search

gratipay / inside.gratipay.com

Here lieth a pioneer in open source sustainability. RIP
https://gratipay.news/the-end-cbfba8f50981
57 stars 38 forks source link

✈️ Relaunch: #BackTheStack #1160

Closed chadwhitacre closed 6 years ago

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

✈️ This is the flight deck for the Relaunch: #BackTheStack project. ✈️

🗻 That project is part of the Make it easier for companies to fund open source epic. 🗻

Okay! https://github.com/gratipay/gratipay.com/pull/4598 is out the door. This is Gratipay 3.0. We are back! How do we tell the world?

Pre-launch

Post-Launch

Partnerships

✈️ This is the flight deck for the Relaunch: #BackTheStack project. ✈️

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

@jdorfman and I are working on this here at #1044. Thought is:

Pitch for partners:

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Potential Launch Partners

Sponsorship - Cash

Sponsorship - In-Kind

Media

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Timeline

I want to get this out ahead of #1139 in early October.

Best day to publish is Tuesday.

Let's aim for September 26.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Pitch to Partners

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Draft post: https://medium.com/@whit537/gratipay-3-0-6949be9505d1.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Earliest Adobe could buy would be December (new budget year).

Talked to Code Fresh ... "1 month, $500, pilot ... $1,000 after that. Yeah, maybe. Talk to Dan."

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

This is Gratipay 3.0.

Let's get clear on what this means. I would like to go for It™. What is It? The big culture change in tech: $2,000 per developer per year into open source. The whole hog. The shocking idea. The shift in the Overton window. A sea change. 🌊

Gonna see about a PR against http://inside.gratipay.com/big-picture/strategy ...

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

P.S. slack

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Let's aim for September 26.

Let's not. :-)

Now thinking let's do some steady sales for a month or two and see when we reach 3-ish customers, then build up some marketing momentum around that. Having companies jump in will be the biggest marketing boon.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Sales plan:

  1. companies that were giving on Gratipay in the past
  2. https://github.com/ossfriendly/open-source-supporters
  3. companies that are giving on OC now (see also: 2)
  4. big companies a la https://github.com/gratipay/inside.gratipay.com/issues/987#issuecomment-288404265
chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Alright, two things happened yesterday and collided in my sleep last night and I dreamt that we rescued the galaxy from demon lords and saved Twitter's stock price at the same time.

1.

I went back and revisited the email conversation I had with Walker from Teespring last year. It ends with this message from him:

This is a marketing challenge, IMO.

You need to change the perception that it's okay to use open source without contributing back to it. I'd mark the calendar for an "open source day" and try to make a huge hash tag and movement about giving back to open source, which gratipay is at the center of.

If you can change the perception that it's okay to use it without giving back, and you're at the center, that's a massive movement. Companies that don't give back and use the software should be shamed about it, etc.

There's a rut in my brain which runs between "We should do a 30 day campaign Kickstarter-style. Back the stack!" (#1057) and "But we want companies to give all the time." Shipping the new homepage for me was willfully choosing the latter over the former ... but! From a marketing point of view there's little reason we can't run a time-boxed campaign to drive traffic to this new homepage.

2.

TwitterOpenSource started following us on Twitter:

screen shot 2017-09-24 at 7 33 07 am

This is significant because of the size of their following and the weight of the Twitter brand. Looks like I neglected to report over on https://github.com/gratipay/inside.gratipay.com/issues/1044 that I ran into my friend @|decause in LA and learned that he has picked up the reins of open source at Twitter (vacant since @|caniszczyk's departure, I believe?), so this is a delightful surprise but not inexplicable. I don't think he can unlock a lot of money, but he seemed interested in talking about comped promotion.

❗️ 💡

1 + 2.

Imagine if Twitter partnered with us to cross-promote #BackTheStack #PayForOpenSource #DontBeEquifax! We've already got OSI on board (#1161). I reached out to Changelog the other day and they were skeptical, but if they find out Twitter and OSI are on board that could sway them. We could also reach out to Libraries.io. StickerMule would want in as well as a sticker sponsor.

3.

YC application announcements went out this morning, and applications are due on October 3—next Tuesday.

October is the first month of the fourth quarter of the year.

Let's aim for September 26.

Let's not. :-)

What if we make the first month of each quarter "Back the Stack / Pay for open source" month? We do a campaign every third month, starting in a week: October 1. Or every six months (à la YC :D). Or once a year. Or just once to start with. 😆

tl;dr

Can we pull together a month-long campaign to kick off next Monday, October 2? 😬 😱 😮 🙉 🚀

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

rescued the galaxy from demon lords

P.S. This part was because I lay in a field staring at the Milky Way for about three hours. :D

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

To: Remy

Dusting off @TwitterOSS, eh? Thanks for the follow, my friend. ;-)

Interesting timing ... we're getting ready to launch a #BackTheStack campaign for the month of October to raise money for open source through Gratipay. Would TwitterOSS want to be a part of this campaign as a promotional partner?

JessaWitzel commented 6 years ago

Very rough draft at https://medium.com/@JessaWitzel/it-is-time-to-backthestack-9b119557de61 for pre-campaign blog post.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

slack

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Heard back from Remy!

Do you have details you can send me (one-pager?) about the campaign and the projects it will support?

Working up a prospectus ...

Will probably also throw together a simple logo ...

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Logo next, here is the prospectus first draft:

#BackTheStack — Promotional Partner Prospectus.pdf

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

backthestack-q4-2017

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Prospectus, Draft 4

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Final: Prospectus - Promotional Partner - BackTheStack on Gratipay - Q4-2017.pdf

(Sent to Remy and OSI.)

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

On profiles (Twitter, etc.) I'm changing:

Helping companies and others pay for open source.

To:

The easiest way for your company to pay for open source.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

I've emailed OpenSource.com asking if they'd like a story about #BackTheStack during October.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Had a chat with @andrew and @benjam from Libraries.io. They are on-board as promotional partners for #BackTheStack, and also had lots of good feedback on how to run the campaign:

They're also willing to help us figure out how to distribute the money once we get there. :)

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

From OpenSource.com:

We'd be interested in an article after the crowdfunding closes. We have a policy of not running articles about open crowdfunding campaigns, but I think an article that explains how much $$ was raised and how it was dispersed would be interesting to our readers.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Mail sent to npm.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Also pinged StickerMule.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

npm:

We’re heads down [right now]; can I circle back [in a week or two]?

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

I pinged Changelog again.

JessaWitzel commented 6 years ago

I will try my hand at a press release tomorrow after the next draft of the blog post!

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwynne/2014/02/24/what-journalists-really-think-of-your-press-release/

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

We've got a number of tickets that were raised about the old model (direct-to-project) and we're addressing them in the new model (indirect-to-project) but I guess we should keep the old issues open since they're not really about the new model?

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Okay! Campaign soft-launch in gratipay/gratipay.com#4650! What next? What are priorities? Here's what I see:

  1. promo logos + /browse/payments—we need to make good on recognition and promotion and friendly competition!
  2. perks / stretch goals—I think this will make a big difference to conversion
  3. marketing materials—one-pager, video, press release, blog post
  4. file uploads—for library comprehension for distribution (we can always ask for these files via an email update later on)
chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/06/06/successful-crowdfunding-campaigns-dont-give-tangible-rewards/

JessaWitzel commented 6 years ago

New rough draft blog post: https://medium.com/@JessaWitzel/its-time-to-back-the-stack-16abe9fc8477

Feel free to use any parts of mine combined with more parts of yours. :)

jdorfman commented 6 years ago

Looks great @JessaWitzel

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

At @jdorfman's suggestion I've reached out to Read the Docs about partnering with us.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

@RichBrey11 has put together a calendar for us to track Facebook and other editorial:

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=anfpfipvlbhj3456ffhdq51ko0%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

New rough draft blog post:

Our target customer is a manager-with-spending-power-at-a-company. That's who we would like to persuade to pour money into https://gratipay.com/. (Right?) How do we get inside their head? How do we empathize with them? Come alongside them? Can we write something they identify with? See themselves in? Ideally they read what we write and say, "Yeah, that's me! Let's do this!"

Reading through "It’s Time To Back the Stack," I'm not sure we're there yet. The reason is that it seems to leak too much of a sense of entitlement on behalf of the open source community, in phrases like, "You don’t want to be the “free rider”," and, "it’s about time that you gave it the gratitude it deserves!"

I think guilt is the wrong motivator, because guilt is uncomfortable and it's going to be so easy to ignore us. As soon as there is a whiff of entitlement or guilt-tripping, won't we lose manager-at-a-company's attention? I'm inclined to agree with @mattbk: "We want to inspire people into action, not scare them" (slack).

Am I off base?

mattbk commented 6 years ago

"Gratitude? Gratipay!"

mattbk commented 6 years ago

Make them feel special for it, they are doing something that few others are.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Make them feel special for it, they are doing something that few others are.

Fine line. We need to make the innovators and early adopters feel special, but to jump the gap and reach the tipping point we need to activate herd mentality and fear of missing out.

diffusion-of-innovation-adoption-curve

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_point_(sociology)#10.25_of_a_Population

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Channels

Here are our channels for this campaign. The ideal is to find our traction by promoting the campaign on these mass channels vs. having to do a manual email outreach slog.

  1. email—We have an untried list of about 6,000 addresses. Discussed with @dmk246 and @Richbrey11 ... I think we need to add everyone to a MailChimp list and let them unsubscribe (vs. mail everyone once for an opt-in to a new list).
  2. Twitter—~35,500 followers
    • OSI: 21,800
    • teabass: 5,500
    • whit537: 2,250
    • Librariesio: 2,250
    • Gratipay: 1,700
    • other: 2,000
  3. Medium—1,000 (I don't entirely understand how this works)
    • whit537: 1,000
    • Gratipay: 1,000
    • gratipay.news (publication): 1,000
  4. Facebook—400 followers (famously opaque who sees what)
  5. press—cold list coming together in #1174
  6. Hacker News
  7. Reddit—/r/opensource /r/programming /r/python /r/javascript
chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

We should also coordinate a HackerOne Hacker News push on Tuesday. Added to the calendar!

P.S. Should we try to use one calendar to coordinate all channels? I've added FB: to the events already on there for Facebook.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

And what about Reddit?

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

P.S. I do think we need file uploads before launch because I think "the software you actually use" is an important selling point. I think we can do it pretty easily though, easier than image uploads.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

@ericholscher thinks uploading package.jsons is a non-starter because a) it's too complex to work with without enough value (no weighting, e.g.), and b) it's sensitive information so we won't get enough of them in the first place.

He suggests we offer companies 1 vote per $1,000 or something simple like that that gives companies a modicum of control over the distribution process—but less than the community. So if 10% goes to Gratipay then let's say 40% is divided according to company votes and the remaining 50% gets split however Libraries.io sez we should split it. If a project can't receive then we split it evenly among their dependencies, recursively.

He says we should have the distribution mechanism fleshed out one way or another before launch to avoid a political quagmire.

That was his second point. ^^^

His main point was that we should look for case studies of where this has already worked for individual projects, such as DRF, Django itself, Vue.js, PHK, and WebPack. Look for blog posts where companies explain why they paid the projects they did. That is our customer telling us in their own words what persuaded them to take the action we them and others to take.

When we find existing case studies we should use them as editorial content during the campaign (#1180).

If we can we should reach out to companies that have given and write up new case studies and interviews: marketing for them, the project, and ourselves. Win, win, win.

Lastly: big picture is that we're taking the fundraising model that has worked for individual projects, and applying it to the open source community as a whole. That is an interesting idea and a compelling pitch and we should make it more prominent.

❤️ @ericholscher

ericholscher commented 6 years ago

Looks good -- only comment is it should just be given to one level of dependencies. No recursion. Stop trying to over-complicate your life :D

ericholscher commented 6 years ago

Also I'm happy to run a Community Ad for this campaign: http://docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ethical-advertising.html#community-ads

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Oh and by the way @ericholscher has graciously offered to help us out with advertising on Readthedocs.org you know no biggie. 👀 See above. ^^^

I can't smile big enough. ☺️

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!