The Business of Open Source6 Jan 2025

Finding Product-Market Fit with Wei Lien Dang

Happy new year everyone! There was a short break for Christmas + New Years the past two weeks, but this week I’m back with a fabulous episode with Wei Lien Dang, General Partner at Unusual Ventures and formerly co-founder of StackRox. I recorded this episode on-site at KubeCon Salt Lake City back in November 2024.

This episode is particularly fabulous because Wei was willing to give some founder real talk. This is easier once you’ve sold your company, and especially easier when the ‘outcome’ of your company’s trajectory looks like an unmitigated success. And that is precisely why you hear so few founders willing and able to be honest about what the company’s trajectory really looked like — and all the times when things did not look like a chart going up and to the right.

Wei has also written an open source field guide, which is absolutely worth reading and is available here.

We talked a lot about product-market fit, how hard it is to find and how important it is. From the risks from just going to your network for feedback to the difference between general, high-level feedback and a very specific idea of how and why your product is used, Wei talked about both recognizing that you have a product-market fit problem and how to fix it. We also talked about empathy as a founder, recovering from building the wrong product, and managing the hearts and minds of your team.

Are you struggling with product-market fit, or feel like you have project-market fit but can’t translate it into commercial success? You might want to work with me, and / or come to Open Source Founders Summit to chat with other open source founders.

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