The Business of Open Source

Pretix founder and CEO Raphael Michel has a completely different philosophy about what he is building compared to the big players in the event / ticketing platform space. We had a great conversation this week about Pretix, how Pretix is positioned compared to big players, and who care about the fact that Pretix is an open source company. 

Some takeaways: 

  • Pretix is a small company, but Raphael feels like it is able to have a much broader feature set than the big players like Eventbrite
  • I think of Pretix and Eventbrite as competitors, but Raphael was able to very easily tell me the difference between Pretix and Eventbrite, how that stems from a different philosophical stance about what they are building
  • It took five years for Pretix to hire one person, about 10 years after starting Pretix there’s about 20 people on the team
  • About 20% of people care about the fact that Pretix is open source, and 80% don’t care. But those who do care, care a lot. Figuring out who cares about open source and who doesn’t depends on the target market and can be trickier than you would expect. 
  • Even though SaaS is the main business model for Pretix, they have an on-prem offer — and they have on-prem customer.
  • How growth is a huge challenge, both for the company growing and for the customers and partners, because it becomes more challenging to get support.


Notice how clear Raphael was about Pretix’s positioning, and how it was different from the big players in the event space. Are you that clear on how your software is different from competitors? Do you have a clear point of view, like Raphael, that sets you apart from the rest of the eocsystem? If not, you might want to work with me. 

What is The Business of Open Source?

Whether you're a founder of an open source startup, an open source maintainer or just an open source enthusiast, join host Emily Omier as she talks to the people who work at the intersection of open source and business, from startup founders to leaders of open source giants and all the people who help open source startups grow.