Paige Finn DohertyFounding Partner, Behind Genius · Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures

What does TQ Ventures Investor Jana Iris think about the turning on of monetization for Gitpod?

16 Dec 2022 · 1 min

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In a brief interview segment, the host asks about the challenges of turning a free product into a paid offering, referencing a past experience at Workwest and a similar transition at HashiCorp. The guest (representing investor Jana Iris) comments on Gitpod’s recent announcement to discontinue its self‑hosted open‑source version and focus on a paid hosted service, adding new features behind a paywall. She describes the move as a smart business decision, expresses curiosity about how the open‑source community will react, and frames the shift as a necessary step for the company to become sustainable.

Chapters

I remember like at Workwest, like what turning on monetization was like because we were like a free product for probably 9 to 11 months and turning on monetization was like very interesting. So I'd be curious to hear what it was like when you were at HashiCorp and you made that switch.
But look, I don't know if you saw the announcement today from Gitpod. So Gitpod, they have like an open source version of their product. And then they also have a hosted version. So today they just announced that they're no longer gonna be supporting kind of like the self-hosted version. So that's a great— Wow. And then they're like turning on kind of like payments and adding more features to the hosted version. So that's a great example of a company that just today announced, hey, we need to figure out how to be a business, which I'm really curious to see how the community reacts. I think that was a smart move on their part.