About OSSCOSSC for an Open Future -- Open source software eats everything.OSS CapitalOSSC_0e2ee220-1907-11ea-8d79-d93e1183ea00COSS CompaniesOSS Capital invests exclusively in early-stage Commercial Open-Source Software (COSS) companies. If a given company heavily relies on and/or builds upon an OSS project as the fundamental building block justifying its existence, that company is definitionally a COSS company.Joseph JacksFounder and General Partner --
Joseph Jacks is the Founder and General Partner of OSS Capital. He is based in San Francisco and leads the US investing arm as well as global investment strategies.
Joseph is also the Co-Founder of Aljabr. Previously, Joseph was an EIR at Quantum Corporation in support of the Rook project which was subsequently donated to the CNCF (its first storage project) where he has also been involved (at the board level, in various committees and as an advisor) since inception. Joseph also founded KubeCon (now also run by the Linux Foundation's CNCF) while also building Kismatic, the first enterprise-focused commercial Kubernetes company (acquired by Apprenda). Over the preceding several years, Joseph worked at Mesosphere, Enstratius (acquired by Dell Software), TIBCO Software and Talend.Bruce PerensBoard Partner --
Bruce Perens is one of the founders of the Open Source movement in software, and created the Open Source Definition, the rules for Open Source licensing that have stood for two decades. He created the modern Linux distribution as project leader of Debian, where he was the first to distribute development of the most critical parts of an operating system to an Open Source community rather than relying on centralized development.
He created the embedded Linux system as author of Busybox, which is distributed in billions of products today. He changed international law as founder of No-Code International, lobbying for change in the International Telecommunications Union treaty to remove the Morse Code test for Amateur Radio licensing worldwide. He was one of the pioneers of 3D animated feature film at Pixar and its academic predecessor. Today he is executive director of Open Research Institute, which is developing space communication systems as Open Source software and Open Hardware. He operates Algoram, a company which produces digital radio systems, and Legal Engineering, an intellectual property consultancy.Heather MeekerFounding Portfolio Partner: Legal --
Heather Meeker is OSS Capital's founding core portfolio partner for portfolio-wide commercial OSS licensing and legal best practices, special projects and key strategic initiatives. As an internationally-known expert in software licensing, for over 20 years Heather has been a thought leader and trusted advisor on the use of open source software in business, and has helped scores of emerging companies structure licensing and business models.
As a lawyer in private practice, Heather has been recognized with many awards for her work in law and technology, and advised clients from startups to global enterprises on software licenses and software copyright. She is a prolific writer and speaker on software licensing, and is the author of Open Source for Business, a go-to handbook for open source licensing in commerce.
Before her law career, Heather was a programmer of business applications and systems and a professional musician.Nick WhiteFounding Portfolio Partner: Finance --
Nick White is a veteran of open source software finance and the founding OSS Capital portfolio partner for all things finance strategy and execution. He has been a key player in building SpringSource from Series A to $420M VMware sale, steering Talend through its “teenage” years between startup and $1B~ public company and was one of the key players in taking Elastic from pre-financed idea to a company with over 1,000 employees in 35 countries.
In those roles, Nick has been the foundation of the back-office and while retiring as Elastic’s CFO in 2017, was at various times during its growth also responsible for accounting, tax, legal, HR, IT, and Real Estate.
Before his involvement in open source, Nick qualified as a Chartered Accountant in England & Wales, a California CPA and was the Controller at Steve Jobs' NeXT as it transitioned from hardware to software.Jim WalkerPortfolio Partner: Product Marketing --
Jim Walker is a Portfolio Partner focused on evaluation and creation of go-to-market and messaging strategies for OSSC portfolio companies.
Jim’s career has been focused on advancing and building major markets for three of the most successful commercial open source companies: Talend, Hortonworks, CoreOS. He is currently the VP Product Marketing at Cockroach Labs.Kevin XuEntrepreneur in Residence --
Kevin was previously the General Manager of Global Strategy and Operations at PingCAP, the company behind a popular open-source NewSQL database called TiDB, where he built the global go-to-market, community-building, and cloud product development operations from scratch. Previously, he worked in President Obama's White House and his first presidential campaign in 2008. He studied computer science and law at Stanford.Kevin WangStrategic Advisor --
Kevin Wang is a Strategic Advisor at OSS Capital where he helps founders of open source projects commercialize and scale. Kevin currently serves as the CEO of FOSSA, an open source license and vulnerability management platform adopted by the world’s largest enterprises and most popular open source projects. Kevin is a member of the 2018 Forbes “30 Under 30” list and was a 2013 Thiel Fellow.
FOSSA was named by Network World as “Top 5 Open Source Companies to Watch” in 2017 and is backed by Bain Capital, Marc Benioff, Steve Chen, Jaan Tallinn and Justin Mateen.Lizza JacksFounding Chief of Staff --
Lizza (pronounced Lisa, but spell check usually changes it to pizza) is OSS Capital's Chief of Staff. Lizza will be responsible for our day-to-day management, allowing our Partners to focus on our global investment and strategies. Lizza's career has focused on both project and executive team management, thus allowing her to become an adaptable implementer, and provide much needed support. Lizza lives in Orange County, CA and has a love for music. Most weekends she can be found at a show or concert.A billion software engineers and creators._0e2ee3ec-1907-11ea-8d79-d93e1183ea00To invest in early-stage Commercial Open-Source Software (COSS) companies._0e2ee4aa-1907-11ea-8d79-d93e1183ea00OpennessCreativityEfficiencyKnowledge TransferTransfer wisdom from founders of COSS companies to the next generation of founders._0e2ee59a-1907-11ea-8d79-d93e1183ea001COSS CompaniesCOSS FoundersMass knowledge-transfer.
OSS Capital's uniquely focused Equity Partner network serves to transfer aggregate wisdom from the last decades founders of 40+ most successful COSS companies to the next generation of COSS founders. OSS Capital is backed and supported by COSS founders who have collectively unlocked $18B+ in annual revenue, driven $70B+ in outcomes, captured $150B+ in value, created 45K+ jobs and raised $9B+ in VC._0e2ee644-1907-11ea-8d79-d93e1183ea00Capital EfficiencyImprove the efficiency of capital for COSS companies._0e2ee6e4-1907-11ea-8d79-d93e1183ea002COSS CompaniesImproved capital efficiency for future COSS companies.
Empirically, the most successful COSS companies of the last decade raised, on average, $220M in VC before reaching $100M in annual revenues. We believe COSS companies are fundamentally more capital efficient than this. As a result, we aim to reduce this average by 50% or more while producing even greater revenue and business outcomes._0e2ee78e-1907-11ea-8d79-d93e1183ea00Software Creators & EngineersSpawn the next 900+ million open source software engineers and creators._0e2ee838-1907-11ea-8d79-d93e1183ea003COSS FoundersSoftware CreatorsSoftware Engineers1 Billion people creating OSS.
By exclusively supporting next-generation COSS founders, we aim to drive the future of COSS as a major lever and enabler toward spawning the next 900+ million software engineers and creators globally towards 1 billion developers on earth. Continued secular growth of OSS will be the fundamental enabler for ultimately reaching 1 Billion software creators._0e2ee8e2-1907-11ea-8d79-d93e1183ea002019-12-07OwenAmburOwen.Ambur@verizon.net