Why I Don’t Hate Mark Spencer, Open Source CEO
There are few people in our lives that we can be happy for without some jealousy. Sure whenever we shake the hand of the guy on our team promoted, slap hands with a player who bested us or applauded the top grade getter in our class back in school we always smile thinly, but deep down inside is that human tendency to speckle it with regret we are not in their place. I have to admit often times, being very competitive, I’ve felt that emotion. Only in places where we are not in direct competition or could care less about the outcome can we at once be both happy and congratulatory with honesty. I imagine someone winning a pie eating contest would qualify.
However there is a third scenario, one in which you see someone succeed where you have not and genuinely enjoy their success and can only hope for more, not only because they deserve it but because you care for them. This is called admiration, and I have it for my friend Mark Spencer, who was just picked as one of Inc’s Top 30 Entreprenuers under 30.
Sure, we were both entrepreneurs, and talked about dishonest employees, growth and other perils of business, but he has become one of the most highly visible entrepreneurs in the Open Source business model. He has been featured in Forbes, Inc.com and many other places as his business, Asterisk, has grown to become the premiere solution for telephony in both small businesses and, increasingly, large corporations. Everyone who deploys it saves massive amounts of money, gains control over their network, and wrestles their infrastructure away from the licensing whims of the AT&Ts and Avayas of the world.
His story fits the mold of a successful entrepreneur; one that never dismisses opportunity, even if it doesn’t fit with your previous business plan. In college he started a Linux support company and needed a cheap (read:free) telephony solution for his cash strapped start-up at his house. What is an open source entrepreneur to do? Why, write your own solution of course!
His software, Asterisk, is the open source solution for telephony, and his company Digium sells and manages hardware that runs his open source product. Of course, you don’t have to use their hardware, and a recent article at O’Reilly even talked about how you can use Asterisk to turn a $60 Linksys router in to a $600 telephony machine. In all of this Mark has stayed true to himself and his company, and with a character that is both disarming and geniune.
As I left being an entrepreneur in late 2005, and his work taking him to Europe and the West coast, often times in the same week, we haven’t had time to enjoy each other’s company as much as I would like. There was even a time a few months ago when he purposely took the longer flight to have a two hour lay over in Cincinnati so we could hang out. Sadly, because of work commitments, I had to ditch him. So, my Java peeps, help me make it up to him and support Open Source businesses at the same time!
Vote for him at Inc.com by going here. You may also catch his profile on Inc.com as one of their top 30 under 30 group.
