Published in Cowboy Ventures·Mar 6Can My Open Source Company Raise Series A?Investors’ definition of ‘greatness’ has changed — this is what founders need to know By: Robby Historically, there has been no clear playbook for open source metrics, benchmarks, and timeline to paid product. Prior to the 2022 downturn, many open source companies could raise Series A (and even Series B)…4 min read4 min read
Published in Cowboy Ventures·Feb 6Making Money from Open SourcePart 2: Deciding on the Right Open Source Business Model Welcome to Part 2 of our series on Making Money from Open Source. This post focuses on open source business models, and how project creators might think about the revenue and company potential for their projects. For Part 1 on…5 min read5 min read
Published in Cowboy Ventures·Jan 23Announcing $260M in new capital with Cowboy Fund IV & Mustang I, Yeehaw!By Team Cowboy (Aileen, Robby, Jillian, Ted, Allegra, Matt, & Mae) At Cowboy Ventures, our mission is to back the most promising seed stage companies, while having a positive impact on the communities around us. …4 min read4 min read
Published in Cowboy Ventures·Jan 19Making Money from Open SourcePart 1: Turning Project-Market Fit into Product-Market Fit By: Robby Imagine you’re the creator of an open source project. You release your project on GitHub, follow it up with a Hacker News post, and within a few months, surpass 1,000 stars. Woohoo! …6 min read6 min read
Published in Cowboy Ventures·Jan 8Marking Cowboy Ventures’ 10 Year AnniversaryBy Aileen Lee We recently passed the 10 year mark at Cowboy Ventures, woohoo! It’s a good time to reflect on the past decade, and share excitement for the years ahead. …12 min read12 min read
Published in Cowboy Ventures·Dec 13, 2022The Fable and Challenges of Credit Cards in the USFor the past few years, many have cited that today’s younger generations mistrust credit cards. Perhaps because it’s the debt instrument of their parents because they have seen the turmoil that debt can cause, the Great Recession, or the burden from student loans. …Debt5 min readDebt5 min read
Published in Cowboy Ventures·Dec 5, 2022Jillian Williams is our new Partner at Cowboy, Yee Haw!By: Aileen Lee It gives me great pleasure to share our awesome cow-lleague Jillian Williams has been promoted to be a Partner at Cowboy Ventures, woohoo 🤠! Jill is an outstanding thinker, collaborator, connector, teammate, finder of great early stage ventures, student of financial markets & business, and human being…5 min read5 min read
Published in Cowboy Ventures·Dec 5, 2022Becoming a Cowboy Partner!By: Jillian Williams I’m excited and honored to share my promotion to Partner at Cowboy, and I’m eager to continue to work alongside my amazing team and our incredible founders. Reflecting on my decision to join Cowboy, I realized that most of my time getting to know the team was…4 min read4 min read
Published in Cowboy Ventures·Nov 3, 2022What We’re Excited About: The Verticalization of B2B FintechBy Jillian Williams Selling financial products is not easy. Nor is shopping for financial products particularly exciting. Even when products or services could save time, money, and/or headaches, it’s expensive to convince skeptical customers to switch from existing services. …Fintech5 min readFintech5 min read
Published in Cowboy Ventures·Oct 21, 2022AI Coders, Open Source Designers & Serverless BuildersQ3’s most important software infra activity By: Robby At Cowboy, we do an internal review each quarter of the impactful events that happened in our areas of focus, and their implications on our investment strategy and portfolio companies. One of those areas is software infrastructure, with investments in companies like…7 min read7 min read
