GGV有話説：
GGV投資筆記是GGV紀源資本關於投資、商業、科技的所見所聞所想，探討關於世界的一切。
在這裏，你可以收穫：
全球優秀科技公司管理經驗、一線調研；
頂級風險投資人&創業者經驗分享；
大航海時代的世界人文歷史、商業見聞……
以下是GGV投資筆記系列第九十七期。
作者：Glenn Solomon
過去一年裏，我為大家介紹了很多開源公司和一批以開發人員為主導的軟件公司，它們顛覆了傳統的企業軟件市場，其總體市值將很快超過1萬億美元。
市值51億美元，HashiCorp是如何在早期一步步發展壯大的？
如何成為10億美元級公司？開源獨角獸公司HashiCorp、Confluent談成功經驗
揭秘Databricks成長故事：看準雲技術，他創建了一家市值380億美元的公司
而GitLab和Confluent的上市更是使得這一天離我們越來越近。
近期，這兩家開源公司的IPO預示了一些更大的趨勢，值得所有軟件公司的創始人、CEO和投資人關注。
首先，開發者們在開源公司中處於主導地位(他們熱愛開源)。其次，有了正確的商業模式，開源可以帶來很高的利潤。
為什麼GitLab和Confluent的市值如今可以分別高達約200億美元和300億美元？
因為，它們正處在一場大規模社會變革的中心，在這場變革中，每家公司都在讓自己也成為軟件公司。此時，對於公司來説，僅僅部署最新版的企業服務軟件是不夠的。當今最成功的公司都創建了自己獨有的軟件系統，並以獨特的方式將免費平台與商用平台結合起來，從而實現競爭優勢。從運輸和製藥到教育、政務、金融、保險、娛樂、零售，每個行業中的機構都是如此。
上市開源軟件公司市值高達數十億美元，而且還有更多的公司正以類似估值準備上市，這主要源於以下五個主要原因。
原因一：開發者對開源的強烈熱愛隨着每家公司都在成為“軟件公司”，它們都需要聘用大量的軟件開發人員。在這種環境下，開發者便掌握了主導地位，他們可以決定使用哪些平台進行編碼和開發運維，而他們大多選擇使用開源。開發人員喜歡開源工具，因為開源工具在本質上具有靈活性、創造性和協作性，能夠讓團隊成員在世界各地協同工作併為社區項目做出貢獻。
因此，像GitLab、Confluent，以及HashiCorp、MongoDB、Elastic、Databricks等開源軟件公司在軟件開發者中非常受歡迎，這些開發者會接下來將這些公司產品的企業版推薦給各自的老闆。企業自下而上地採用開源技術為這些最大的開源公司帶來了巨大的收入增長，這些開源公司均提供了商業版軟件產品，並增加了軟件的安全性、合規性、質量控制和協作等功能。
原因二：未來客户的大幅增長更重要的是，開源是一台永續存在的增長機器，為開源公司帶來可持續的長期價值。隨着世界各地的開發者不斷對開源工具進行標準化改進，這些開源平台像“病毒”一樣在更多開發者之間快速傳播，而他們對開源平台的信任也在不斷增加，這使得開源產品企業版成為越來越多公司的標準選項。開源工具的病毒式傳播為開源公司創造了不可阻擋的客户增長，而且客户數量如雪球般越滾越大。
原因三：難以置信的客户留存率公司能夠採用開源軟件付費版，通常是因為它們的開發人員已經在相當長一段時間裏成功使用了免費版。這意味着一旦客户開始為企業開源產品付費，他們很可能會堅持繼續付費下去。
這使得開源公司往往擁有很高的收入留存率；換句話説，一旦開源公司獲得了客户，這些客户就會留下來，隨着客户公司不斷髮展並且更充分地使用產品，它們會以越來越大的合同金額續訂。
原因四：雲的崛起許多開源公司現在成功地採用雲模式來託管並管理自己的軟件，並且將其作為服務提供給客户。五年前，大多數開源軟件都是“本地部署”，用户先是下載免費的公共開源內核，然後再付費下載商業化企業版，並主要在自己的服務器上自行管理。
現在，雲服務正在取代這一模式。例如，GitLab在其最近提交的S-1文件中指出，類似於SaaS的全託管雲產品在2020財年至2021財年間的ARR佔比從9%增長至16%，SaaS ARR同比增長202%。Confluent最近報告稱其雲收入年增長率為245%，MongoDB的雲收入現在佔其總收入一半以上。預計雲託管產品將繼續在開源公司中佔據顯著地位。
原因五：不斷自我強化的產品開發開源的本質是開放合作：開發人員將他們的專業知識(免費)回饋給作為商業開源產品底層框架的開放核心項目。對於開源公司來説，這種回饋令所有當前和未來的客户收益，因為這使得開源公司的產品變得更強大，更能符合開發人員的需求。在2020年，有大約1000名回饋者參與了GitLab的開放核心項目，2021年，這一數字翻了一番。每一位回饋者都為GitLab的基礎技術平台增添了價值。
我們可能會看到更多開源公司上市。Databricks、Snyk、Grafana、Kong和Vercel等公司正在快速成長，這説明，未來幾年裏一系列令人矚目的IPO正在醖釀之中。總的來説，屬於他們的時代已經來臨了，那些令開發者傾心與信任的開源公司已蓄勢待發，準備迎接未來的發展和最終的上市成功。
*文中提到的HashiCorp, Kong和Vercel 都是GGV紀源資本所投資的公司。
以下為英文版：Open Source IPO Boom: What GitLab And Confluent Show Us About The Future Of Software
For the last year, I’ve been writing about open-source companies and a wave of developer-centric software companies that are upending the traditional enterprise software market—and will soon collectively be worth more than $1 trillion in combined market capitalization. That day is getting closer ever since GitLab and Confluent went public. The recent IPOs of these two open-source companies portend some larger trends that all software founders and investors should pay attention to. Most importantly, developers are in the driver’s seat (and they love open source), and secondly, open source can be highly profitable with the right business models.
Why do GitLab and Confluent today have fully-diluted market caps of approximately $20 billion and $30 billion, respectively? They both sit at the center of a massive societal shift where every company is becoming a software company. It’s not enough to deploy the latest enterprise software; the most successful companies today create their own unique software and combine free and commercially-available platforms in unique ways to achieve competitive advantage. And this is the case for organizations in every industry, from transportation and pharma, to education, government, finance, insurance, entertainment, retail, and beyond.
There are five main reasons public open-source software companies are worth billions of dollars and that more are poised to go public at similar valuations.
Strong developer love
With every company becoming a software company, they all need to hire armies of software developers. And in this environment, developers are in the driver's seat. They dictate which platforms they want to use for coding and DevOps, and they mostly want to use open source. Developers love open-source tools because they are nimble, creative, and collaborative in nature, allowing teams to work together around the world and contribute back to community projects. Thus, open-source software companies like GitLab and Confluent, as well as HashiCorp, MongoDB, Elastic, Databricks, and others, are very popular among software developers, who in turn recommend the enterprise versions of these companies’ products to their bosses. This bottoms-up adoption of open source in the enterprise has driven huge revenue gains for the largest open-source companies—which all offer commercial versions of their software with added functionality such as security, compliance, quality control, and collaboration.
Huge future customer growth
What’s more, open source is a self-perpetuating growth machine, driving sustainable long-term value for open source companies. As developers worldwide continue to standardize on open-source tools, viral use of these platforms among other developers grows—and trust in them increases—making it standard practice for more and more companies to adopt the enterprise versions of open source products. Viral uptake of open-source tools has created unstoppable customer growth for open-source companies, and it will only continue to snowball.
Incredible customer retention
When companies adopt paid versions of open-source software, it’s usually because their developers have been successfully using the free version for quite some time. That means once customers start paying for an enterprise open-source product, they are likely to stick with it. This dynamic causes open-source companies to have high net dollar retention; in other words, once they get customers, those customers stay, and they renew at larger and larger amounts as their own companies grow and engage more fully.
Rise of the cloud
Many open-source companies are now succeeding with a cloud model where they host and manage their own software and provide it as a service to customers. Five years ago, most open-source software was “on premise” with users first downloading the free public open core, and then later paying to download and largely self-manage a commercial enterprise offering on their own servers. Now, the cloud service model is taking over. GitLab, for example, recently reported in its most recent S-1 that it’s fully-hosted cloud offering, which they call SaaS, grew from 9% of ARR to 16% between fiscal 2020 and 2021, representing year-over-year SaaS ARR growth of 202%. Confluent has recently reported annual cloud revenue growth of 245% and MongoDB’s cloud revenue now represents over half of total revenue. Expect cloud to continue to grow in prominence for open-source companies.
Self-reinforcing product development
The very nature of open source is that it invites collaboration. Developers contribute their expertise (for free) back to the open-core projects that serve as the underlying frameworks for commercial open-source products. For open-source companies, these contributions benefit all current and future customers because their products get stronger and more closely aligned with developer needs. GitLab had about 1,000 contributors to its open core project in 2020 and doubled that number in 2021; each of these contributors adds value to GitLab’s foundational technology platform.
We’ll likely see more open-source companies go public. Companies such as Databricks, Snyk, Grafana, Kong, and Vercel are growing rapidly and represent an intriguing IPO pipeline over the coming years. All in all, with the headwinds behind them, open-source companies that can win the hearts and minds of developers should be well-positioned for growth and eventual public-company success.
*HashiCorp, Kong, and Vercel are GGV Capital portfolio companies.
*作者簡介：Glenn Solomon是GGV Capital的管理合夥人之一。GGV是一家專注於本地創業者的國際創業投資公司。Glenn Solomon關注從種子期到成熟期的企業技術初創公司，涵蓋多個關鍵領域，包括開源、雲服務、基礎架構和網絡安全。Glenn Solomon有20多年的創投經驗，過去十年裏幫助9家公司完成了IPO上市。Glenn Solomon也是播客“Founder Real Talk”的主理人，在節目中採訪了多位創始人和初創公司高管，交流創始人們所面臨的挑戰以及如何在重重困難中成長。