Elise Bentley

From Dungeons & Dragons to Fortune 500 – Running a Large Commercial Open-Source project

They slashed their pricing from 400 options down to four. The result? A 200% increase in self-service sales.

From Dungeons & Dragons to Fortune 500 – Running a Large Commercial Open-Source project
#1about 2 minutes

The journey of TinyMCE from open source to commercial success

TinyMCE evolved from a two-person project into a major commercial open-source editor through a key merger and over 20 years of continuous development.

#2about 2 minutes

Building a strategic partnership between product and marketing

A successful marketing team acts as a strategic partner to product and engineering by deeply understanding customer pain points to shape the product roadmap.

#3about 1 minute

Adopting the open core model for sustainable growth

The open core model allows TinyMCE to keep its core product free for the community while developing premium features for a small percentage of paying users.

#4about 1 minute

Creating a product that genuinely solves user problems

The first step to growth is building a product that addresses real user pain points, like the PowerPaste feature solving copy-paste formatting issues.

#5about 2 minutes

Choosing the right open source license for your goals

Selecting an appropriate license, like the permissive MIT license, is crucial for achieving goals like widespread adoption and community building.

#6about 3 minutes

Building brand recognition for your open source product

Gaining traction requires creative brand recognition tactics, such as leveraging integrations with major platforms like WordPress or adding a subtle, removable logo.

#7about 3 minutes

Educating the market and tying premium features to pain

Successfully commercializing requires educating the community about premium features and demonstrating how they solve significant pain points for paying customers.

#8about 3 minutes

Learning from pricing and packaging mistakes

Key mistakes included incorrectly moving features to the commercial tier and creating an overly complex pricing structure with hundreds of options.

#9about 1 minute

Achieving significant growth with the open core model

The open core model led to significant growth, increasing from 30 to over 200 employees and reaching over $25 million in annual recurring revenue.

#10about 2 minutes

How to maintain and innovate on the open source core

To prevent the open source version from stagnating, dedicated engineering teams work exclusively on maintaining and improving the core product.

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