Season 4, Ep. 42 – Founder to Founder: with Brian Douglas, Founder & CEO of OpenSauced

(THE FRONTIER THEME PLAYS)

Bill, via previous recording (00:05):

Welcome to another Founder to Founder interview from Gun.io, your source for hiring world-class tech talent. Today, Gun.io’s CEO and co-founder, Teja Yenamandra, sits down with Brian Douglas, founder and CEO of OpenSauced, a service that helps engineers expand their portfolio by contributing to open source projects. Okay, here’s Teja. (FRONTIER THEME ENDS)

Teja (00:37):

Brian. Thanks for coming out, man.

Brian (00:39):

Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. 

Teja (00:42):

Yeah. I would be curious to hear about your background, like, how you got interested in like, software development, software engineering, like, technology as a whole. Like, did you kind of grow up as a nerd?

Brian (00:51):

Grew up, single parent household. So my dad was around, but he just wasn’t in the household, like, doing his own thing. So like, we lived in an apartment complex, and in the apartment complex there was like, a clubhouse, like a pool clubhouse, and then they had a computer set up, like, just a community computer, which is like, pretty novel, like, mid’90s. Cool to have. We would go in there and like, watch the older kids, like, the high schoolers play Wolfenstein, and they would show us like, how we could run it ourselves on DOS, which was pretty cool, because I’m like, oh yeah, I feel like I’m a hacker. Like, at the point I was like, probably seven years old, so I’m not like, a hacker, but I could like, go in there and play the game myself if, you know, the high schoolers would let me, or they weren’t in there.

Brian (01:36):

So first exposure to computers was then. I think definitely, I was just listening to the guy who created CNET. He worked on this product like, before that: Encarta for Microsoft. Shortly after that we got a computer in the house, and I remember my dad had Encarta on his computer, (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) and like, we just run through like, Encarta, like, looking up random facts on countries, and history, and stuff like that. So like, computer literate, pretty early age, and then got into like, almost everything every kid in the turn of the century gets into, on like, AOL, to chat rooms to eventually AIM, and I like, played a bunch of games. So like, source, like, what was it, shareware back in the day? We’d like, find a bunch of shareware to do a bunch of random stuff, but I say all that, because I didn’t go to school for CS.

Brian (02:30):

I went to school for finance, and the reason was ’cause we didn’t have money, and I figured if like, if I could learn how money works, I can make a lot of money like, doing finance, like, do like, financial advising or stock trading, and graduated 2008 and did not have an opportunity, like a job to land during the looming housing crisis, and all the, like, basically there’s no internships. Nothing was going on, especially if you didn’t go to school like, a major school. I went to University of South Florida. So yeah, basically did sales for a bit until I was getting my MBA, and then while getting my MBA, I had an idea for an app, and then I started Googling. Oh, I could probably…I know enough. I could learn how to like, write code to make an app, and I ended up doing it, and like, that’s like, the rough CliffsNotes of how I got to getting interested in software and eventually taking the job.

Teja (03:24):

That’s interesting. So you studied finance, got an MBA, and then did you kind of find yourself like, getting in, like, finding out that you wanted to build an app, basically because of financial motivation, or is like entrepreneurial…?

Brian (03:37):

It wasn’t even financial motivation, because I think I was, I ended up getting like, promoted twice in sales. I was an IT consultant, so like, the equivalent of like, staff engineer, but for sales, at the age of 25. So like, I was doing pretty decent at that point. I was getting my MBA, ’cause I just wanted to go like, to the next level, like, do some like, more, bigger deals and stuff like that, and get, like, basically have a name for myself when I walk in the door, ’cause like, again, had no job lined up for me when I graduated college. Knew if I got an MBA, I could have at least something on my resume to say, “Hey, I’m legit,” but the motivation was really when I was getting my MBA. First quarter, we had to do a dissertation on a business, basically. Like, how like, inception of business, like origin stories, and I ended up picking Google, ’cause I was reading this book called In the Plex, and it was like, the early days of Google, and in Stanford, and like, figuring out like, in a garage, in the wood chicken garage, and like, what I learned is like, they built an entire business, like, a multi, at this point, billion dollar business (Teja: Google?) by idea. Yeah.

Teja (04:46):

Yeah. Trillion, right? At this point.

Brian (04:48):

Yeah, yeah. A trillion at this point, yeah, yeah. But yeah, basically an idea with no brick and mortar. Like, everything else, like, if you think back in 2013 when I was doing this, the majority of like, the biggest businesses were like, oh yeah, we started a restaurant, or we started this, or like, I have a car wash or whatever it is. Like, it was always like, you gotta put in some investment, build a business, and then you’re good, but they had an idea, got adoption, and then built a business up later. My thought was like, what if I could just build something that, like, at like, 2013, social networks were definitely pretty mature at that point, so I had an idea to build the Yelp for churches. (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) There’s like, a whole longer story, like, where me and my wife, we had a son that was born very early, so we were looking for some sort of uplifting, something to do on the weekend, and find a church locally, but not having a lot of context, some churches locally, like…Yelp for churches. Yelp, at that point, wasn’t really good for churches, just for restaurants. So I thought I would just build that. That’s the app I ended up Googling how to build.

Teja (05:55):

Got you. Ah, that’s cool. Yeah, that’s pretty sweet. I definitely resonate like, a lot with that story. Like, my mom’s also a single mom. My dad passed when I was pretty young, and like, in our house, like, my mom was very financially motivated. I mean, you kind of have to be, if you’re like, in the US and, you know, and I feel like I inherited that. So I certainly, you know, when I was young, I didn’t think that I’d be working in technology. In fact, I like, remember this moment vividly where like, I’m in college and like, you get to choose your major, and I like, look at all the people that are like, in the engineering school, and like, I look at the people in like, the arts and sciences like, liberal arts wing of the school, and I’m like, all right, these like, engineers and like, pre-med people are like, way overworked. Like, their GPAs are like, really bad, and like, they seem like they’re not getting any sleep, and they’re not able to like, work out, and so I’m like, why would I do that? Like, I want to just get good grades and like, also have time to like sleep well, and hit the gym, and all that stuff <laugh>. Ten years later, you know, we’re both running, you know, products for engineers. So, (Brian: Yeah.) yeah, it’s just funny, but I definitely resonate with that story. Cool. Okay, where’d you grow up? Florida?

Brian (07:20):

I grew up in Florida, so outside of Tampa. So grew up on Tampa Road, and it’s funny ’cause like, now I feel like Florida’s like, definitely overrun with like, way more people there. (Teja: Yeah.) So when I say Tampa, now people are like, “Oh, I know where that is,” and then I can get like, way more granular and be like, “Oh yeah, Palm Harbor.”

Teja (07:35):

Dude, our VCs are based in Tampa. Like our (Brian: Oh, really?) institutional route we raised, yeah. They’re based in Tampa. They’re in like, (Brian: Small world.) yeah. They’re like, next to…they’re downtown Tampa, next to the…

Brian (07:48):

Probably near University of Tampa?

Teja (07:52):

They’re like, by the Hyatt and like, maybe (Brian: Okay.) a mile from the Edition hotel.

Brian (07:58):

Okay. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, Tampa’s not that big. So if you’re near the Hyatt, then you’re probably like, I know there’s a WeWork right there. (Teja: Yeah.) It’s funny, because growing up, Tampa was like, dead. Like, all southern cities, I don’t know if you grew up in the south as well, but all southern cities were just dead cities, (Teja: Oh, yeah.) and now Tampa’s way more vibrant, has like, a cool little water walkway. Channelside’s like, completely like, reborn again. It’s like, I’m blown away whenever I go back there, and like, I see people like, base their companies out of there, or like, I find engineers that I know of that are living there full-time and growing up. I left Tampa…I guess going back to my story, like, I did the MBA, learned how to code, but ended up taking a job in San Francisco, and I left, because I wanted to grow faster, (Teja: Yeah.) and I just couldn’t do it in Tampa.

Teja (08:48):

No doubt. There’s like, a lot of, I mean, there’s a lot of line loss in terms of information and also like, the pace of the city, at least in Nashville. I can’t speak about Tampa, and you know, I think, yeah, ’cause I haven’t lived there, but I definitely <laugh>…my co-founder, he came to visit once. He was based in Berkeley, and he’s like, “Bro, like, how come everybody’s stopping work at 5:00 here?” Because we went to like, some coworking space we were working out of, and like, the lights were shut off at like, you know, 5:30 or something like this, and most people left, and I’m like, “Dude, I don’t know.” That’s just the culture here. It’s like, yeah, that’s like, you know, people get in around 9:00 in the Bay and like, grind until 9:00 PM, you know? That’s just how it’s done. So you’re in San Francisco right now or…?

Brian (09:40):

Oakland, specifically.

Teja (09:43):

I was just in Tampa in November for like, the fund’s annual meeting, and we had a blast, and there’s some solid companies out there right now, like, killing it. Like, big Series B is like, the classic Silicon Valley, like, 30 million Series B type of thing, you know, doing it.

Brian (10:00):

Yeah, they have like, an accelerator, like, the Tampa Wave accelerator, I think, exist, and I think…so they have Techstars Miami, which I know a lot of folks from Tampa went down to Miami. They do Techstars now. (Teja: Yep.) Yeah, it’s a different scene. Like I’m not as involved. I go back home, and I hang out with family, (Teja: Yeah.) so I’m not as involved in the scene, but like, between Tampa, Orlando, I think there’s a bit of like, a vibrant developer community that’s worthwhile. So like, 10 years ago, when I moved to the Bay, to San Francisco in particular, I made the decision, because I wanted to level up faster, ’cause there wasn’t a lot of stuff happening for developers (Teja: Yeah.) in like, Tampa, Orlando. So the irony is like, I used to always tell people, yeah, you gotta move if you wanna like, make a name for yourself.

Brian (10:49):

I think that’s completely different today, and I don’t know, and if I made the switch today from sales to now in the engineering field, would I have moved? That’s something I reflect on a lot, ’cause like, now I’m here, I’m raising two kids, they go to school. Like, I’ll probably be here for the duration, like, until like, an exit or something that affords me to like, have more flexibility at the schedule. I just get a lot of value in being here next to where all the VCs are.

Teja (11:17):

Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. Have you guys raised a round of capital, like, from West Coast VCs?

Brian (11:28):

Yeah, so we did a bunch of West Coast angels. So a lot of folks I know who are like, founders of companies, our actual seed round, which we haven’t announced, is actually East Coast, ironically.

Teja (11:39):

Got you. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I think, you know what’s interesting, it’s like, the capital, like, level of sophistication that I’ve seen from like, VCs, particularly in the Southeast over the last couple of years, as like, folks have basically fled California and New York has like, significantly increased. I remember like, we started the business maybe a decade ago, bootstrapped it, you know, and talking to VCs like, when we were super early, like, they just like, it wasn’t even known outside of the developer community like, what open source was or what we were trying to do, like, why this problem even existed, (Brian: Yeah.) and now I feel like more and more folks like, actually understand it, you know? But I’m sure you didn’t really run into that issue on the West Coast, ’cause like, you know, people understand kind of what you’re doing.

Brian (12:35):

Yeah, I mean, yes and no. It’s like I ended up seeing something like, I spent almost five years working at GitHub, so like, jumping around the story a bit, but my job was to lead developer advocacy. So I was meeting with open source maintainers from all the biggest enterprises, top projects, everyone’s heard of, all the maintainers you’ve heard of, (Teja: Yep.) and like, limited, not even limited to like, from Python to JavaScript, like, all of them, and it was a common thread of we would love to get more insights into our open source. (Teja: Yeah.) As we were building a product to basically level up engineers and get them to do open source, we found an opportunity, which is you can’t level up engineers without having a place to show them to go level up in or to get the job. (Teja: Yeah.) So why don’t we level up companies?

Brian, via OpenSauced promotional video (13:17):

(PROMOTIONAL VIDEO AUDIO PLAYS) (CHILL LOFI ELECTRONIC MUSIC PLAYS) There’s a trend happening right now where more and more startups are starting with open source first. If you check out any of the batches of YC, you’ll see more and more open source companies now submitting applications to YC and getting in. Now, this is a good trend, because the scale and velocity of what you can do and grow through open source is off the charts. (MUSIC AND PROMOTIONAL VIDEO AUDIO FADES OUT)

Brian (13:34):

That is an “A-ha” moment now, ’cause like, we’ve done the pitch, and I think folks are just now getting wind of it, like, competitors. Like, the reality is like, folks only go certain to a certain degree, because like, if the assumption is open source is all free, <inaudible>, no money really, but the reality is like, we’re using Streamlabs, which is now hosted in like, a WebRTC, whatever, powered by open source on the cloud. (Teja: Right.) All these cloud applications all get funneled into getting tons of sponsorship from Google, Apple, Facebook, Netflix. All that money goes somewhere, and it’s to fund full-time engineers to keep making this stuff work. So that way the entire internet now, or the entire cloud, is now getting leveled up, and it’s all being powered by open source, ’cause like, if I’m gonna choose like WebRTC or something else I’d never heard of, like, I’m gonna choose the thing that has the investment in like, the power, like, that kind of contribution. So 30 years ago, yeah, or even 10 years ago, you’d be like, “Ah, I don’t know. Open source? You sure?” but now, it’s obvious. Like, if those who know, know, and those who don’t know, they’ll figure it out in the next 5 to 10 years.

Teja (14:45):

What like, was the original driving like, problem that you kind of stumbled upon with OpenSauced? I mean, did you kind of figure out like, during your time at GitHub, or how did you kind of come up with your business?

Brian (15:01):

The original goal…so I’d worked at a company called Netlify. I was employee number three, and I was an engineer. I built out the app, Netlify.com, and I like doing open source. Like, my goal when I joined Netlify was to do a conference talk, and I did a conference talk, then I did a much bigger talks, and then I had a goal of like, I just wanna do more open source. Netlify had an open source plan, which is like, free for maintainers, but like, you know, you gotta let people know about this. So while making contributions to random open source projects, I update the docs to like, what does this change, and then link Netlify in the PR. So like, hey, I made a fix. Also, by the way, if you wanna see this live, here’s a link to Netlify.

Brian (15:43):

I did this like, with like, at the point, like, 10 to 20 PRs at a time. So I need a place to like, coordinate or have a CRM basically for managing my outreach and my contributions, (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) and on GitHub, it’s kind of hard. Like, you have a port request list. It exists today. It didn’t exist before. So like, you end up just building your own tools to manage your own contributions at open source, which is a common thread at enterprises and for individuals. So once I built that, then I was like, “Oh, lemme just call this something.” So I got the domain OpenSauce.pizza, where I could see all my open source, and from there, it turned into like, a community who also, like, folks wanted to also do this same thing, because I shared at GitHub Universe at their conference about this, and then I ended up getting a job at GitHub, ’cause of this application. (Teja: Oh, cool.)

Brian (16:32):

Then what I learned is, again, that sort of gap of, it’s cool to like, push people to do open source and rah rah rah, good first issue, Hacktoberfest, but like, you gotta have a place for them to land, and it’s very clear that the enterprise is also valid. Like, they invest money in the open source through back channels and through conferences. Like, they see the value. So like, if you can basically look at your…like, the open source you leverage and attach that to revenue. (Teja: Yeah.)

Brian (17:01):

Like, if Node.js misses a release or doesn’t ship the thing that you need them to ship, so that way you can make web sockets work by Native, which is like, you could do that now with Note.js. Now you have to go look at other alternatives or build your own alternatives. So like, did you choose JavaScript on the service side, or did you make the wrong decision? Basically, it’s a question as an engineer, CTO, you gotta ask yourself, do we need to move to Rust, or do we need to move to something else that’s actually getting more contribution? So if that’s the case, there’s a direct correlation of value that we’re exposing. So basically like, the real reasons I wanted to do open source, what I found, there’s a lot of other people who wanna do open source, and then what I really found out is that companies also wanna find these people who wanna participate at that level.

Teja (17:45):

So are you the sort of solo founder, or did you start it with some friends?

Brian (17:50):

So I left GitHub on sabbatical and was like, “Hey, I’m gonna build this thing.” Like I already built OpenSauce, but I needed to build the version I knew was gonna be the thing that companies would pay for. So I told my manager I was gonna be leaving, and he’s like, “No, do a sabbatical. Like, you don’t know what’s gonna happen.” So I ended up doing a month sabbatical, built this with a couple like, some engineers that contracted during the summer of 2022, (Teja: Yep.) and at that point we had an app, and like, we had a new app, and we had a customer which was DigitalOcean. So we contracted DigitalOcean to support Hacktoberfest data. This was really just for the DigitalOcean team, so we never exposed this publicly, but it was really, how do you see 563,000 PRs that happened in October? How do you see who they are, where they’re coming from, where they’re going, and how much is spam? Like, those are the questions we were trying to answer that we were able to answer that summer. So, ended up hiring a founding team shortly after that, after I left GitHub. So like, solo founder, but I do have some folks with significant equity who came in pretty early with me.

Teja (18:55):

Cool. Dude, I’m disappointed you didn’t come to us to hire those contract engineers. I’m sure you <inaudible> some good people, but you know.

Brian (19:01):

Yeah. You’d be surprised. Like, the network that I’ve <laugh>, I’ve amassed just by doing a bunch of these podcasts and stuff. Yeah.

Teja (19:07):

Yeah, yeah. Totally. I would, I mean, for selfish reasons, I would like you to come use our product and just like, tell me feedback at some point. I’m always curious.

Brian (19:18):

Yeah, for sure. We’re <laugh>, it’s funny enough, like, we’re also actively hiring one engineer right now, and like, the pipeline went quick. Like, literally first week of January, got five people just from like, some quick Twitter DMs, and now they’re already completing their technical screen this weekend, and we’ll have final interviews next week.

Teja (19:40):

This is a question that I feel like founders get. Who do you go to for problems? Like, do you go to your investor network that like, have invested? Do you have like, an independent like, executive coach? Like, how do you deal with like, oh, shit. Shit’s on fire. I need to talk to somebody.

Brian (19:56):

It’s this thing I think about a lot too as well, ’cause like, solo founder, and like, now we’re at a point where we’re scaling, so I’m like, oh man, (Teja: Yeah.) it’d be cool to like, lift this and hand it to somebody else, or like, another co-founder, just like, run with it, (Teja: Yeah.) and just know intuitively that, okay, this needs to get done, because this is like, this what happens to the business. (Teja: Yeah.) I will say like, my first two hires, I’ve got a lead engineer, and then I’ve got a person who runs operations. Like, those folks, I treat them as co-founders. Like, even though they don’t have co-founder of level equity, and like, I like, had the conversation up front was like, “Hey, this thing’s already started. Do you wanna come in like, with some beefy equity that you can work towards?”

Brian (20:33):

So what I’ve done is set up like, a leadership team where these are the folks I chat with weekly, at minimum weekly. So it is one-on-one separately, altogether at least once a week, and we’re just staying up to date, like, talking about what’s wrong, what’s not going well, what’s going extremely well, like just kind of sharing wins, and these are the folks that also I can trust to, you know, go learn how to get taxes running for Ohio, ’cause we’ve got a teammate who started in Ohio in September. So like, all that stuff I can hand off to a certain degree, and then what I’ve been doing in the last six months is like, a hundred percent sales. So I just focused on just doing that, knowing that the entire rest of the business is still moving forward.

Teja (21:15):

That’s what I like doing too. I like having the operations run and like, the product, you know, roadmap being executed against, and I genuinely like conversations like this, snd then also selling, you know? Although I do, I’ll admit, like, miss I don’t know, like, actually writing stuff and having my hands up (Brian: Yeah.) in the copy as well. I don’t know, whatever.

Brian (21:40):

I miss that as well, and so I was reading this book, I just finished it actually this morning, The Power of Giving Away Power. I don’t know if you’ve read this one.

Teja (21:49):

No, but that sounds good. I’m going to read that.

Brian (21:52):

Yeah, it’s actually, it’s a lot of the things that I’ve kind of done organically already, just learning from other like, really good managers and leaders, but it’s the idea of like, getting people to feel invested to go do a thing without needing to go micromanage and like, providing feedback in a way that like, brings people along for the ride, as opposed to like, <inaudible> like, not really understanding like, what to do next, and so what I love to do is like, my designer mentioned…they were contracted with us, and then they came on board full-time in the summer, mentioned, “Hey, I’d love to like, expand my product managing experience.” Like, “Cool. You lead product now. We have a product sync every other week. You’re now driving it. I’m not doing it anymore,” and like, to see them really thrive in that moment is like, okay, now they own it.

Brian (22:41):

They can share designs, and they can get feedback, but also they’re in all customer calls with me, taking notes, providing feedback, showing designs. I treat them as if like, they’re on the same level as me, ’cause then I can see if they can handle it, and if they can’t handle it, it’s like, cool, let’s just like, take a pause. In this situation, like, they were able to like, take it in stride, and now they’re like, my partner in crime as we go have conversations with large enterprises about what we haven’t shipped yet.

Teja (23:09):

What surprised you about building your own company?

Brian (23:12):

Honestly, like, almost no one knows what they’re doing. (Teja: <Laugh>.) It’s a reaction that you kind of have to like, own and realize, ’cause I’m talking to folks at the largest enterprise level, so I rattle off a bunch of things, but so use your imagination. No deal close. So can’t confirm or deny, (Teja: Yeah.) but like, we get to that level, and like, folks are like, “Oh yeah, we just put our finger up in the air, and like, we just know what we’re doing is working,” but when we are able to show people like, “Hey, we actually figured something out. Here’s like, a here’s a journey, here’s a story, here’s a metric.” Like, one of the things, so I’ll mention this, so read between the lines, but Microsoft TypeScript, it’s in repository. Zero percent of contributors to Microsoft’s TypeScript library come from the outside.

Brian (24:00):

So if you’re a first time contributor, if you don’t work at Microsoft, you’re not getting a contribution to TypeScript, and that’s like, very clear when you look at the data, but when everyone’s like, “Oh, I wanna do open source; I’m gonna contribute to TypeScript,” it’s like, well hold on, slow down, or “I’m gonna contribute to React.” Like, okay, hold on. Let’s look at the actual real numbers. Like, what’s the chances of this actually happening? (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) First, maybe get a job at Microsoft or Meta, and then you’ll be good or go try somewhere else, but if you look at VS code, VS code is the number one first time contributor project on GitHub. So if you’re looking to organize like, energy, connection, driving folks to like pat out their resume with contributions, go to VS code, but then if you were to look at the data, it’s not VS code. It’s VS code plugins.

Brian (24:48):

So because there’s some native plugins within the repository, you make contributions to things about like, the extended libraries and like, and it’s like, I use this analogy all the time, which is like, if you wanna get in the NBA, and you find out that LeBron James is playing pickup games across the street from your house, you’re gonna be at those pickup games. Like, you’re gonna be like, watching games every evening on TNT, and TBS, or whatever channels they play on. I use YouTube TV, so I don’t even know what it is anymore. But like, you’re gonna watch, and you’re gonna like, learn and you’re gonna see the process, like, the entire league has changed, where now it’s not just about, you know, driving to the hoop. Like, it’s also about your three point shot.

Brian (25:33):

It’s about how you play defense. It’s about taking charges, but like, if you don’t see how the game has shifted, like, you’re gonna still be playing like it’s 20 years ago, and I think with engineering it’s the same thing, but it’s also with working with like, a startup, it’s also the same thing. It’s like, everyone assumed that GitHub was gonna build exactly what OpenSauced is building, but as of last Friday, GitHub shut down the actual product that would’ve built OpenSauced. So that like, again, like, you only know as much as you know, and like, once you really start painting the picture for people, then they get like, the “a-ha” moment, and then it, like, you just pay the path. So starting a company, what I didn’t know is like, kind of honestly, everyone’s coming in pretty naive. (Teja: Yeah.) So if you just come and…actually there’s a saying that I hear all the time, which is well, I used to hear all the time, “The man with the one eye is king in the land of the blind,” (Teja: Yep.) and like, it’s like, startup founders, it’s like, the same thing. It’s like, dude, just open up one eye, and you’re good. (Teja: <Laugh>.) Like, you’re better than the majority of the other people sitting around you.

Teja (26:34):

Yeah, yeah. That’s true. So how do you spend your time? Like, give an average day? Like, what’s your day look like?

Brian (26:43):

Man, it’s changing a little bit this year, because like, we have a bunch of conversations that are active that we need to close or move on. (Teja: Yeah.) So like, before the end of the year, constant customer discovery conversations, showing off Figma, like, getting folks excited about our product. We have five design partners now. So like, we’re now focused on just having those conversations with those five companies and not doing so much outreach and basically Biz Dev. So now what I’m doing, is I’m doing way more product design in like, research and development basically. So like, we have a bunch of these metrics. So I rattled off like, these TypeScript and VS code like, in statistics, there’s a rate of self-selection, and the concept of open source is like, how many contributions happen that are not part of you or your organization, and a quick calculation that we were running on projects, but then like, engagement ratio. 

Brian (27:43):

So like, how do you know if a project…like, I was talking to a co-creator of Kubernetes recently on a podcast, and he was saying that they wanted to make sure that when you walk through the Kubernetes, you could tell it was a good neighborhood. (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) Like, all you wanna know is like, is this a place I can hang out in? (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) Or if not, like, how do I know not to even like, walk in here? (Teja: Yeah.) So like, the engagement activity, repo health, like, this calculation, I was doing a bunch of statistics basically like, on the regular. So now I’m saying it’s changing, because as of like, the new year, I’ve actually been working on a side project to validate some new data we’ve been using, and the reason for that is like, I don’t wanna block engineers with my code, just build a little side project to like, proof a concept, what I’m talking about or what I’m seeing in the conversations, and then the hope is to hand us off to engineers to then run with.

Teja (28:33):

So are developers able to see basically like, where to kind of prioritize their time to drive, let’s say, you know, maximum contributions, like, to get exposure, build their network, all that stuff? So if I’m a dev, I can use OpenSauced to basically help like, you know, make my time like, just better used.

Brian (28:57):

Yeah. It, yeah, for the most part. Like, so today, it’s gonna be much easier if you already do open source, ’cause we can just show you what you’re doing already. (Teja: Gotcha.) The caveat is also you could see where open source is happening, (Teja: Gotcha.) but the recommendations we do have…basically, if you tell us, like, if you’re a Python, like, you wanna know Python, we’ll recommend you projects based on OneSignal, which is new contributors. So this is something that also, again, this is like, sort of inside baseball knowledge that everyone doesn’t know yet, but they will pretty soon with OpenSauced. Everyone looks like stars as a metric of like, success, (Teja: Yeah.) and whether a project is notable or should be paid attention to, (Teja: Yep.) but the better metric is new contributors, and even better metric is new contributors outside the organization. So outside the rate of self-selection, new contributors, ’cause that shows a trend, and those new contributors also come from companies, like a Google or a Facebook, then that’s even a better trend. So this is all data. We’re working on a new, like, OpenSauced 2.0, basically, that will ship silently next week, and they’ll have a larger announcement once we get some design partner feedback, but the idea is like, you have a dashboard where you could see all this data and have a good idea of like, if you wanna engage developers, or if you wanna level up your own career. Like, you could choose that adventure within our product and platform.

Teja (30:20):

That’s cool. It’s so interesting that like, GitHub has access to this information, and like, they have not, like, they have not decided to like, showcase this valuable information. In fact, they (Brian: Yeah.) <inaudible> like, what <laugh>?

Brian (30:36):

Like, there’s a blog post on, I call it “Minding the Gap” on OpenSauced blog, and it talks about GitHub deprecating this little feature, which is organizational level insights. So you have an organization, Gun. You could see all what’s happening across, like, everywhere the light touches, you could see in Gun. They’re shutting it down, because of cost reasons, and because of AI reasons. So like, GitHub completely shifted to shipping OpenAI engagements, and producing more Azure compute, and stuff like that. So it’s like everyone knows, like, we can just say it out loud, but they would need to rewrite the entire thing in order to make this work and make it viable. (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) So yeah, I’ve got a bunch of other details about this, but like, I’m happy to say that like, we talk to GitHub very regularly.

Brian (31:23):

I’m so well connected, and like, we’re very much prepared to absorb a lot of this interest and these type of metrics, and it really comes down to, like, Microsoft acquired GitHub 2018. Github’s focus has been how does this make sense? So what made sense was GitHub Actions, Actions Compute, Copilot, Codespaces, more Azure Compute, and then now OpenAI’s partnership. Like, I don’t know if everybody realize if you take a step back, like, OpenAI, like, prior to Copilot, like, it was cool. Like, DALL-E was cool, like, a whole parlor trick, but the first like, realistic commercial offering was GitHub Copilot, (Teja: Right.) and the way this worked was GitHub was approached by Microsoft, who was approached by OpenAI, thanks to the investment that build something with GitHub and OpenAI, and Copilot is what came out, and it turned out to be a really, really good investment for all parties involved. So that focus that happened in like, the end of 2021, roughly early 2022, that focus has now been shifted, and that’s the main focus. So like, when you talk about these insights or talk about tech debt, there’s not an investment right now, because GitHub is on the pathway to profitability, ’cause they’re not profitable today, but like, they’re gonna get there very, very quickly, because now they have a very, very strong focus on how they turn the black into green basically.

Teja (32:50):

So if I’m an engineer, how do I sign up to OpenSauced, and like, where do you want me to go?

Brian (32:56):

Yeah, yeah. So OpenSauced.pizza, connect your GitHub. So you have to have a GitHub to use OpenSauced. We do that, this is frankly, ’cause we had the conversation about recruiting, and like, do we want recruiters to be on OpenSauced yet? It’s like, ah, if they have a GitHub, like, they’ve already crossed the chasm, and like, okay, you could swim in the data and like, have fun, but we’re not catering to recruiting right now, so we only have login with GitHub, and then once you log in with GitHub, you select in the wizard like, what languages that you’re interested in. So we continue with the filter, the developers that actively wanna participate in the ecosystem, and then from there, you could see your contributions if they exist. If not, there’s a recommendations tab we could see repos to contribute to.

Brian (33:40):

The one thing that I always, I tell, because I used to mentor at a bootcamp. (Teja: Mmm <affirmative>.) The best thing you do if you wanna make an open source contribution is go look at other PRs. (Teja: Yeah.) Look at, so we have an activity tab. If you wanna look at just JavaScript or Python on the explore page, look at open PRs from other people, and then start seeing who’s making contributions, ’cause the other game is like, if you see people making contributions, that’s a future mentor, and that’s…my entire career has been open source interacting and people who know more than I did, telling me how to do things, and like, showing me the way, and this being helpful in the entire conversation. So I’m working on a YouTube video and blog posts around this like, conundrum of like, bootcamp grads and folks who’ve been laid off who are like, “I need to find open source projects to contribute to, like, where do I go?”

Brian (34:31):

Like, the answer is like, OpenSauced, but the answer is like, also maybe don’t ask the question. Like, maybe first go look at open source, or maybe go build a project, or maybe look at the stuff you’re using. (Teja: Yeah.) Like, you check there first, because like, everyone wants to start at React or TypeScript and make a contribution there, but no one wants to start with like, the project that opened up yesterday. (Teja: Yeah.) Just <inaudible> traction that has no documentation. (Teja: Yeah.) When things are to go there first, level up, and then you’re like, you can make the contributions in a place or get the job you’re looking for.

Teja (35:00):

Yeah. That’s awesome. Where could people find you on the interwebs, sir?

Brian (35:06):

Yeah, yeah. I’m BDougie on the Twitter/X. We’ll figure out what’s going on over there, (Teja: <Laugh>.) and then at this point, I’m on GitHub. BDougie on GitHub, and honestly, yeah, that’s pretty much it. I mentioned I have a YouTube channel that OpenSauced, itself, has a YouTube channel. We’ve doing a podcast called “The Secret Sauce,” where a lot of the stuff I discovered is talking to founders in open source, talking to maintainers in open source, asking ’em where their success is coming from. (Teja: That’s true.) Again, like, you asked the question of like, what things I learned. Like, the best thing I did when I started was we didn’t ship any code. When I started my sabbatical, we started a podcast. Reason for that is like, once I started talking to people about what’s good with them, (THE FRONTIER THEME FADES IN) then I knew what to build, (Teja: Mm-hmm <affirmative>.) but a lot of times you’re like, “I’m a founder, I know everything. I’m gonna build a thing that I think everyone is gonna love and use,” (Teja: Yeah.) and then you spend two years like, shopping this thing around trying to figure out like, why no one wants to use it, and it’s like, it’s super pretty, it’s got a ton of animations, but you didn’t tell anybody about it or ask any questions about like, “Would you use this?”

Teja (36:09):

Yeah. Yep. That’s powerful. Sweet, man. Appreciate your time today. This was an awesome conversation.

Brian (36:15):

Yeah, it’s a pleasure. Happy to hang out with you and check out Gun pretty soon.

Abbey, via previous recording (36:20):

You’re listening to The Founder to Founder podcast, powered by Gun.io’s Frontier Network. We release a new episode every Thursday morning, so be sure to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you stream your music. Please leave us a review and share with your friends. You can follow us online at the Frontier Pod or drop us a line at [email protected] to get in touch about hiring world class tech talent.

(THE FRONTIER THEME ENDS)