I understand if you don't want to share, but I'm curious what the compensation package looks like for a deal like this.
It's interesting because on one hand you have a lot of leverage (redis would not exist without you), but on the other hand you have none at all (redis can continue to exist without you). I wonder if the redis labs folks gave up equity, or if there is some kind of profit sharing arrangement.
This is certainly a unique business scenario, so again, I'm just curious. Totally understand if you can't tell us, but I'd be interested to hear insight on this.
Hello chatmasta, sorry, I can't share the details. Btw, yep makes sense to wonder about this since is a particular setup. Moreover Redis is BSD and not GPL which makes things more interesting. At the same time there are many projects that lost traction once the project leader decided to quit. So many variables indeed... So basically the value is given by a set of things. How important is for a company to have you on board, how important are your design decisions for the project, how strategic is that the project leader does not start another company instead of joining forces, and so forth... I think both parts are happy about the deal in this case.
Maybe all the pieces had some weight. All in all it was pretty logical, they were building a serious Redis company, I was not doing it, but was elsewhere. There was something not matching in the equation... It is logical to join forces, and it is more natural that the Redis development is sustained by the company that is focusing the most on Redis itself. So I think both Redis Labs and the Redis project itself are stronger from this simplification :-)
I don't know about the compensation, but I do know that by and large, cost of living is fairly low in Sicily, so if the compensation is good by US standards, antirez is going to be pretty comfortable.
I think antirez, when I met him virtually... 20 (?! così tanti?) years or so ago, really opened my eyes to the possibilities that the internet offered to people who do not live in an Important Place like Silicon Valley.
I would love to know the actual deal which happened however I highly doubt if he would publish it.
It is very clear to me that redis is a labor of love for antirez and money is not a driving factor anymore in his life. I am sure If it was about money, he would have started something like redis labs long time ago himself.
Personally, if I was as smart as him and created a great open source product like Redis, I would have definitely started something like Redis Labs to benefit from it financially. I am jealous of folks for whom money is not a driving factor.
It's a complex matter with different factors: for me money is important as well since I've family with two children, even if, indeed, I'm not crazy about getting as much money as possible in general. However, how good is money if you have no free time? Coding is something I can do from Sicily, but bootstrapping a company, I'm sure would require me traveling a lot more, compared to someone who is based on SF or London. So given that, as David Welton said in this thread, in Sicily is not super expansive, I tried to balance things, getting SF-style compensations while living here. This does not made me rich at all... I purchased a 350k euros house a few years ago and I'll have to pay half of it for the next years... But still, I can travel with family, go buy food without checking the price labels too much, have a small garden, and so forth. For me this was a good quality-of-life/money balance. With Redis Labs my compensation improved since Redis Labs is focused on Redis, is not just a part, so they are able to compensate me better, and this is good since I'll be able to work from home in a similar fashion.
Kudos for finding work/life balance while providing the community with, dare I say it, an essential tool a lot of us could not live without (or our lives would be much more difficult with a substandard tool in its place).
I, too, am an OSS developer who makes a living off my projects. Money is very important to me but so is my time. Like antirez, I want to focus on building the best features and products I can and not spend time looking for investment, hiring, running a company, etc. As of today, I have a one person self-funded profitable company which requires very little effort to maintain aside from periodic bookkeeping.
This business scenario is not that unusual. The package is whatever you can negotiate.
Your value as a no-longer-essential founder does not necessarily diminish once you are no longer a single-point-of-failure. Some founders are also superior community leaders. Doug Cutting (founder of Hadoop, Lucene, now at Cloudera) comes to mind.
Comments
I understand if you don't want to share, but I'm curious what the compensation package looks like for a deal like this.
It's interesting because on one hand you have a lot of leverage (redis would not exist without you), but on the other hand you have none at all (redis can continue to exist without you). I wonder if the redis labs folks gave up equity, or if there is some kind of profit sharing arrangement.
This is certainly a unique business scenario, so again, I'm just curious. Totally understand if you can't tell us, but I'd be interested to hear insight on this.
Hello chatmasta, sorry, I can't share the details. Btw, yep makes sense to wonder about this since is a particular setup. Moreover Redis is BSD and not GPL which makes things more interesting. At the same time there are many projects that lost traction once the project leader decided to quit. So many variables indeed... So basically the value is given by a set of things. How important is for a company to have you on board, how important are your design decisions for the project, how strategic is that the project leader does not start another company instead of joining forces, and so forth... I think both parts are happy about the deal in this case.
How much of it is just being able to use your brand and to be able to say they have you on board?
Or since you probably can't answer that, does it factor into the equation at all?
Maybe all the pieces had some weight. All in all it was pretty logical, they were building a serious Redis company, I was not doing it, but was elsewhere. There was something not matching in the equation... It is logical to join forces, and it is more natural that the Redis development is sustained by the company that is focusing the most on Redis itself. So I think both Redis Labs and the Redis project itself are stronger from this simplification :-)
I don't know about the compensation, but I do know that by and large, cost of living is fairly low in Sicily, so if the compensation is good by US standards, antirez is going to be pretty comfortable.
I think antirez, when I met him virtually... 20 (?! così tanti?) years or so ago, really opened my eyes to the possibilities that the internet offered to people who do not live in an Important Place like Silicon Valley.
Hey we are old but not so much :-) 16 years ago more or less...
I would love to know the actual deal which happened however I highly doubt if he would publish it.
It is very clear to me that redis is a labor of love for antirez and money is not a driving factor anymore in his life. I am sure If it was about money, he would have started something like redis labs long time ago himself.
Personally, if I was as smart as him and created a great open source product like Redis, I would have definitely started something like Redis Labs to benefit from it financially. I am jealous of folks for whom money is not a driving factor.
It's a complex matter with different factors: for me money is important as well since I've family with two children, even if, indeed, I'm not crazy about getting as much money as possible in general. However, how good is money if you have no free time? Coding is something I can do from Sicily, but bootstrapping a company, I'm sure would require me traveling a lot more, compared to someone who is based on SF or London. So given that, as David Welton said in this thread, in Sicily is not super expansive, I tried to balance things, getting SF-style compensations while living here. This does not made me rich at all... I purchased a 350k euros house a few years ago and I'll have to pay half of it for the next years... But still, I can travel with family, go buy food without checking the price labels too much, have a small garden, and so forth. For me this was a good quality-of-life/money balance. With Redis Labs my compensation improved since Redis Labs is focused on Redis, is not just a part, so they are able to compensate me better, and this is good since I'll be able to work from home in a similar fashion.
Kudos for finding work/life balance while providing the community with, dare I say it, an essential tool a lot of us could not live without (or our lives would be much more difficult with a substandard tool in its place).
Thank you, and congratulations.
I, too, am an OSS developer who makes a living off my projects. Money is very important to me but so is my time. Like antirez, I want to focus on building the best features and products I can and not spend time looking for investment, hiring, running a company, etc. As of today, I have a one person self-funded profitable company which requires very little effort to maintain aside from periodic bookkeeping.
It's not for everyone but neither is VC-funding.
+1
There's a button for that.
This business scenario is not that unusual. The package is whatever you can negotiate.
Your value as a no-longer-essential founder does not necessarily diminish once you are no longer a single-point-of-failure. Some founders are also superior community leaders. Doug Cutting (founder of Hadoop, Lucene, now at Cloudera) comes to mind.