Investor - Open Core Ventures

Deadline to apply: Feb 13, 2026. We’ll complete Interviews and extend offers by Feb 27, 2026.

"As software has eaten the world, open source is eating software." — Peter Levine

Commercial open source software companies have captured hundreds of billions in enterprise value—yet this represents only a fraction of the trillions delivered by OSS today. We're still in the early innings.

GitLab co-founder and executive chair Sid Sijbrandij started Open Core Ventures (OCV) to accelerate this opportunity. We start companies around promising open source projects—the same approach that took GitLab from OSS project to $15B IPO in seven years.

We recruit founders and help them reach escape velocity. We’ve started 30+ companies around open source projects, including Fleet, FlowFuse, and Mermaid Chart. 

You can read more about our approach in our public handbook. 

As an Investor at OCV, you’ll identify promising open source projects, build investment cases, and launch companies—formulating initial strategy and driving execution. Think part investor, part co-founder.

You’ll work directly with technical founders to build traction and find product-market fit. Between company launch and CEO recruitment, you'll provide critical leadership— talking to customers, shaping and shipping products, and driving growth. You’ll gain visibility across OCV’s portfolio with exposure to both investment and startup operations.

• Research and evaluate OSS projects for commercial potential
• Identify CTO candidates from these projects 
• Partner with Founder CTO to drive product and GTM strategy on new investments
• Drive execution and build momentum before a permanent CEO
• Help identify and recruit CEO candidates once the company has momentum
• Help identify and recruit CEO founders once the company has some early momentum

We're looking for 0-1 product managers, product-obsessed founders, or product centric investors who are obsessed with identifying the next great technologies and building generational products and companies. You know how to talk to users, do things that don’t scale, build something people want, and move fast.

You could be a great investor at OCV if:

• You move fast: Growth defines startups—you live for velocity and rapid iteration
• You have a founder mentality: You do whatever it takes, take big swings with imperfect information, and learn quickly from failures
• You understand technology: Technical background helps, but fluency in software concepts is required. Experience at a top-tier software company is ideal
• You're relentlessly curious: You dig deep to understand how things work at their core
• You sweat the details: Nothing falls through the cracks on your watch
• You bias toward action: You balance big ideas with concrete execution. You'll do the grunt work. Movement creates momentum

Cash

Range: Commensurate with market and experience 

Equity

OCV offers the most favorable risk-adjusted path to wealth creation in venture

• Direct equity ownership: Receive 1% equity in each company you incubate, vesting over just 9 months instead of the typical 4-year schedule
• Compared to carry in a traditional fund: You receive cash at exit without the entire fund needing to clear its performance hurdle (typically 8% annual returns to LPs before GPs earn carry). To illustrate: 50bps of carry on a $100M fund requires an 11x return ($1B) to earn $1M—the same as a single $200M exit on your 1% stake at 50% dilution.*
• Compared to founder equity: You launch and support 3 active companies at a time, building a 12 company portfolio over 3 years. That's 12%+ aggregate equity across 12+ companies—founder-level ownership with more shots on goal.*

*For illustrative purposes only. Actual proceeds depend on dilution, liquidation preferences, and other capital structure variables.