I sent an internal note to all of Acquia's 700+ employees today and decided to cross-post it to my blog because it contains a valuable lesson for any startup. One of my personal challenges — both as an Open Source evangelist/leader and entrepreneur — has been to learn to be comfortable with not being understood. Lots of people didn't believe in Open Source in Drupal's early days (and some still don't). Many people didn't believe Acquia could succeed (and some still don't). Something is radically different in software today, and the world is finally understanding and validating that some big shifts are happening. In many cases, an idea takes years to gain general acceptance. Such is the story of Drupal and Acquia. Along the way it can be difficult to deal with the naysayers and rejections. If you ever have an idea that is not understood, I want you to think of my story.
Team,
This week, Acquia got a nice mention on Techcrunch in an article written by Jake Flomenberg, a partner at Accel Partners. For those of you who don't know Accel Partners, they are one of the most prominent venture capital investors and were early investors in companies like Facebook, Dropbox, Slack, Etsy, Atlassian, Lynda.com, Kayak and more.
The article, called "The next wave in software is open adoption software", talks about how the enterprise IT stack is being redrawn atop powerful Open Source projects like MongoDB, Hadoop, Drupal and more. Included in the article is a graph that shows Acquia's place in the latest wave of change to transform the technology landscape, a place showing our opportunity is bigger than anything before as the software industry migrated from mainframes to client-server, then SaaS/PaaS and now - to what Flomenberg dubs, the age of Open Adoption Software.
It's a great article, but it isn't new to any of us per se – we have been promoting this vision since our start nine years ago and we have seen over and over again how Open Source is becoming the dominant model for how enterprises build and deliver IT. We have also shown that we are building a successful technology company using Open Source.
Why then do I feel compelled to share this article, you ask? The article marks a small but important milestone for Acquia.
We started Acquia to build a new kind of company with a new kind of business model, a new innovation model, all optimized for a new world. A world where businesses are moving most applications into the cloud, where a lot of software is becoming Open Source, where IT infrastructure is becoming a metered utility, and where data-driven services make or break business results.
We've been steadily executing on this vision; it is why we invest in Open Source (e.g. Drupal), cloud infrastructure (e.g. Acquia Cloud and Site Factory), and data-centric business tools (e.g. Acquia Lift).
In my 15+ years as an Open Source evangelist, I've argued with thousands of people who didn't believe in Open Source. In my 8+ years as an entrepreneur, I've talked to thousands of business people and dozens of investors who didn't understand or believe in Acquia's vision. Throughout the years, Tom and I have presented Acquia's vision to many investors – some have bought in and some, like Accel, have not (for various reasons). I see more and more major corporations and venture capital firms coming around to Open Source business models every day. This trend is promising for new Open Source companies; I'm proud that Acquia has been a part of clearing their path to being understood.
When former skeptics become believers, you know you are finally being understood. The Techcrunch article is a small but important milestone because it signifies that Acquia is finally starting to be understood more widely. As flattering as the Techcrunch article is, true validation doesn't come in the form of an article written by a prominent venture capitalist; it comes day-in and day-out by our continued focus and passion to grow Drupal and Acquia bit by bit, one successful customer at a time.
Building a new kind of company like we are doing with Acquia is the harder, less-traveled path, but we always believed it would be the best path for our customers, our communities, and ultimately, our world. Success starts with building a great team that not only understands what we do, but truly believes in what we do and remains undeterred in its execution. Together, we can build this new kind of company.
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Dries Buytaert
Founder and Project Lead, Drupal
Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Acquia
