CEO Franz Karlsberger on Joining an Open-Source Start-Up to Scale Growth

08/16/23 • 33 min

Franz Karlsberger is the CEO of Amazee.io, an open-source platform that seeks to make developers’ lives easier by abstracting their day-to-day workload. Throughout our conversation, we explore what it means to join an open-source start-up as an external CEO, and why Franz put so much emphasis on go-to-market strategy. Franz also walks through the importance of knowing what open-source business model your company will follow, and how to measure the success of an open-source project.

Listen in as Franz shares some of his most interesting mistakes, what he’d do differently if he could start over, and why Franz feels open-source is more than just a type of software, it’s a company ethos that affects everything down to the team culture.

Highlights:

Franz introduces himself and his company Amazee.io, which is a ZeroOps application delivery platform (00:50)
How Amazee.io went from being a point solution to a platform solution (06:20)
Why Franz was brought in as an external CEO for Amazee.io to accelerate growth (10:03)
How Franz adjusted to working at an open-source start-up and what that learning curve was like for him (11:47)
The importance of open-source at Amazee.io and why it is baked into their core values and ethos as a company (15:30)
How the go-to-market model differs for Amazee.io’s cloud offering versus their managed offering (17:51)
Franz describes some of the most interesting mistakes he’s made and what he’s learned from them (23:25)
Franz’s views on measuring the success of an open-source project (26:29)
How listeners can connect with Franz and learn more about Amazee.io (32:37)

Links:

Franz

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franzkarlsberger/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/fkarlsberger
Company: https://www.amazee.io/

Highlights:

Franz introduces himself and his company Amazee.io, which is a ZeroOps application delivery platform (00:50)
How Amazee.io went from being a point solution to a platform solution (06:20)
Why Franz was brought in as an external CEO for Amazee.io to accelerate growth (10:03)
How Franz adjusted to working at an open-source start-up and what that learning curve was like for him (11:47)
The importance of open-source at Amazee.io and why it is baked into their core values and ethos as a company (15:30)
How the go-to-market model differs for Amazee.io’s cloud offering versus their managed offering (17:51)
Franz describes some of the most interesting mistakes he’s made and what he’s learned from them (23:25)
Franz’s views on measuring the success of an open-source project (26:29)
How listeners can connect with Franz and learn more about Amazee.io (32:37)

Links:

Franz

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franzkarlsberger/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/fkarlsberger
Company: https://www.amazee.io/

Previous Episode

Two-time founder Vlad A. Ionescu on finding success after repeated entrepreneurial failures

It’s kind of a cliche, Vlad A. Ionescu, founder and CEO of Earthly, says, but his first attempts to build something really awesome focused on amazing technology. With hindsight, he doesn’t think it’s so surprising that those efforts weren’t successful. It’s not that passion doesn’t matter, but rather that he had to learn to build things that inspired passion from both the market and the builders. We also talked about:

Leaving a job, blowing through his savings, going back to a job before finding entrepreneurial success
Realizing that if he wanted to have the kind of impact on the world that he wanted to, he had to figure out a way to make it as an entrepreneur, because the alternative was climbing the corporate ladder and that didn’t sound like fun
Why it’s important to be brutally honest with yourself and what you suck at
How Vlad finally found success at Shift Left (now Quiet.ai)

I also really liked his ideas about cutting corners — that startups will always have to cut some corners, it’s just up to you to decide which ones to cut.

Highlights:

Vlad recounts lessons learned from early entrepreneurial failures. (2:31)
Taking failure personally to overcome weaknesses (5:19)
Vlad explains what led to his first success with Shift Left (7:40)
Vlad shares his journey from Shift Left to Earthly (13:40)
Why open source? (17:03)
How Vlad and his team built Earthly based on what he learned from building Shift Left (25:07)
Breaking a product down to its components to find more value (31:38)
The Startup Hierarchy of Needs (34:02)

Links:

Vlad

Next Episode

Venture Capitalist Tim Chen on the Nuances of Founding an Open Source Startup

Tim Chen is a Partner at Essence VC and also the Co-Host of the Open Source Startup Podcast. Through these channels, he has the opportunity to speak with a broad variety of open source startups. Throughout our conversation, we explore the patterns that Tim sees in the open source startup space. Tim talked about how too many founders take the decision to build an open source company too lightly and the path that he would take if he were to start a venture-backed open source startup tomorrow. We also discuss the different monetization models of open-source startups and the true business value of an open source project.

Highlights:

Tim introduces himself and describes his role at Essence VC as well as his work as Co-Host of the Open Source Startup Podcast (00:22)
The common patterns that Tim sees having worked with so many open source startups (02:25)
Tim describes the landscape of open source and how it varies from open source projects to venture-backed, open source companies (06:48)
What path Tim would take if he were to start a venture-backed, open source startup tomorrow (09:31)
How Tim views different monetization models and their potential profitability (17:29)
Tim’s views on the pros and cons of an open-core model (20:34)
The business value of an open source project according to Tim (24:47)
How Tim’s evaluation and investing tactics have changed as he’s worked with more open source startups (31:58)
Where listeners can find more information about Tim and learn more about his work (37:47)

Links:

Tim