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<p>Dear midPoint community,</p>
<p>We were starting up a new company in 2011. We had with very
little money and limited business experience. However, we had a
good team, a vision and a code. The experts would say that
starting up a company based on engineering, with no sales, no
marketing and no rich investors equals a suicide. Yet, a decade
later, we are still here, more successful than ever. We have built
up a sustainable business based on open source.<span
id="more-7559"></span></p>
<p>Back in 2011, we had the <a
href="https://evolveum.com/ten-years-of-midpoint/">code</a> and
we knew that we want to develop it. However, three things are
absolute requirement for sustainable long-term professional
software development: money, money and money. That was <i>the</i>
problem. We had some savings, but that was not enough to fund a
long-term development effort. We we more than aware <i>how
“basic” our code is</i> and how much work is needed to make this
into a product. We were looking at years or even decades of
development effort. The money we had in hands could hardly cover
few months of development works.</p>
<p>Of course, as every self-respecting start-uppers at the times, we
were considering venture capital. Slovakia was a business
backwater at the time, investors were few and far between (unless
you wanted to invest in organized crime, of course). Yet, we have
managed to get in contact with few venture capital investors.
Turned out, they were more interested in capital than venture,
expecting unrealistic growth that we could not provide.</p>
<p>We were on our own. Bootstrapping was the only realistic option,
and even that was much less realistic than we imagined. Fellow
conspirators Katka Stanovská and Igor Farinič prepared a business
plan for a bootstrapped company. The plan projected a break-even
point in two years. I didn’t like the plan. It was too optimistic,
too risky, there were bold assumptions and insufficient reserves.
Nobody with their right mind could follow that plan. Then, of
course, we did.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what persuaded me to go for it. It was perhaps trust
in people in our team. Perhaps it was our best chance to develop a
code, a code that we would be forced to drop otherwise. Perhaps it
was just a momentary lapse of reason. I do not know for sure to
this day. Yet, looking back, I’m glad that we have made that
foolish decision, a decision that literally changed our lives in
many unexpected ways.</p>
<p>In August 2011 we have formally established Evolveum. Of course,
the beginnings were much harder than we had planned. There was no
break-even point in two years. Instead, we have invested all our
savings, borrowed money, went pretty much all in. It was quite a
ride. But that is another story for another day.</p>
<p>The investments started to really pay back only after a decade.
This was not the most profitable way of investing money. However,
Evolveum was still a huge success, especially in ways that cannot
be measured financially. We have secured a sustainable funding for
an open source project. We have created intereting jobs, jobs that
are desperately needed for the future of our country. We have
developed a software that is a major enabler. It makes identity
management deployment feasible for many academic organizations. It
makes government identity management deployments much more
transparent. It allows enterprises to use identity management
software in ways that were not possible before. MidPoint is a
game-changer for many organizations.</p>
<p>Starting Evolveum was a leap of faith. Evolveum grew from a crazy
idea to an established and financially-stable company. We did it
all ourselves, with a support from customers and midPoint
community. We could not wish for anything better.</p>
<p>(Reposted from <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://evolveum.com/establishing-evolveum/">Evolveum blog</a>)
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Radovan Semancik
Software Architect
evolveum.com</pre>
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