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Cal.com Founder Interview Highlights

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00:00 My name is Pierre. I'm the co-founder and co-CEO of Cal.com.

00:03 It's an open source scheduling product.

00:06 We just reached 15,000 stars on GitHub, I think two days ago or something.

00:11 And I think we're close to 2 million bookings done over Cal,

00:17 which is pretty mind-blowing that 2 million people met

00:20 because we just built something in our living rooms.

00:24 It was just an idea like one and a half

00:26 years ago is mind-blowing i was basically googling for calendly open source like that was literally

00:33 my keyword and uh couldn't find any compelling product ever like it was none there was a few

00:41 reddit posts and um and i think um on News, people asking for like, hey, does anyone know like an open source Calendly?

00:50 I need this for XYZ. I was like, huh, interesting. I need this too.

00:56 Why don't I like just start it very upfront that this is a commercial open source software.

01:02 There's a difference between false and cost free open source software and commercial open source software. There's a difference between FOSS and COS, free open source software and commercial open

01:07 source software.

01:08 I personally believe that a lot of issues in the open source community come from lack

01:13 of funding.

01:15 And to get funding, you typically need to have a commercial product that makes revenue.

01:21 That's where we built like an enterprise license

01:25 where you need to pay us for the usage.

01:30 So we did raise a Series A, I think in December,

01:34 maybe January.

01:35 So like within the same year,

01:38 which was 25 million Series A.

01:42 So like total funding is now 32.4. I it's all public on calicom open which is

01:48 kind of like our open open startup page you need to be realistic with your burn rate like our burn

01:54 rate is crazy cheap like we're still burning uh like a pre-seed seed company just because uh we

02:03 we grow headcount by product,

02:06 not the other way around.

02:07 Like you can't hire more people

02:08 and expect them to grow the business.

02:11 In fact, I'd even say the business moves slower

02:13 the more people you hire.

02:15 I don't recommend having a burn plan.

02:18 Like I know some people would be like,

02:20 oh, we have a budget of 2 million,

02:22 but we only spent one.

02:23 So let's hire two more people, three more people. it's like you should hire people because your business needs it not because you

02:29 have the budget or the funding we still do contract to hire so that hasn't changed you start at a

02:35 company as a contractor first for about a month four to six weeks and you define a very well

02:41 scoped project where you can say was was this good? Was this bad?

02:46 And then you eventually, both the company, but also the contractor can decide if they

02:50 want to continue working together.

02:51 I think one thing we can say about hiring is we pay global salaries.

02:55 For me, it's like, okay, the most fair is money for code.

03:01 If you treat work as something like where you present value to a company

03:06 and you want to be fairly compensated, I don't think the manager should care what your living

03:12 situation is. I'd say like a European salary in Sri Lanka, you can pay for the whole family and

03:18 basically buy laptops for your brother and teach them how to code. And, you know, like that, that's just awesome in my opinion.

03:26 And these engineers are literally the same quality and output.

03:30 Like, it's not like there's any difference.

03:32 Like if you wouldn't know, you wouldn't know.

03:35 And so that's just, yeah, that's something I'm still very proud of having global salaries.

03:41 Also, what we've seen is we've seen people literally in our team move to live

03:46 in Switzerland from India for a couple of weeks or months and this would not happen like this

03:51 would just not happen right like yeah yeah it's life-changing and I'm a digital nomad so like

03:56 should I change my salary every time I move like if I go from Germany to whatever.

04:02 Consent things and very thoughtful and refreshing to say this.

04:06 And we don't hear it often.

04:08 And all these things are public, right?

04:09 Like what people get paid and where they come from.

04:12 It's all in your public metrics.

04:13 So we've been hearing about all these positive aspects of being open source and an open startup.

04:18 And so biggest challenge?

04:20 Yeah.

04:20 So the biggest challenges, and I think for anyone who wants to go open source,

04:23 you really need to know what you're getting into.

04:25 One side that no one's talking about is open source is really, really hard when it comes to complexity, product, community, different stakeholders.

04:35 You know, you have the freemium users, you have the enterprise customers.

04:38 Basically, our spectrum of users is the hobby engineer and Fortune 500 companies and they have very different needs and

04:47 very different expectations right um so that's really hard in terms of product making decisions

04:53 what types of features to prioritize and and deprioritize and and having literally everyone

05:02 be able to write an issue and create a comp like can be overwhelming

05:06 i think there's like 600 open issues that we have right now what would be your advice to people

05:11 getting started uh maybe a mistake or a pitfall to avoid and didn't sound like there has been

05:16 but yeah what would be your advice i i don't think i don't think there is something like

05:23 overnight successes i mean you hear this all the time.

05:26 It's a very, very long grind,

05:28 not even with a product that has interest,

05:32 like in general as a founder.

05:34 This is my 11th year now as an entrepreneur and product person.

05:41 And I've probably launched like 30 products in the last 10 years minimum has to be

05:47 probably more and the first startup failed second one was acquired third one is now cal

05:53 and fourth actually I think to increase your chances you know to be lucky you need to just

05:59 keep on doing things like I think a lot of people underestimate the power of pivots.

06:08 Like I've seen companies,

06:09 I've actually invested in a couple of companies that did like a hard pivot

06:12 and within two weeks they had more users than they've had in the previous

06:17 product for like a year or two years. Right.

06:19 Like sometimes you just struck a, yeah.

06:22 Find the lightning in the bottle and then, yeah,

06:24 you just focus on that instead well any any any last thoughts that you would like to

06:30 leave people um my dms are open if you have any questions on twitter uh it's peer underscore

06:38 rich r-i-c-h i'm happy to also reply to emails peer at cal.com or hook me if you have something more

06:47 serious.

06:48 But yeah, no, it's always a pleasure to jump on these calls and see how open source continues

06:56 to grow.

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