John Roberts on Wednesday resigned from his post as CEO of open-source CRM vendor SugarCRM, leaving board member Larry Augustin to assume the role of interim CEO while the company conducts a formal search for his replacement.
John Roberts
(Credit: SugarCRM)Roberts, whose grounds for leaving the company and future plans remain undisclosed, has made a huge impact on the open-source world, innovating the "Open Core" business model and helping drive open-source applications into the enterprise.
SugarCRM, despite losing Roberts, will be in good hands with Larry Augustin, who, as founder and former CEO of VA Linux, sits on a number of open-source company boards, including Pentaho, Compiere, Appcelerator, and Medsphere. He understands how to run an open-source business and, importantly, what to look for in leadership. Augustin should be able to find a strong CEO to lead SugarCRM.
Augustin's near-term task is clear, as he outlines in his blog announcing the change in leadership:
Yesterday, I stepped into the role of interim CEO at the company. I have an immense amount of respect for the founding CEO, John Roberts...My goals for the next 30 days at SugarCRM are fairly simple: get to know the team, customers, and partners. I am looking forward to helping them to continue to execute and (taking) the company to the next level.
In other words, continue the solid work that Roberts started.
I first met Roberts at an SDForum event in 2004, at which time I thought that he was crazy for believing open source could succeed in applications. He and his SugarCRM team persisted in their Quixotic dream, building SugarCRM into a thriving company that brought in tens of millions of dollars in sales last year and has an eye on an IPO.
I couldn't reach Roberts for comment but hope that he spends a little of his downtime on cycling, one of his passions, before he leaps back into the open-source world. As Augustin notes of Roberts, "Few people have taken a company from concept to major growth the way John did at Sugar."
I agree. Roberts will be missed. Fortunately, his legacy should live on at SugarCRM, one of the pioneers of commercial open source.
Disclosure: I am an adviser to SugarCRM.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
I moderated a panel yesterday that included John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM, as well as Danese Cooper, Open Source Initiative (OSI) board member. I was a bit surprised to find John criticize the OSI's make-up and mechanics, as The Register notes, but I can't say that I disagree with those complaints. John's basic point - for the OSI to have stronger resonance within the community should reflect that community - seems like a sound one.
But how do we get there from here?
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I've been highly gratified to see the response to this Open Source CEO Series. I've been impressed by the sincerity and wisdom most of the answers have revealed. Running an open source company at the beginning of the commercial wave is challenging.
Nowhere is this more true than with John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM. I've known John for several years now, and can still remember first meeting him at an SDForum event (back in 2004, as I've described before). John, Clint, and Jacob approached me after I spoke on an open source panel and told me about their idea for an open source CRM company. I thought they were fools, because clearly open source wouldn't work in the application space.
Four years later, it's clear that I, not they, deserve the "fool" title.
In this eleventh installment of the Open Source CEO Series, John took time from his growing business to talk with The Open Road. John is a friend and someone I respect deeply. He has stayed focused and true to his ideal to make CRM easy to use and affordable to deploy.
Name, position, and company of executive
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John Roberts, CEO and Co-founder, SugarCRM.
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