Silverstripe success is an open secret
Sunday, August 3rd, 2008
The secret to its success was about being less secret.
By “opensourcing”, or making its webpage-building software available online and free of charge, Silverstripe risked having its ideas stolen by competitors and paying customers opting for the freeware.
What actually happened, says chief executive Brian Calhoun, is not what one might have expected.
“We saw an explosion in interest globally. People all over the planet started downloading it,” Mr Calhoun says.
The company has been profitable for five years and taking its main product to market as freeware created so much goodwill in the online community that existing customers stayed with it, and new customers sought it out.
Silverstripe now makes money from the added extras to the free capabilities its open-source software provides, and as expectations for websites grow, the add-ons are becoming more necessary.
“Be more human” is Silverstripe’s mantra, and it runs all the way from the online code it writes to the humorous “pants optional” office dress policy to the bosses’ attitude to running the company.
The three Silverstripe founders, Sigurd Magnusson, Sam Minnee and Tim Copeland, all work as employees and have never needed to seek outside investment.
