Using OSS Usage Data to Sell your Company

Published

June 13, 2022

This article was originally posted on

Hackernoon

Nestybox

Cesar Talledo is the co-founder & CEO of NestyBox. Nestybox was founded in 2019 with the goal of creating software to enhance Linux container security and workloads.

Challenge: Nestybox Desired Greater Insights into their Package Downloads

The Nestybox team needed a way to track downloads of their Docker Images from Dockerhub. They could track basic information with GitHub’s built-in traffic information. However, they wanted to see more information about the users and potential customers that were downloading their software. They worried typical solutions like adding telemetry to the software would scare potential adopters.

Solution: Scarf Delivered the Data Nestybox Needed

Nestybox began using Scarf to track more detailed data insights. Scarf helped by providing further insight into which companies were downloading and using their software. It provided more concrete data like company names and the number of times each company downloaded their packages. Scarf stored all historical data, which allowed them to gather better stats.

Result: Scarf Unlocked New Opportunities for Nestybox.

Scarf provided Nestybox with deeper insights into which companies were downloading their open-source software and opened new opportunities for the company during their recent acquisition.

“Nestybox was recently acquired by Docker Inc. During the acquisition conversations, Docker asked for download stats of Nestybox’s software ad we relied on Scarf to provide this info. Had we only relied on GitHub traffic stats, this infor would not have been available”

Key Outcomes

  • With Scarf, Nestybox could track downloads of Docker images without scaring potential adopters with typical telemetry software.
  • Nestybox could see hundreds of downloads per week in GitHub, but could not tell who was downloading their software until they used Scarf Gateway.
  • The data provided by Scarf was used to help Nestybox provide accurate download statistics during their acquisition conversations with Docker.

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