My name is Bruno Lowagie and I'm an entreprenerd.
- I developed free and open source software: iText, a FOSS PDF library (first released in 2000).
- I commercialized the technology: my wife and I founded iText Group (2008), a company with subsidiaries in the US (2009), Belgium (2011), and Singapore (2015).
- Together, we grew the business from the pre-revenue startup phase to an eight-figure exit.
I left the company in 2018 and I sold the remainder of my shares in 2020 to Crescendo, Titan, and Rivendell, three private equity companies backed by Peter Thiel. I am now helping startups with technical founders as a business angel and mentor. I notice that many engineers lack some essential skills that I—being an engineer myself—have acquired through experience over the years. With the book Entreprenerd: Building a Multi-Million-Dollar Business with Open Source Software, I want to help other technical founders save time.
In this book, I explain what you can expect when starting a company to generate the resources that are necessary to further develop and maintain your technology. I walk you through every phase in the life of a product: from idea to start-up to scale-up to exit. Along the way, I also introduce you to the vocabulary that is indispensable when talking to sales people, customers, accountants, investors, lawyers, and so on.
Watch the short promotional video (73 seconds):
Watch the book presentation (less than 6 minutes):
The slides of the book presentation are available on Slideshare.