Open-Source Business Models: How Giving Away Tech Makes Money with Bob van Luijt Weaviate

The Scale Up Show

Ryan is joined by Bob van Luijt in this episode to discuss his open-source AI company Weaviate. Listen in as Ryan and Bob break down Weaviate's unique vector database technology powering the next wave of AI applications. Bob talks about the business model behind many open-source infrastructure companies, how Weaviate helps developers easily build and scale AI solutions, and where Bob sees AI transforming businesses over the next 12 months.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Weaviate provides the core infrastructure for storing and indexing vector embeddings from AI models to enable faster search and retrieval.
• Open-source companies like Weaviate make money by offering additional services like support, training, and managed services around their free technology.
• Weaviate targets developers through a "bottom-up" product-led growth strategy focused on helping them succeed with AI applications.
• Current AI systems are limited by their binary nature, but new probabilistic AI promises opportunities to build more nuanced applications.
• Combining generative AI models with vector databases enables more complex AI agents for legal services, cybersecurity, and other business use cases

BEST MOMENTS

“I was a part of a community called a Google developer expert community. And I was invited in 2016 to Google IO. And during the keynote, Sunder Pichai, the CEO of Google went on stage and he said, we got to move from mobile first to AI first."

“How do we make sure that, that we really can go to production and that we can bring it to their customers as well? Because AI, and I don't mean this, I really mean this, it's like a seismic shift in how we build technology”

"If you store it and you can't get it out anymore, it's useless. The problem we had was that most search was always keyword based."

"We passed that point of good enough. So that opened the eyes of a lot of people. It's like, Hey, actually we can, we can build stuff with this."

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

[e-mail]

www.ryanstaley.io

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets