Building an open source
consulting company
Nate Aune
www.jazkarta.com
Open Source Bridge Conference
Portland, OR
June 17, 2009
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/me
• First experience with Linux in 1994
• Founded Jazkarta in 2004 in Boston
• Now 3 full-time staff and 10 subcontractors
• Specialize in Plone and Python
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Topics for exploration
• Marketing • Recruiting
• Pricing • Finances
• Contracts • Open Source citizen
• Project Management • your topics?
• Services
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Marketing
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Marketing & getting work
• Speaking
• Blogging
• Sponsoring
• User group / consultants group
• Networking
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Pricing
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Pricing / rates
• How much do you want to make?
• What are your costs?
• What will the market bear?
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$100,000 / yr
$100,000/yr % 50 wks/yr % 20 hrs/wk
=
$100/hr
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Costs of doing business
(overhead)
• Self-employment tax
• Legal fees
• Accounting / bookkeeping
• Office space
• Hardware
• Subcontractors
• Telephone
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Market rates
• What are your competitors charging?
• How much will your customers pay?
• How does the economy affect your bill rate?
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When to raise rates?
• When your customers don't blink an eye
when you tell them your rate
• When you have more work than you can
handle
• When you have an in-demand skill
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Contracts
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Contracts
• Get legal advice - don't do it by yourself
• Optional scope contracts
• Tools: EchoSign for digital signatures
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Traditional vs. Timeboxed
Optional scope contracts:
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Project management
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Project management
• Agile is aligned with open source development
• 2 week iterations
• 3 person teams (PM, dev, design)
• Tools: ClueMapper, Google Docs, Dropbox
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Resource planning
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Global Team
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Global team strategies
• Group team members in same or close timezones
• Make sure everyone is on IRC and uses it
• Set up a mailing list for each new project
• Skype calls every week to touch base
• Issue tracker (ClueMapper/Trac)
• Version control (Subversion/Bazaar)
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Pros/cons of
subcontractors
• Pros
• Only pay them when you have work
• Can find top talent, specialists
• Cons
• More expensive
• Can be difficult to retain if not enough work
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Services
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Services
• Development
• Training
• Support Recurring revenue
• Hosting
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Training
• Private onsite training
• Public training
• Training as part of a conference
• Online training
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Support
• Open source = no guarantees
• Retainer = insurance policy
• Keeps the conversation going
• Upsell support before the project is complete
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Hosting
• Easier to support if on servers you control
• Distribute benefits across all customers
• Upselling opportunities
• Steady source of recurring revenue
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Recruiting
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Recruiting
• Read blogs
• Attend sprints
• Elastic staff
• User groups
• Internships
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Finances
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Finances
• Get a good bookkeeper
• Seek next project while still on first project
• Find sponsors to fund open source dev
• Tools: Quickbooks
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Open source citizen
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Open source citizen
• writing documentation
• contributing code
• serving on board
• sponsoring sprints
• organizing user group
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Thanks! Questions?
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Stay in touch
• Email: natea (at) jazkarta (dot) com
• Twitter: twitter.com/natea
• Blog: blog.jazkarta.com
• IRC: irc.freenode.net/natea
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Books & Resources
• e-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
• Manage It! by Johanna Rothman
• Ship It! by Richardson/Gwaltney
• Art of Agile Development by Shore & Walden
• Making Things Happen by Scott Berkun
• Computer Consultant's Guide by Janet Ruhl
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