/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/business/technology/2020/05/07/zoom-buys-security-firm-keybase/zoom.jpg "keybase zoom")
This reminds me a little about the OKC sale actually, they had a blog post about why charging for dating sites made them worse that they took down after selling to match (they used to do cool analysis and publish them as blog posts, most of the details ended up in the book a different cofounder published called Dataclysm). It'd be interesting to hear from Chris, but the sale probably restricts public communication? Of course it's easy and probably unfair for me to say these things as an outsider with limited information and no real stake, it's definitely possible I'm wrong about important details that would change my mind. Though the weird Stellar wallet addition implied some vision/product issues anyway.
KEYBASE ZOOM CODE
How much power do the VCs typically have?ĭon't founders often have the ability to overrule and make their own decisions?Ĭhris is already financially independent from the OKCupid sale, he could have open sourced the server code and/or reduced the overall burn to pivot to paid accounts. Obviously, being scrappy, applying for NSF grants, and spending my own money have very real downsides both personally and for our growth, especially when every competitor has VC funding, but it also means that I can ensure Zulip continues existing as a real open source project for the long run. I don't think VC funding as it currently exists is consistent with running an open source company according to my values, which is why we're not taking venture funding for Zulip. I don't blame folks for taking VC it was easy to get, and there aren't a lot of alternative funding models that can pay the multiple fulltime staff that might be required to create what one wants to create. And a VC-funded Open Core project will end up trying as hard as it can to have everyone need to buy the paid version, since that's clearly the way to optimize revenue and eventually the slippery slope will get you there. With a few exceptions, you end up with an acquisition that ends or repurposes the project, or an Open Core project. The VC funding model is terrible for most open source projects. For raising their next round, having $5K in revenue from a paid plan few people buy might well have been worse than having $0. FWIW, I doubt Keybase offering a paid plan would have raised revenue that's significant compared to their burn, so Chris was probably right to not spend resources figuring out a paid offering. Losing their independence was from the beginning the most likely outcome of building something that's hard to monetize like Keybase on the VC funding model.
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