answer. Um, that's where trust is built straight away, in my opinion. Um, and it's where we've certainly found with, with Dev Lake where a lot of our success has come in, right, is is making it very clear like what this thing doesn't do, what it can't do, where it's gonna fail you if you do this, um, That's, that's kind of part one I think in, in building trust. I think, um, part two, you know, in those kind of relationships is, is really kind of seeking to understand. And that's the other kind of key coaching that I would give to anyone looking to excel in this. And, and what I mean by that is if you try to just stray away, wedge your solution into what you think you're seeing, um, you might be right, but more often than not, you're gonna be wrong. And you have to understand the underlying why they've decided to take half an hour out of their day to get on a call, to talk to you about an open source data platform. Why, um, what are the big things they're looking to accomplish? And you have to dig into that to really start understanding like what are the underlying motivations like are, because it's, it's not, it's likely not gonna be what you're thinking. And I think you see so many salespeople fail so badly when they come in with a talk track. They come in with an agenda. They come in with their assumptions. They think they know the business, they think they understand the problems. And sh they probably do on a lot of levels, but if they don't lead by seeking to understand, um, they're, they're inevitably gonna go wrong. And for me, that's where the magic pixie dust has been on all of the biggest deals I've ever done, is you're, you're digging for the why. Um, especially when you've got multiple stakeholders. You're digging for the why on all levels, right? You're looking at headaches on a day-to-day basis. How can you solve those and what are the things that are really frustrating them? You're looking at really big picture business things like what's their company as a whole looking to accomplish this year or next? And how can you play into that? And then on a personal level, right, this is, this is the magic pixie dust, right? Everyone has their own personal goals. Um, and sometimes those can be a little Machiavellian, but sometimes they can be very, um, You know, wholesome and, and real, and you wanna figure out what that is too, right? Maybe, maybe underlying this, like they're saying, Hey, I'm looking at this analytics product, but the real reason I'm looking at it is because I would like to figure out how I can become the VP of open source next year, or I'd like to figure out how I can add five people to my headcount that no one's given me the kind of budget to do right now. Or, you know, maybe if you're really speaking privately and candidly with people, they're like, Hey, I'm looking to transition to a new job next year. And I'd love to be able to kind of quantify and articulate my accomplishments. And this is, this is something I see as being able to do that. And what I've always coached, you know, my, uh, my own salespeople to do, and I do think it works, is if you are meticulous about really figuring out like what are those kind of day-to-day wise, what's the big picture company? Why? And then most importantly and most frequently overlooked, what's that kind of personal why, you know, for each stakeholder. If you can find a way to, in a non bullshit way, really address those things, it's gonna be hard for you to lose. Um, and that begins with, you know, being comfortable, saying no, being comfortable, saying what isn't possible, what you can't do, winning trust there, and then being someone who's genuinely interested in understanding. Um, hard to go wrong with those recipes. Yeah, definitely.

Matt Yonkovit: 46:24

I think that, you know, those are two really good pieces of advice. I mean, that, that trust when you have to like be honest about your product and yourself, I call it the Miracle on 34th Street approach where, you know, I don't know if you ever saw that old movie the Santa Claus recommends they go to, not, they're at Macy's, a recommend they go to a different store to get a toy. Right. That builds that trust and it's a great just, you know, clip if you haven't seen it. Just to kind of get that and obviously the solution sale, selling to what is actually the pain. Making sure you can articulate great advice. Yes.

Avi Press: 46:54

Mm-hmm.. Yeah, very much. Agreed. And since you are. You know, the Merico is selling a very, you know, data driven, metric driven, um, platform, and we love getting into metrics and so I'm really curious with metrics app of Yeah. Yeah. Matt put on your metrics app please for this question. Um, , what metrics are you finding, uh, are providing like, you know, maybe outsized impact for people who are using Dev Lake? Um, or, or, or your even the proprietary

Maxim Wheatley: 47:24

platform as well? Yeah. Um, so there's so many answers to that and I'll try and organize them. Um, so I think in the open source conversation, one dashboard that we built with the community for Dev Lake that has really seemingly been a needle mover for a lot of projects is, um, what we like to refer to as like the developer experience dashboard. And that's focused on metrics related to responsiveness. Um, like how quickly are issues answered, how quickly are they resolved? What percentage of prs are properly resolved? Um, how many prs actually make it all the way to the end and into production. Um, metrics related to that, um, have been, I think, really empowering for maintainers and kind of open source leaders. Um, and we've found that that's also been a key piece for kind of enterprise, kind of closed source companies that are engaging with open source. They love this dashboard. Cause I think it helps them to understand on a high level, like the, the health of the community as measured by how responsive it's being. Um, so that's, that's certainly one that we've found has been really exciting. Um, we've also found a tremendous amount of excitement and traction from the, the Dora framework. Um, you know, DevOps research, um, Acquired by Google became this kind of gold standard for assessing DevOps effectiveness. Four key metrics, you know, two categories, right? Velocity and stability. Um, we could talk about that in detail if we want to. Um, but we've, we've found that there's been a great appetite from many companies, uh, who are looking to a, just get a better read on their own processes, um, figure out, you know, do some benchmarking, figure out if they're performing at the level they think they are, and if not, why not? Um, those DORA metrics have been a real kind of game changer and we've, we've found that companies are using that as a starting place, and it's a great foundation to start digging deeper. Um, Can you just really quickly describe

Avi Press: 49:28

what the door metrics are for those that

Maxim Wheatley: 49:29

don't know? Yeah. So, um,, Matt Yonkovit: yes. I don't know either, Avi. So don't, uh, I don't feel so bad., even though I have the hat out. I don't know . So I'll, I'll do a, I'll do my best to kind of do like a quick, uh, two minute TED talk here on this. Um, for our listeners. So, so the, the Dora Framework, um, comes from a research group that was ultimately acquired by Google. Um, and these researchers were trying to answer the question of, You know, how do you kind of predict the success of a software team? Um, how do you determine whether they're doing a good job from a delivery perspective, um, and what are the metrics that correspond to that? And they researched, uh, well over 10,000 teams. Um, they say so, and I believe them. Um, and the, the kind of the result of that research became the DORA framework. And the Dora framework is four key metrics and it's focused on two key areas, um, the velocity of the team and the stability of the outcomes. And those four key metrics are essentially kind of deployment frequency. Change failure rate, um, how quickly you're responding to change failure. Um, and in essence, what the framework is really kind of doing is, and it's the reason I like it, is I always talk about how it's sufficiently abstract that it's difficult to game. And what I mean by that is, you know, if you're just looking to reduce change failure rate, right? Um, there's not many behaviors that you can do to. Push that metric, they're gonna be bad things. Right? Um, whereas if you simplify it to the most simple possible thing, right, of saying we're defining success by lines of code. Well, surely you're gonna find people just finding ways to be more verbose and split things apart, produce more lines. Um, but it's hard to game a metric like that. And that's one thing I like about it. The, the other thing that I love about it is it's, um, it's also sufficiently actionable, which is this almost like impossible middle point where, you know, it's sufficiently abstract that it's not gonna lead to kind of perverse behaviors. Um, but it's sufficiently actionable that it's not going to just be this. Thing that you're like, oh, great, like we have 600,000 units of money. Like what do we, is that good? Is it a lot? Is it, you know, it, it's something that's actionable enough where they can see, here's where we stand and we have some good ideas as to how we can respond to it. Um, so, so that's kind of a fast and furious kind of explanation of the Dora framework. Um, but it's, it's something that I think drives a culture of improvement. Um, it's, I think well understood by the community and in general. Um, and if it's not well understood once they dive into it, I think it's something that they can feel comfortable and confident in seeing that it's been kind of vetted by the best in the business. It's, it's kind of, um, accepted and evangelized by some smart people. Um, it's not perfect, right? Nothing is, but it, of course, for us it's been this kind of a magic kind of intersection of all the right things. Um,

Matt Yonkovit: 52:37

now Maxim for, from a business perspective though, tho those are metrics that, you know, you're recommending to other folks look at, but personally from a sales marketing perspective, what are the metrics that you are paying attention to? What's like the, the top one that you're just always kind of like browsing, like on a weekly basis, daily basis, especially basis incubating project. Yes,

Maxim Wheatley: 52:54

yes. Yeah, I mean, I, I think I, I have several kind of key, you know, I always think about it, right as a doctor, you know, you're looking at height, weight, you know, blood pressure, heart rate, you know, all these like high level signals that can. Not necessarily give you diagnostic capability, but they can give you a sense of whether this person is doing well or not. Um, and, and those metrics for me, like if I take the equivalent right, my kind of, uh, immediate physical exam metrics to check in on things are, um, are slack growth. So, you know, are we having new developers and new users come into the slack? Um, that tells me a few good things, right? It means it's discoverable, it means they're engaged enough that they care. Um, and it means that the community itself is growing. And, and that's kind of a crucial kind of top of funnel thing. Um, I look at things like new contributors, right, which can tell us whether or not we're being discovered in the right orbits from an open source perspective, and whether or not our documentation, our onboarding, our first issues are good enough. That they're, you know, welcoming to, to new contributors. That's a key thing. Um, I certainly look at, um, I certainly look at kind of retention, right? Um, and, and figuring out like, where, where are we suddenly losing people's interests or enthusiasm or where, where are they dropping off and figuring out why. Um, and it's not always like a science, right? It's sometimes a bit of detective work. Um, But that kind of retention piece is key, is figuring out like, how are you, um, are you doing the things that kind of keep people, um, interested and, and excited? And there's a few kind of proxy measures I use for that. You know, like, um, sometimes things as simple as like, uh, posts on Slack, getting a lot of emoji responses like are, are huddles on Zoom, like having good registration levels, um, or people sharing it on Twitter, like the, those are good proxy signals for engagement. Um, and then with our power users or enterprise users, like how quickly are they responding to us when we, you know, check in with them? Um, tho those, those kind of things are really key. Um, but I'm, in our stage of the game, I'm very focused, certainly on kind of like top of funnel things for lack of less businessy phrases where it's like mm-hmm , how, how much visibility are we getting and how consistently, um, and how much is that translating into. Clones, um, how much is it translating into new Slack users? Um, I used to pay quite close attention to stars, but, um, I think what I've found, which maybe is not such a unique experience, is our growth in the first four months really corresponded to the star growth. Right? Um, we went from, you know, a hundred to a thousand stars on launch week, um, and then we gradually kept building towards 2000. Um, and, and I could say from the ins outside, you know, from the inside, it felt to me like our growth corresponded to that chart. Um, but since then, our kind of stars have somewhat, you know, plateaued. Um, but the good news is, is that our growth has like gone on a skyrocket since. And I, I just think that's an interesting point, um, which is to say that I'd love for our stars to keep growing and I'm sure they. Um, but that it stopped becoming kind of a useful measure, um, around three or four months in. Yeah, I think a

Matt Yonkovit: 56:22

lot of people start like the, the, the ones you get early are the ones who are gonna be more looking at code deeply, whereas you might get more users as you go on because I think that's a misconception that it's not a one-to-one, right? Just because you are a user or you've value the product or you know, the tools doesn't necessarily mean you value them enough to go out and build from source or maybe even look at the source code. You, you end up getting 10, 20 times the number of users than you do people who will actually go to the repositories. Yes. Mm-hmm.. Um, you know, and I think that that's a really interesting thing. Now you did bring up that kind of top of funnel and, you know, I, I, I wanna, I wanna bring that up because this is an interesting question and, um, I wasn't gonna give Avi the last word here, but I think I'm gonna steal Avi from Avi the last word. Cause you brought up the funnel, you know, and, and I'm curious, um, You know, when you're talking about, you know, that funnel, you're talking about the awareness side, which is great, which is exactly what you know we're talking about, is the more people in the community, the more potential later on that they become customers. Right? I mean, that's. bottom line in a, in rough nutshell. But the thing is, it's like lots of people question mark customers, right? And the question mark, that middle section is the one that always gets you and that's the make or break, right? From a, from a commercial company. And so right now I'm, I'm curious, um, are there indicators you're looking f at right now that are in that kind of question mark phase, which is, you know, like, uh, here's these users. How do I know when they might potentially be ready to be a customer and I should talk to 'em? Um, are there things or metrics you're looking at? Are there indicators? Are you using the normal kind of like marketing technique? So you know, oh, here we have this, you know, qualified lead and we're going to score it. And then it eventually becomes an MQL marketing qualified lead for those who are listening, and then eventually we become a sales qualified lead. Are, are you following that same sort of like classic dynamic or is it a little different?

Maxim Wheatley: 58:19

So, so today we're not using that approach. Um, For, for many reasons. I think one of which is also just team size, right? Where, um, absolutely. You know, I think, um, as, as we evolve that might become necessary, um, the, the things that I'm really looking for. So to fir to answer your first question about kind of what are we looking for that indicates whether that kind of like middle of funnel, kind of no man's land is being bridged effectively. Um, the, the things that we're really looking for that I think give us a good indication of that is, um, you know, are, are the, are the users really investing in the technology and the platform and finding, finding good questions? So what I mean by that right, is, um, you know, if someone's just like found a easy, fast way to deploy it, um, they haven't really pushed it, um, and they've found some utility in it. Um, they, they may or may not stay. And it's hard to, hard to say whether they will. Um, but where we find the most successful long-term relationships coming is when. You know, they, they start coming, you know, to the conversations by saying, you know, like, oh, we, you know, we've already done this, we've already done that. Um, we'd like for it to do this, but haven't figured out how. Um, I, I think when they, when they've got that engaged with the technology, um, for us that's like a almost guarantee that they're gonna stick around and be a valuable user. Um, and I think, you know, as kind of a follow up to that, when, when they start asking you for specific types of support or customization or something, right? Um, those then become kind of the, the stars that form the constellation of the smart monetized strategy, right? Where you can start figuring out, look, okay, all these people who are just using it and probably wouldn't want to pay a cent for it, um, they're not gonna ask these challenging questions. They're not gonna seek like, Extra capabilities because they aren't so deeply invested in it. But the, the conversations where you can tell that they've really started plumbing this into their workflows, um, and they're trying to figure out how to live with it long term. And the signal for that is that they're figuring out what are the blockers of tomorrow? Um, what are the things we're going to want to extend this to? Um, when you can hunt for those kind of questions, um, that's how, you know, you've certainly succeeded in building a great relationship and a good user. Um, and I think it gives you a good indication that there's gonna be opportunity to, to sell value to them long term. Um, exactly as we talked about, right? Where you're not just taking their money, you're giving them a solution they've asked for, um, and they'll be happy to pay you for it. Yeah,

Avi Press: 1:01:03

absolutely. That's a really great, great qualitative metric to look at that. I think that the hard questions being asked is a really, really good one. I've never heard it phrased like that before, but it's very

Maxim Wheatley: 1:01:12

apt. Yeah, yeah,

Matt Yonkovit: 1:01:13

yeah. Well, Maxim. We are out of time. We want to thank you for coming, chatting with us today, talking about all kinds of different things. Um, you know, we do appreciate you lending your expertise and sharing your thoughts on, uh, the open source space and kind of your journey. Um, we, we, we loved

Maxim Wheatley: 1:01:31

having ya. I love being here. Really grateful for the opportunity to chat with you guys. And Avi, it's always a pleasure and glad to call you one of my friends and colleagues in the open source universe and, um, oh, very much likewise. Very much. Yeah. Um,

Avi Press: 1:01:48

yeah, and I guess we'll, uh, we will have to, uh, have your, uh, colleague Kohan for part two very soon,

Maxim Wheatley: 1:01:54

so, uh, stay tuned for that. I think that'll be fun. He'll, uh, he'll certainly be able to talk a lot about it from a engineer's perspective too, like what's it's been like growing and building this project. Um, yeah, I'm excited to hear it myself.

Matt Yonkovit: 1:02:09

All right everybody. Thanks for showing up. Don't forget to like, subscribe, follow us, give us comments. Tell us what you'd like to see on future shows. Leave any questions we may have left unturned. We would love to hear from you. Until next time, we'll see you later.