A short talk (YouTube video) by Jason M. Lemkin about the challenges and signals of competing with open-source (free) products. Lemkin argues that competing with free is difficult but valuable: if a paid product gains early traction against a world-class open-source alternative, it likely serves a narrow segment where it is dramatically (≈10x) better, indicating strong product-market fit.
Yeah, I actually think it would be even. You know, I think I do think competing with open source is really complicated, right? Yeah, I feel like I'm a tiny bit smarter about it today. Although I haven't done as many commercial open source investments as I wish I had. Competing with free is both tough and wonderful because it cuts through the Sony baloney. Like if you, if your product, if you're competing with a world class open source product and you are getting relatively incredible traction in the early days, that means your product rocks for some use case. It's not going to be the best for everything, right? It cannot be the best for everything. But there must be some segment, some sliver where you are literally 10x better than or you would never get any traction, right? Everyone's going to futz around with the free version. So there's probably no better signal than when you compete with the free open source platform and your product is exploding even at an early day because it's got to be magical.
