Living the dream: running a FOSS company out of your backpack

August 20th, 2011 FrOSCon, Bonn, Germany Walter Heck, Tribily.com

Who am I?
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Walter Heck, 30 years old Studied IT (for 2 years) Narcoleptic Traveler / hitchhiker / couchsurfer Diver / Hiker / Geek / Environmentalist / Metalhead

Timeline
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Worked in dutch corporate world 7 years Gave away all my stuff, quit my job and started
traveling in 2007 money

Started my company in 2008 when I ran out of Lived in 4 continents in 4 years in Thailand, Malaysia,
Costa Rica, Brasil, Alaska and currently Turkey

OlinData
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Started because I didnt want to stop traveling Chose MySQL because I thought it was cool and t for location independency Made 2000EU in the rst 8 months only (with non-mysql work) Started consulting through Open Query and found 2 small clients Started oplexing (shared webhosting for professionals) in 2009, quit it in late 2010 after never making any money Started tribily (server monitoring as a service) in 2010

What worked?
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Winging it! Just get started! Dont be afraid to say goodbye to people, only work
with skilled people who can work independently mind when making decisions told me from time to time

Keeping the goal (traveling while making money) in Following my heart, not listening to what others

What worked (2)?

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Karma overrules business decisions Build discipline (work whenever I can) Persevere! Have benets from being virtual: all knowledge
online and transferable

Do things the proper way, not the quick way

What didnt?
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Trying to make money out of shared hosting Trying to hold on to something that clearly didnt
work

Doing work remotely that wasnt suitable for it Elance (ugh!)

Marketing
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Speaking at conferences (ok, its also a lot of fun ;) ) Google SEO (Write content) (25% of all visits) Commenting on related blog posts (20%) Responding to tweets, forums etc. Google Search Alert

Finding people
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Its hard! 1 good employee == 5 lousy ones Techies? Chat interview rst! Personal network / references Low income countries

Why FOSS / Openness?

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Sharing is caring Code that needs to be open needs to be reusable

(==well structured/designed?)

Giving back to a community that gives me so much Hope for external contributors

What do we do with/for FOSS

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Using: puppet, mysql (MariaDB), zabbix, drupal,

debian, php, redmine

Sharing back: http://github.com/tribily Drupal to zabbix module Zabbix templates Zabbix frontend modications Zabbix server binary patches Help out on forums, irc, mailing lists

Future plans
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Grow organically, no outside funding Employ people from low income countries with decent incomes Create time to work on a project that changes the world Move from the mysql business (non-stable income) to the tribily business (stable, not depending on amount of work) Settle down in a nice location on the planet with home ofce But rst: travel more!

Dreams
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Live off the grid but still connected Make enough money to support employees and
their families

Rule the world. >:)

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Questions / Feedback ?

The End!

http://tribily.com walter@tribily.com @tribily