From Dyslexia to SugarCRM: John Roberts (Part 5)

SM: Can you take us through the process of building your sales team? JR: People started calling from all over the world, so we built four different sales channels: an ecommerce engine, an inside sales team, a channel sales team and enterprise sales team.

From Dyslexia to SugarCRM: John Roberts (Part 4)

SM: Who is your customer base? Do you mainly have small businesses? JR: This is a very interesting area to explore. In open source there is very little control over who your customers are. As a result, we have everything from big banks to the Men’s Warehouse.

From Dyslexia to SugarCRM: John Roberts (Part 3)

SM: The situation you described is not a pretty one. Why did you do it? Did you have any idea how you were going to make money? JR: We just believed. It was pretty early on. We did not know how we would make money. We hoped to be able to create a commercial version,

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From Dyslexia to SugarCRM: John Roberts (Part 2)

SM: During that timeframe, what did you think were the bright flashing lights of OpenSource? JR: It was all about hope and belief. That is why in the fall of 2003 I decided to go for it. I asked my wife for six months to chase this idea.

From Dyslexia to SugarCRM: John Roberts (Part 1)

John Roberts is CEO and co-founder of SugarCRM. He established SugarCRM’s commercial open source business model. Today the Sugar community is one of the largest open source communities on the Web.

Catching Up on Readings: Bootstrap Yourself!

Amidst the ocean of content that is coming at you, readers, I am sure you find yourselves overwhelmed. Here’s a recap of some articles from this site which you may have missed, but may be worth your time:

OpenSource Thought Leader and CollabNet Founder Brian Behlendorf (Part 9)

SM: What are some of the more interesting projects going on in the OpenSource space? BB: Recently I have been spending a lot of time with non-profits which are using OpenSource software in very creative ways. One example is the Grameen Foundation which runs an OpenSource project developing software to run a microfinance bank. They

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OpenSource Thought Leader and CollabNet Founder Brian Behlendorf (Part 8)

SM: Let’s focus a bit on the OpenSource universe itself. How do you see the movement changing and what do you see around you that is significant? Take WordPress for example; they just raised a ton of money. I run my website on WordPress and I don’t pay a dime. BB: What is interesting is

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