All software should be open and more people can become entrepreneurs

WELCOME

A New Approach to Venture

Founded by Sid Sijbrandij, Open Core Ventures (OCV) is a venture capital firm that starts commercial open source software companies. Our team identifies open source software projects with traction, recruits passionate project founders and contributors, and launches new companies. OCV companies aim to create tangible value for the open source community by providing access to resources and reducing the barrier to entrepreneurship.

OCV believes in the power of open core, and the impact of open learning and collaboration. Our approach diverges from conventional venture capital because OCV starts companies and recruits founders; OCV does not invest in existing companies. The OCV model enables experienced, capable, and technical founders who otherwise would not have the resources to launch a successful startup.

OCV does not make investments in existing open core companies.

OCV is not currently accepting new limited partners.

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PORTFOLIO COMPANIES

"If you're going to pour your heart into your open source project, you might as well build a world-changing business at the same time."

Mike McNeil
CEO at Fleet

"Connecting with a CEO and seed funding meant we had great momentum building the Open Core model from day one. With OCV, building a growth business around open source is low-risk and high-reward."

Zach Wasserman
CTO at Fleet

"After a two-decade long career at a leading global tech giant, OCV inspired me to take the entrepreneurial leap to found FlowFuse."

Nick O'Leary
CTO at FlowFuse

TEAM

Sid Sijbrandij

General Partner

Sid is the Co-Founder and CEO of GitLab, the single application for the DevOps lifecycle and one of the world’s largest all-remote companies. He is a champion of the open source community and a pioneer in scaling remote organizations.

Betty Ma

COO

Betty comes from a finance background and most recently held Business Development and Strategic Partnerships roles focusing on the venture ecosystem. She’s a Wharton MBA and is passionate about advising startups on valuation topics and growth models.

Erica Lindberg

Head of Content

Erica is a content strategist and executive ghostwriter with a background in building and scaling content operations for hyper-growth startups. She is passionate about content marketing and helping founders develop their editorial voice.

Mel Condos

Head of Talent Acquisition

Mel comes from recruiting leadership for start ups and hyper growth software companies. She’s passionate about building a process to identify the right talent and match leaders with the right opportunities.

Robert Speicher

Senior Application Engineer

Robert was an early engineer at GitLab and joined OCV to recreate that magic for the next generation of open core companies. He loves puzzles, hip-hop, and queso, but not necessarily in that order.

Rich Aberman

Group Partner

Rich was the founder and Chief Product Officer of WePay (YC S09), a payments API company that raised $75M, grew to 300 employees, and achieved profitability before being acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2018 in one of Y Combinator’s largest exits. He then served as Managing Director of Chase Merchant Services before joining Y Combinator as a Visiting Partner for the W22, S22, W23, and S23 batches. At YC, Rich invested in over 150 companies, including fintech, developer tools, digital health, consumer and vertical SaaS. Rich is an active angel investor and lives in Santa Cruz, CA.