Building Computers in Kenya and Open Sourcing Startups ⚡️
Summer meet-ups, member spotlights, Top Tweets + more!
We haven’t talked about it much, but V1 began its mission as a newsletter. The newsletter that you are reading right now has over 1,300 subscribers and averaged 2,000 views per article last semester! We set out to create an entrepreneurial space for creators and builders who want to make an impact. We’ve now grown to provide the most motivated students with a network, opportunities within startups, and mentorship to level up skills. It’s crazy how just a platform connecting a community of people can go to accomplish great things together.
What’s coming up?
That’s why we’re so excited for the new and exciting content lined up for the summer edition of the V1 Newsletter!🌟 We’ll be covering the latest trends reshaping industries, insights into emerging spaces, projects V1 members are working on + more⚡️
If you want to help contribute, have any suggestions on what we should cover or general feedback, let us know at v1umich@gmail.com.
But for now, let’s dive right in! 🚀
First of all, shoutout to our first ever V1 Cohort! Meet the incredible new members of our community. 15 of our cohort’s participants rose through the ranks and were welcomed into the V1 family as members 😊 They participated in cohort bonding games @ Cahoots and had a cooking competition with V1 core team members!
Here’s where V1 Platform comes in, an operating system for V1 where everyone can register to become a member, see all the events and track their progress in the community. Since its start in March we’ve had 150+ signups and 80+ coffee chats requests 🤯
Sign up and become a part of Michigan’s top talent network + join our next Cohort!
Ann Arbor, NYC, LA + more!
We’re getting the V1 community fired up this summer by hosting virtual and in-person meet ups🔥 This community driven event is up to you to decide what fun things you want to do. Whether it's going out for food, drinks, or spending a day at the park, it's your call!
If this sounds like a great time to mix and meet, make sure to fill out the interest form! Look forward to seeing the community get together 🙌
This summer we’re highlighting some of the projects V1 members are working on! Whether it’s something you’re building for a company or for fun, we want to feature the inspiration that drives V1 🚀
Kicking off is Megan Giacobetti, core team lead @ V1! She’s a rising junior majoring in mechanical engineering and at Factor[e] Ventures for their project management and engineering internship in Kenya ✨
Since Kenya does not have an established computer manufacturing system, the ability to purchase and repair computers at an affordable price is a key area of concern for computing access.
This is where “PCs and Parts was born. A platform that provides all of the knowledge and resources necessary to build your own computers. Think about open-source coding— it accelerates at a fast rate because everyone gets to contribute. This is how the computer economy will work. You are giving people blueprints to make computers for themselves or make ones to sell on PCs and Parts. Result — low-cost computers and Kenyans making it themselves. It is the definition of kickstarting the local economy because you are providing the horizontal infrastructure necessary for people to go out and build their own verticals on top of it.”
If you want to read the full version and show some support, feel free to check out Megan’s Notion & Linkedin Post! 🙌
The modern revolution in education came about by open source technology. GNU/Linux - the best known and used operating system that manages the hardware resources for the software running on your desktop, Python - one of the most used programming languages in the world, Git - the world’s most famous version control system, Android - the most popular mobile OS, are just to name a few. Groundbreaking software that went through 1000s of iterations, 100s of pull requests & 1,000,000s of views today began one of the most uniquely democratic processes of learning and building.
All of these are great examples of open source software. But what is exactly open source? There are a lot of different definitions but generally speaking open source software is software that can be freely accessed, used, changed, and shared (in modified or unmodified form) by anyone (Open Source Initiative). However, it doesn’t mean that all open source software is free to use. In fact you can use it for commercial purposes and even sell it, but you can’t make it proprietary, i.e. hide the source code and place restrictions on how people can use your software.
Startups and Open Source
It might seem like building an open source startup is not a good idea.
The best startups are unique in the sense that they are often building new and extraordinary implementations of ideas for in-demand solutions. You don’t want to reveal key aspects of your work that can work against you (i.e. someone copying and changing your work for profit). Yet Red Hat, Databricks, Supabase, Canonical, Nginx, Confluent are examples of companies based around open source products with tremendous success and Microsoft, Meta, Google, Intel, GitHub are some household names that make large contributions to open source projects. So let’s decode what exactly happens when you open source your business.
Let’s start with the pros.
1 - Hiring. Finding engineers can be a pain for tech companies and startups but by open sourcing your codebase you can attract talent that is a) already familiar with your code, b) fits into your team, c) loves contributing and improving stuff. Instead of spending resources on coding challenges and take home tests, you can review your biggest contributors and hire the best candidates from this developer pool.
2 - Community, super fans and customers. When you are building open source, you are building a community around it. There are people coming in and contributing to your code, testing out the product, finding bugs and proposing new features. Some people might not be contributing to the codebase but they are fans of what you are doing and will help you to spread the word about your company. Lastly, you can find your first customers in open source (especially if you are building for developers).
3 - Market validation. If you get users in the early open source stage, meaning they are willing to go through all the hoops of installing and hosting your project to solve their problem, it means your company provides value to that demographic. Once you reach that stage, you can be more confident in developing your product further and expanding access to more people.
All of this sounds great but there are certain challenges associated with going open source.
1 - Resources for building a community. When you launch a new project you will need to spend a lot of your limited resources on building the community and learning how to do it right in order to enjoy all the benefits that we mentioned earlier. It means that for some companies the costs of open source are way too high.
2 - Open source is just a product strategy, not a business model. It’s a great model to achieve specific goals but it will not create a great business by itself. A lot of high potential open source companies failed because they never got the business side of things down.
3 - Not every open source project can be turned into a business. Let’s say the main audience of your open source project is hobbyists that will never pay for the product. Even if your GitHub repository has 10,000 stars, it will have less potential to become a successful business than a smaller project targeted at corporate users.
Overall, open source can provide a ton of advantages but it doesn’t suit every business. We hope that more and more companies will adopt this model as it empowers people (including our own community) to innovate faster and build marvelous things together. According to the Red Hat Open Source Report, the future of open source in the next couple of years is an optimistic one.
In fact, the vote has already been cast by tech devs in emerging spaces. The core vision of Web3 is to decentralize power over the internet’s infrastructure through allowing data transparency in public ledgers, and access to learn and build on protocols that run applications on different blockchains. Here, startups power themselves through cryptocurrencies, where unique tokens urge participation in freely distributed networks. DAOs or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations run on foundational smart contracts while executing actions based proposals and voting from all members. Although Web3 has to overcome its set of hurdles, like heavy energy consumption and an inundation of bad actors, its vision has promising potential for the future of accelerated innovation on a more level playing field. V1’s very own, Megan Giacobetti, has a similar idea to address income and tech inequality in Kenya with the introduction of open source tutorials and parts for building Modular Computers.
With open source, growth and intellectual discovery for all has a real chance to break past paywalls for a share in our internet driven future.
What we’re reading 📬
Web3 Builders Hope to Fix Open Source ‘Broken’ By Web2
Should I Open Source my Company?
The Mystery of the Miracle Year
Top Tweets 🐥
Liked our piece on open source? Want to contribute to projects yourself? We’ve got you covered!
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“May you live in interesting times” is an English expression that is claimed to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse.