Open core venture platform.

WHAT WE DO

Source, start, and scale companies

At Open Core Ventures, we give founders the foundation they need to launch the next generation of era-defining companies.

We identify the highest-potential open source projects, form the company, and stand up the operational infrastructure so founders can focus on building starting on day one.

We track the OSS ecosystem and validate which projects can support a real company before anyone else considers them fundable.

Identify breakout projects.

We form the company and recruit the project's author or key contributor as the founding CTO. OCV partners and operators support founders from day one.

Incubate the company.

Once there's momentum, we recruit a proven CEO, a repeat founder who's raised and scaled before. With traction in place, we help you prepare to raise.

Raise from external investors.

WHY WE DO IT

Enabling more open source founders

The world's most important software is open source, and the companies that should exist around it mostly don't. We're here to change that by offering founders a salary and benefits from the beginning.

Watch

Sid explains the biggest constraint on entrepreneurship isn't talent or ideas, it's the price of admission.

THE OUTCOME

Open core at scale

Starting open core companies at scale creates a network effect: each one sharpens the playbooks and deepens the bench of founders and investors for the next. Open core compounds this. Commercialization funds the maintainers and governance that make open source sustainable, while open code earns trust and moves faster than closed code ever could.

Sid Sijbrandij

Partner

Former General Partner at ICONIQ Capital, where he helped scale the firm to seven funds and over $20B AUM and built out its talent and platform functions.

General Partner

Chris Hubbell

Partner

Former Fund Strategy Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where she helped shape fund strategy and operations across the firm's venture practice.

Chief Financial Officer

Maxine Ow

Team

Runs OCV's Catalyst Program and supports the incubation and growth of open source startups. Previously at Techstars and JPMorgan. MS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech.

Associate

Alex Smith

Team

Content strategist with a background in building and scaling content for hyper-growth startups.

Head of Content

Erica Lindberg

Team

Focuses on Finance Ops at OCV. Previously on the Sales & Trading floor at Goldman Sachs, dealing in FX and rates derivatives.

Finance Operations

William Xu

Team

Focuses on Business Ops at OCV. Previously an Associate at Point72 Ventures across portfolio analytics, finance & operations, and portfolio success.

Business Operations

Lainy Thomas

Team

Focuses on Operations at OCV. Previously at Bookkeep.com, building integrations to automate accounting workflows across B2B and fintech SaaS.

Operations Assistant

Jamie Lynn Lufrano

Straight answers

We build for venture scale.

Every company we start has the potential to become huge. OCV founders swing for the fences and push the pace on how fast they can grow companies.

We build open core.

OCV companies are built on top of open source projects. Pivots away from the original open source project are rarely successful.

We may fund competing projects.

We can't promise otherwise; some overlap is inevitable. We never share competitive information between companies.

We wind down when it's the best option.

We go all-in immediately to prove the commercial opportunity. If it's not there, founders find out fast without burning years of their lives.

Maintaining a project with traction?

Talk to us about becoming a founding CTO.

Founding CTO path →

Experienced operator looking for your next company?

Explore the founding CEO path.

Founding CEO path →