The Early Days of GitLab - A Chat with Sid Sijbrandij

GitLab, one of the world's leading open-core companies, has greatly influenced PostHog's all-remote culture and product style, with its founder, Sid Sijbrandij, offering insights into GitLab's business strategies and growth. GitLab, bootstrapped initially with 100K users, realized the commercial value lay in its source-available version, reaching $100M ARR by 2020, and encourages focusing on this area over hosted solutions due to competition. The company emphasizes a clear separation of free and paid product features, with product managers determining the allocation of engineering resources. Marketing was initially not a priority for GitLab, relying instead on organic community adoption, though they acknowledge that early-stage companies might benefit from simultaneous marketing efforts. Sid advises against blindly following GitLab's path, emphasizing the importance of learning from their experiences while acknowledging the unique aspects of each company’s journey.

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