Scaling an Open Source Sponsorship Program
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The document outlines principles and strategies for scaling a corporate open source sponsorship program, emphasizing maintainers' needs and impact-driven funding. It describes stages of the program, including pilot testing, growth tactics, and establishing effective relationships across teams. The authors also highlight future opportunities for leveraging expertise and company resources to enhance engagement in open source projects.
Scaling an Open Source Sponsorship Program
- 1. Scaling an open source sponsorship program All Things Open Mike Fix and Carol Huang October 16th, 2023
- 2. Technical Program Manager, Developer Relations, Stripe Head of Open Source, Stripe Open Source Summit North America — 2023 Mike Fix Carol Huang Hello there
- 3. Stages of a corporate open source sponsorship program Launching a pilot Growing your program Tactics for operating at scale Future opportunities What we’ll talk about 1 2 3 4 5 Open Source Summit North America — 2023
- 4. What’s the problem? Scaling corporate open source
- 5. Sustainable. Maintainers should be able to rely upon this money to make decisions that impact their future. Maintainer-first. We ask the maintainers what they want and what they need. They remain the leaders of their project and roadmaps. Impact-driven. Provide enough money to make a tangible impact in the maintainers life. Coming up with investment principles Stripe example
- 6. Pilot Cohorts 1, 2, 3… Platform Stages of our sponsorship program 1 2 3 Stripe example
- 7. Symbiotic Self-serving Altruistic Recursive, reinforcing Looking inward Looking outward Kicking off Pilot
- 8. Pilot Testing your hypothesis Launching the program Remember: track your progress towards or alignment with your success criteria. ● Select projects in alignment with your principles ● Set your hypothesis ● Define success ahead of time ● Ensure you can measure success ● Launch!
- 9. Cohorts 1, 2, 3… Growing the program Repeat
- 10. Expand Test other hypotheses (business goals!) ● DevRel: Improve DX (developer experience) ● Sales: Help close a win ● Product: Unblock a launch ● Eng: Scale out your team
- 11. Tactics for operating at scale Creating a platform
- 12. Support our expensive dependencies or speed up common workflows. Bring-your-own-Budget Save costs Grow revenue Support any company-wide initiative. Supported by investing in the projects that make money. Allow other teams to participate Example: sponsorship menu
- 13. Scaling the program Relationships ● Phase I: one point of contact
- 14. Scaling the program Relationships ● Phase I: one point of contact ● Phase IIa: one program → point of contact
- 15. Scaling the program Relationships ● Phase I: one point of contact ● Phase IIa: one program → point of contact ● Phase IIb: one program → multiple points of contact
- 16. Scaling the program Product team points of contact DevRel points of contact Relationships Pros: ● Know how to literally be a developer advocate ● Sharing knowledge by their default role in the org (on the same team) Pros: ● Great subject matter expertise ● Very close with product team, able to closely monitor feedback loop
- 17. Scaling the program Product team points of contact DevRel points of contact Lessons learned ● Have DAs specialize in their project maintainers’ specialities ● Give a crash course in developer relations and more structure/support
- 18. Scaling the program Relationships ● Phase I: one point of contact ● Phase IIa: one program → point of contact ● Phase IIb: one program → multiple points of contact ● Phase III: Moving towards one intake
- 19. Scaling the program Budget renewal ● Use the budget review process to your favor ● Partner with procurement, finance & strategy, accounts payable
- 21. ● Great for teams ● Open source native ● Budgeting/expense tooling ● Invoiced billing ● Great support ● Employment benefits! ● Great for creators ● Wide reaching global support ● Content tools ● Not as open-source native Sponsorship platforms Example: pick your platform Patreon Open Collective GitHub ● Great for individuals ● Open source native ● Ubiquitous ● Invoiced billing ● Org sponsorships
- 22. Open source economy Funding platforms
- 23. Looking ahead Future opportunities for impact ● What can you do with your expertise, company backing, or people power? ○ Healthcare ○ Project/product management aid ○ Financial or other “admin” guidance ○ Shared infrastructure/tooling ○ Others?
- 24. Mike Fix & Carol Huang Thank you! Questions?