Software is adopted, not sold (Ep. 441)
Ben and Cassidy chat with Ian Tien, CEO and cofounder, and Corey Hulen, CTO and cofounder of Mattermost, an open-source platform for developer collaboration.
Ben and Cassidy chat with Ian Tien, CEO and cofounder, and Corey Hulen, CTO and cofounder of Mattermost, an open-source platform for developer collaboration. They discuss how Ian arrived at computer programming under duress, the relationship between game companies and SaaS companies, the challenges of monetizing open-source projects, and why “software is adopted, not sold.”
E
pisode notes:
Ian and Corey met at Microsoft, where they built
Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005
(which boasted its own CD-ROM).
They went on to found
Mattermost
in 2016 to give developers one platform for collaborating across tools and teams.
Ian, who previously founded the game company
SpinPunch
, calls Mattermost “yet another of those video game companies turned B2B software companies,” like
Slack
and
Discord
. Says Ian: “Games are all the risk of a movie plus all the complexity of a B2B SaaS product.”
Today’s
Lifeboat badge
goes to user
Diogo
for their answer to
How can I call functions from one .cpp file in another .cpp file?
.
Connect with Ian on
LinkedIn
.
Connect with Corey on
LinkedIn
.