The investment case for employing a Drupal Core contributor

I've long been convinced that every well-run Drupal agency of 30 people or more can afford to hire a Drupal Core contributor and let them work on Drupal Core pretty much full-time. A healthy Drupal agency with 30 people should be able to do $5MM in revenue at a 15% net profit margin ^#1. This means it has $750k in profits that can be invested in growth, saved as reserves, or distributed among the owners.

There are many ways to invest in growth. Hiring a Drupal Core contributor can be one of them: many Drupal agencies can afford it, and the role should be viewed as an investment rather than merely a cost.

In fact, Chapter Three just announced that they hired Alex Pott, a Drupal 8 core maintainer, to work full-time on Drupal Core. I couldn't be more thrilled. Great for Alex, great for Drupal, and great for Chapter Three!

§The value of having a Drupal Core contributor on staff

When Drupal 8 launches, it will bring with it many big changes. Having someone within your company with first-hand knowledge of these changes is invaluable on a number of fronts. He or she can help train or support your technical staff on the changes coming down the pipe, can help your sales team answer customer questions, and can help your marketing team with blog posts and presentations to establish you as a thought leader on Drupal. I believe these things take less than 20% of a Drupal Core contributor's time, which leaves more than 80% of their time to contribute to Drupal.

But perhaps most importantly, it is a crucial contribution that helps ensure the future of the Drupal project itself and helps us all avoid falling into the tragedy of the commons. While some core contributors have some amount of funding – ranging from 10% time from their employers to full-time employment (for example, most members of Acquia's Office of the CTO are full-time core contributors) – most core contribution happens thanks to great personal sacrifices made by the individuals involved. As the complexity and adoption of Drupal grow, there is a growing need for full-time Drupal contributors. Additionally, distributing the employment of core contributors across multiple Drupal organizations can be healthy for Drupal; it ensures institutional independence, diversified innovation and resilience.

§Measuring the business impact of a Drupal Core contributor

When I heard about Chapter Three hiring Alex Pott, I immediately called Chapter Three to congratulate them, but I also asked them to track Alex's impact on Chapter Three in terms of sales. If we can prove that hiring a Drupal Core contributor is a great business investment, it could provide an important breakthrough in making Drupal Core development scalable.

I asked my team at Acquia to start tracking the impact of the Drupal Core contributors on sales. Below, I'll share some data on how Acquia tracked this and why I'm bullish on there being a business case.

For Acquia, high-quality content is the number one way to generate new sales leads. Marketers know that the key to doing online business is to become publishers. It is something that Acquia's Drupal developers all help with; developers putting out great content can turn your website into a magnet. And with the help of a well-oiled sales and marketing organization, you can turn visitors into customers.

Back in December, Angie "webchick" Byron did a Drupal 8 preview webinar for Acquia. The webinar attracted over 1,000 attendees. We were able to track that this single piece of content generated $4.5MM in influenced pipeline ^#2, of which we've managed to close $1.5MM in business so far.

Even more impressive, Kevin O'Leary has done four webinars on Drupal's newest authoring experience improvements. In total, Kevin's webinars helped generate $9MM in influenced pipeline, of which almost $4MM has closed. Importantly, Kevin had not worked on Drupal prior to joining Acquia! It goes to show that you don't necessarily have to hire from the community; existing employees can be made core contributors and add value to the company.

Gábor Hojtsy regularly spends some of his time on sales calls and has helped close several $500k+ deals. Moshe Weitzman occasionally travels to customers and has helped renew several large deals. Moshe also wrote a blog post around Drupal 8's improved upgrade process using the Migrate module. We aren't able to track all the details yet, but I'm sure some of the more than 3,200 unique viewers translated into sales for us.

§Conclusion: investment returned, and then some

Acquia has an amazing sales and marketing engine behind these core contributors, driving the results. I hope Chapter Three tracks the impact of hiring Alex Pott and shares the results publicly so we can continue to build the business case for employing full-time Drupal contributors. If we can show that it is not just good for Drupal but also good for business, we can scale Drupal development to new highs. I hope more Drupal companies will start to think this way.

§Footnotes

^#1 This estimate assumes that 25 of the agency's 30 employees are billable, with an average fully loaded cost of $125k per employee and gross revenue of approximately $180k per billable employee. The basic math is: (25 employees × $180k) − (30 employees × $125k) = $750k in profit. I confirmed these assumptions with several Drupal companies in the US.

^#2 "Influenced pipeline" means that the content in question was one factor or touch point in what ultimately led potential customers to become qualified sales leads and be contacted by Acquia. On average, Acquia has 6 touch points for every qualified sales lead.