Making AI an Opportunity with Joshua Drake

In this episode of The Business of Open Source, I talked with Joshua Drake, president and CTO of Command Prompt, about business management, bootstrapping versus taking investment, and AI, open source and open source businesses. 

This episode is a real no-bullshit take on how human psychology influences how leaders behave, how people identify with open source ecosystems and specific technology, and how people in open source should focus more on the outcomes that they want to achieve for clients or for their company rather than making their identity about being an open source developer or a postgres developer.

He says everyone — not just entrepreneurs, but technologists in open source communities in general — need to focus on outcomes and build their identities around those outcomes, rather than around a specific technology. This goes for people whose identities are completely connected to open source. What’s important, that the license is OSI-approved, or that you are a person who builds software collaboratively? What’s important, is it the lines of code or is it the people in the community? 

This episode has a lot of gems; it will be useful for seasoned entrepreneurs as well as aspiring ones. 

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If you’re listening to this and you want to go deeper on the human side of building open source companies, check out Open Source Founders Summit, a conference dedicated to building open source companies. 

As a consultant, I’m also focused on outcomes for clients rather than hours in a chair. What are the outcomes I get? A streamlined product roadmap that’s focused on what matters to your ideal customers, higher conversion rates from your sales conversations and shorter sales cycles. Find out more about working with me here.