Episode #30 of Founder Real Talk was recorded live at a Heavybit speaker series event in Heavybit’s San Francisco clubhouse. I had the pleasure of chatting with Aghi Marietti, Co-founder and CEO of Kong, Inc. the API company on a mission to intelligently broker information across all services. It was interesting to hear how Aghi and his team recognized that making the move to an open core model was the best way to build a strong user base and how opening up Kong to the community impacted their overall go-to-market strategy. This episode is relevant to anyone who is challenged to concurrently manage, triage, and support two totally different audiences. In the case of Kong, it’s a matter of balancing the open source community and the commercial business. Aghi shares that users don’t mean community and community members can serve as ambassadors for the product if they feel like they are a part of a movement. This episode is filled with Aghi’s insightful nuggets of wisdom and there’s a bonus Q&A section at the end with questions from audience members. If you’re enjoying Founder Real Talk, please be sure to share it with friends. Happy listening!