InfluxData’s Playbook: How to Convert 1% of Your Open Source Users (And Why That’s Actually Amazing)

Here’s a number that might shock you: “You’re a phenomenal open source company if you could monetize 1% of your community.” That’s InfluxData CEO Evan Kaplan sharing a rarely discussed truth about open source businesses in a recent episode of Category Visionaries.

With 1,900 paying customers, including Tesla, Lucid, and Salesforce, InfluxData has mastered the art of converting free users to enterprise customers. Their journey offers a masterclass in open source monetization that challenges conventional wisdom about conversion rates.

Start with Developer Experience

The foundation of InfluxData’s conversion strategy wasn’t sophisticated sales tactics – it was making their product irresistible to developers. “What Paul got right completely was that approach to the time series category by making it schema list, by building the capabilities directly in, by allowing it to scale horizontally… Just a bunch of stuff that made it really easy for developers to engage quickly, learn, install.”

This focus on reducing friction became their key differentiator. “The hurdle that you see with most databases, whether it’s traditional mysql or postgres, of coming over, having to get over a big wall just to use it, didn’t exist with it. It was very easy to start working with, and then it was pretty easy to stay working.”

The ‘Open Core’ Evolution

Rather than relying on the traditional open source model of selling support, InfluxData adopted what’s known as “open core.” As Evan explains, “The open source is free, it’s completely useful, but once you get up to a certain scale, you have to buy our closed source software.”

This decision point came in 2016 when they moved their clustering feature to the commercial offering. “We had planned on keeping the clustering and the high availability in the open source… But we were faced with kind of an existential threat as we couldn’t keep funding the company and building the database if we didn’t find a way to monetize.”

Multiple Paths to Revenue

Instead of forcing customers down a single path, InfluxData created multiple routes to monetization: “We offer the product, we offer it in a serverless form in the cloud, so people can just pay you go serve. We offer a dedicated form in the cloud, and then we offer it on prem, so we offer it all three ways.”

This flexibility allows them to capture value at different stages of customer maturity and across various deployment preferences.

Bottom-Up Enterprise Sales

Perhaps most crucially, InfluxData recognized that enterprise deals start with developer adoption. “For me, talking to a CIO is an exercise in vanity, because you don’t go to a CIO and say, hey, listen, you need a new time sharing,” Evan reveals. “You start with a developer, you win an architecture, and then you explain to a CIO or CTO why this is important, why it will scale with their business.”

This bottom-up approach means investing heavily in developer education and community building before focusing on enterprise sales.

Embrace the Reality

The key to InfluxData’s success might be their clear-eyed view of open source business models. Instead of fighting the 1% conversion rate, they built their entire strategy around it, focusing on making their free product genuinely valuable while creating clear incentives for enterprise adoption.

As Evan notes, “My philosophy after my three long stints as a CEO is if you can get 60-65% of the stuff you’re doing right, you’re going to have an amazing company.” This pragmatic approach – understanding that not every user needs to become a customer – has helped InfluxData build a sustainable business model in the challenging open source space.

For founders building open source companies, the lesson is clear: success isn’t about maximizing conversion rates – it’s about building the right product, creating multiple paths to monetization, and accepting that a small fraction of highly engaged users can build a substantial business.