My presentation about starting a startup in the software freedom day 2012 in Factuly of Engineering, Alexandria, Egypt.

1. FOSS Entrepreneurship and
Business
By: Ahmed Mekkawy AKA linuxawy
Founder | CTO – Spirula Systems
ahmed.mekkawy@spirulasystems.com

2. FOSS
●
Free Open Source Software
●
Free Software is a philosophical idea, a social
movement, based on consumers rights
●
Open Source software is a practical
development methodology, looking from the
developers perspective
●
Philosophy vs. Practicality? why not both?

3. Entrepreneurship
●
Who's an entrepreneur?
●
Let me tell you a secret, I'm considered an
entrepreneur and I'm not sure what it is, I even
miss-spell it all the time.
●
Entrepreneur creates a startup company, so
what is a startup company?

4. Startup Company
●
Great idea ( or so it seems ).
●
Low fund.
●
Small team with high ownership.
●
Unstable, quick changes.
●
Having fun.
●
Non-experienced team, lots of mistakes.
●
High learning curve.

5. Who Can Do That?
●
Creative and smart.
●
Able to realize his idea.
●
Workaholic? not a must, but a hard worker.
●
Hunger to success.
●
Positive and optimistic.
●
Accepts challenges, and accepts failures as well.

6. Company Output
●
Products.
●
Services.
●
(Infrastructure|platform|software) as a service.

7. How To Get Funded?
● First, when will you need to get funded?
● Stages of funding: 3F, seed, angel, VC.
● Exit strategies: IPO, sell to a big fish, no exit.
● What to prepare to get funded
● Idea, idea, idea
● Core team
● Business Plan
● Lots of caffeine
● Everything that could cheer you up

8. Bad Practice - Business
●
It seems great, people will like it. But I'm not sure how
to make money from it – twitter style
●
It exists all around, and generates profit, so I'm
guaranteed to win – supermarket style
●
It's already made 100 times, that's why it's not gonna
fail this time – el kabda el dameya style
●
I don't have an idea, but I'm passionate about having
my own startup, so I'll search for anything that seems
promising – no style

9. Unethical Behavior - FOSS
●
Capitalize the community efforts with some
marketing strategies, than I'm gonna donate
0.0001% of my profit to them – ***** style
●
Gonna claim that I'm supporting FOSS only by
letting it run on my platform – ********* style
●
Gonna be a FOSS black hole, only taking
community efforts, giving almost nothing back, or
giving very tiny stuff – ****** style

10. So What Should I Do?
●
Think of a win-win situation, in both aspects: FOSS
and business.
●
FOSS created a funny community, producers are
consumers and consumers are producers. Your
startup is a consumer (using FOSS), don't forget to be
a FOSS producer.
●
Direct your passion to success not money, and direct
your success to be useful, not to take more.

11. Bottom Line
Balance between paying back your
debt to the community, serving your
customers, and benefiting the
shareholders is the key – don't lost it

12. Spirula as an Example
●
Founded February 2010
●
A long shot, at a tight timing
●
Self fund, very tight bootstrapping
●
Started with one employee: me
●
Started in a single room, stayed there for more
than than 18 months

13. Spirula Success
●
ROI after 12 months.
●
Handled massive projects, like referendum and
elections, akhbarak & al-akhbar, taghyeer.net &
elbaradei2011, meedan, alsaha, eglug, nezal, and
supermama.
●
Very good reputation.
●
Employees number doubled 7 times.
●
Our own office now :)

14. How?
● Rare service in the area.
● Addressing existing need.
● Solid technical background.
● Community activities.
● No tolerance towards ethics.
● Focusing on success more than profit: Don't look under
your shows (unless you have to).
● Patience: Don't Panic.

15. About
●
Following the professional open source business
model, and embracing free software values, Spirula
aims to support the small to medium business to switch
its IT infrastructure - or part of it - to the use of open
source software.
●
Supporting the local free/open source software
communities is a commitment that we have taken upon
ourselves, as without such communities all the software
we use would not exist.

16. Vision & Mission
● Vision:
To support and encourage business decision makers in
adopting Free/Open Source Software, by offering high quality,
reliable, and affordable services.
● Mission:
To give systems and infrastructure services to small to medium
businesses, while targeting the local market , the MENA region,
and the whole world.
● Slogan:
Openly managing and securing your digital world.

17. Questions?
ahmed.mekkawy@spirulasystems.com