Chris Crosby

A big cheers to one of my favorite start-ups, DimDim (see blog post here). They just raised $6M in capital. Nice work guys. It demonstrates what’s possible if you come to market with a viable product in the right niche and execute well.  These guys didn’t come out of the gate as a “Web 2.0″ company trying to boil the ocean. They started small and grew organically through partners and beta customers until they worked out the bugs and kinks. My guess is that these guys will continue to execute well and get acquired by someone looking to get into the collaboration space to augment their existing apps (Google anyone?)

Here is a useful article for any software company considering using open source components in your applications. I can tell you from personal experience that if you think getting acquired is part of your exit strategy then you need to pay attention to what open source code may find its way into yours, because your acquirer certainly will. If you’re not planning on getting acquired, its still a good idea to understand what your legal exposures might be.

My suggestion is to make sure you document any third party (even commercial) code and how you’re using it across your applications; and then have an attorney review the appropriate license agreements.