Posted on Oct 2 I recently chatted with Jonathan, VP of Marketing at Armo.We discussed how they went from a regular old enterprise startup to embracing open source. It was rad hearing about their journey!You can watch the full video here:ARMO started off like most companies - targeting big corporations and trying to get sales through demos and long sales cycles. It worked alright, but growth was slow.In August 2021, everything changed with the NSA's release of the Kubernetes Hardening Guide.Armo quickly built and released this scanning tool called Kubescape. Despite no marketing, Kubescape immediately exploded in popularity within the Kubernetes community, rapidly garnering thousands of GitHub stars.When there is a huge problem popping up in the market - automatically, people look for a solution - Kubescape was there, so there were almost 0 requirements for additional marketing.A good way to build an open-source product is to look into new restrictions that get into the market.Stunned by this viral growth, Armo pivoted to become an open-source-led company. Kubescape became Armo's flagship offering, and they shifted to a product-led growth model targeting developers and users rather than top-down sales.Kubescape got 1000 GitHub stars in just 1 week and hit 2000-3000 stars in 2 months!Compelling event: The NSA paper generated interest in Kubernetes security, and Kubescape solved a timely problem.Audience-tailored: Kubescape provided fast, easy scanning that perfectly matched user needs.Community traction: Kubescape gained exposure on GitHub trending pages, leading more users to it.To fuel Kubescape's growth, Armo started marketing it hard:With its success, Armo decided to donate Kubescape to the CNCF.CNCF - Cloud Native Computing Foundation is the open source, vendor-neutral hub of cloud-native computing, hosting projects like Kubernetes and Prometheus to make cloud-native universal.Everybody can try and donate their project to CNCF to tap into a greater DEVOPs market.This gave it:Instant legitimacy for enterpriseBuilt-in community and exposureAssurance it won't go closed-sourceBut it also had some downsides:Armo lost ownership and brandingThey had to decouple it from their productRisk of competitors copying itI talked about:Starting my career as a full stack / team-leader developer for a decade.Becoming a digital nomadBuilding my own startups and the acquisition of one of themTurning point, switching from a developer to a growth hacker.Feel free to watch it here 👇This newsletter is good for you if:It’s a 100% free newsletter (and always will be). Feel free to register at:https://github20k.comTemplates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use. Are you sure you want to hide this comment? It will become hidden in your post, but will still be visible via the comment's permalink. Hide child comments as well Confirm For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse Ajay Shukla - Sep 25 Noobiz Developer - Sep 20 Vinish Kapoor - Sep 25 Francisco Inoque - Sep 24 Once suspended, github20k will not be able to comment or publish posts until their suspension is removed. Once unsuspended, github20k will be able to comment and publish posts again. Once unpublished, all posts by github20k will become hidden and only accessible to themselves. If github20k is not suspended, they can still re-publish their posts from their dashboard. Note: Once unpublished, this post will become invisible to the public and only accessible to Nevo David. They can still re-publish the post if they are not suspended. Thanks for keeping DEV Community safe. Here is what you can do to flag github20k: github20k consistently posts content that violates DEV Community's code of conduct because it is harassing, offensive or spammy. Unflagging github20k will restore default visibility to their posts. DEV Community — A constructive and inclusive social network for software developers. With you every step of your journey. Built on Forem — the open source software that powers DEV and other inclusive communities.Made with love and Ruby on Rails. DEV Community © 2016 - 2023. We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.