Founders at Work.pdf

400 Founders at Work
Livingston: So in open source projects, you have to listen to the opinions of
other developers.
Ross: Sure, they’re the ones building the product. We just have to be wary of
our inner geek voices and make sure we’re considering the needs of the world
at large. I don’t think Mozilla did that, and the project stagnated at a few million
users.
Livingston: Do you think Firefox has reached the mainstream because it is
better?
Ross: There are a million different reasons. Many people think it’s easier.
Others were just sort of weaned onto it when their children put it on their
computers.
Of course, we’ve also done plenty of legwork to reach the mainstream. It’s
all word-of-mouth marketing. We have a site called Spread Firefox that Asa
Dotzler and I started in 2004 when we launched Firefox. It’s basically a way to
leverage the talents of people who are not coders. We said, “Instead of just
being developer-only, like most open source projects, how do we leverage college
students and Toastmasters and people who knit—just every kind of talent
you have and every organization you’re a part of. How do we match you up with
other people in your region and give you tools to spread Firefox?” That was a
huge success. We’ve had over 250,000 people sign up.
We also did an ad in the New York Times. Ten thousand people donated
between $10 and $30 each to buy two full-page facing ads in the New York
Times when Firefox launched. Of course, that’s a couple hundred thousand
dollars, but we didn’t have a marketing budget. That was all communityfunded,
which is pretty unusual for any software project, let alone an open
source project.
Livingston: So Firefox spread because the browser is better and through word
of mouth?
Ross: Yes. We don’t have people shaping a message or working the press. It’s all
been grassroots, word of mouth, done through Spread Firefox. It’s been interesting
because we’ve seen about a dozen companies adopt the same model
since then. There’s GoTrillian.com, SpreadOpenOffice.org—there are all these
different copycat sites.
Livingston: Was there ever a point when you were really worried?
Ross: Not really. But I’m making it seem like startups are so stress-free, and of
course that’s just not true. It’s just really freeing not to be . . . We weren’t trying
to strike it rich with Firefox. It’s open source and it’s free. We weren’t trying to
take over the world; we had kind of modest goals, and it was OK if it failed. We
were a lot freer to make risky decisions.
If you can afford to do things that way, it’s just so much better. You’re not
thinking about venture capitalists or marketing or sales. Just product and users,
all day every day.