David and Goliath in the CMS Market with Thomas Schedler

The Business of Open Source

This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Thomas Schedler, co-founder and CEO of Sulu. Sulu is a small, bootstrapped company that spun out of an agency; Thomas was recommended by someone to me as a guest, but when I first reached out to him he was skeptical about coming on the show because he wasn’t sure he was a good fit. But there’s a bunch to learn from this episode!

• Spinning out from an agency —> in my experience, one of the most common ways for open source companies to be bootstrapped, or even to be go on to raise venture capital, is to start out as a web development agency that uses a lot of open source tools.
• They are working on moving away from services and getting more revenue from the product; and Thomas talked about the advantages that they get from providing both services and developing a product-based business strategy.
• The CMS market is crowded! And everyone is open source, so being an open source company doesn’t differentiate the product at all. So how does Sulu differentiate itself in the market? Thomas talked about it.
• I loved that Thomas talked about how important opinions and technology choices are in differentiating themselves on the market.
• I also loved that Thomas talked about keeping some things out of the product as a way to differentiate themselves from others. Sometimes more features can deliver less value to users.
• How being small can allow you to move quicker, and that gives Sulu and advantage over the huge players in the CMS market.
• Why differentiation and knowing your niche is so important when you’re a small company competing again large players.

Do you need to differentiate yourself in a crowded market? You might want to work with me.