What is an open company?

The Open Company Initiative (OCI) is a group of companies committed to maximizing operational transparency and openness as a defining element in how we create value.

"Open Source for business practices"

Different companies do it differently:

• Gittip
• Buffer
• Balanced

How Open Companies came to be

Gittip

https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/pull/137

Everything wasn't ideal

• Share as much as possible.
• Charge as little as possible.
• Don’t compensate employees.

BSD vs. GPL

BSD: Balanced

GPL: Gittip

"Run your company like an open source project"

How Openness works at Balanced

Not everything is open.

But a lot is.

Ambitious Open Source goals

Other goals too:

• Key business metrics
• Product design
• Pricing

Cucumber

https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/pull/431

TDD an API

https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/pull/496

Crowdfunding features

https://balanced.crowdhoster.com/let-s-push-to-debit-cards

Open Company Partnerships?

https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/pull/2036

https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/pull/2053

https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/pull/2062

How open is open enough?

https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/issues/23#issuecomment-36059506