Open Source Venture Fund Unveiled

prostoalex writes "Over the next three years Simula Labs will finance 6-8 open source startups with $10-15 million it got from venture capitalists, News.com says. The venture financing enterprise is mostly interested in hiring the founders of the project and selling the services based around product infrastructure. LogicBlaze and Mergere are among the first startups who got financing from Simula Labs, and it looks like a logo that incorporates orange and brown is required before you apply."

Comments

Site Design & Structure

[xombo]

Both sites seem to be structured in the same manner with similar page titles and similar wording for content.

The transition from project to services

[G4from128k]

I wonder how these ventures will work out. The transition from being an independent OSS project to being a captive part of a services organization can't be easy. Holding customers' hands as they deploy last-year's release is very different from writing the next bit of cool code.

The solution will be to find a management staff that can balance software development tasks versus providing services -- keeping both the project personnel and the customers happy. I'm guessing that they will do this by putting project people into "guru" positions and doing the bulk of the sales and service work with an army of hired underlings.

This could lead to some intriguing possibilities..

[Billy the Mountain]

Think about it. A new category of startup: The Open Source Startup Model. As any self-respecting Slashdot denizen, I naturally haven't read the article. Others mentioned that 10 million spread among 6-8 startups would not be enough to fully fund a startup. I agree, but if I was running such a fund, I don't think I'd want all of the startup funding coming from one primary source anyway. The OSS teams I'd want to finance would be those that already had something going, i.e. some software already in place. Then I'd want to at least see a plan for filling in the "Step 2: ?????". Why finance something that already exists? Because you don't want to start with a just a concept that may or may not work. Also, you already have a potential customer base (just have to figure out a way to not piss them off).

What would be the advantage of an OSS startup? It's a great way to leverage goodwill--people like OSS software and its developers. Also, OSS usually contribues to the greater good of society.

What existing projects would be good candidates for this? I'd like to hear from others on this. My votes would be for 1. Mambo--PHP Web Content Management. 2. Nagios--enterprise system monitoring and alerting software.

I don't think I'd be willing to fund, say, PHP or MySQL because they are too mature to benefit from $1-2 M, plus MySQL already is an established enterprise.

BTM