OSS Fellowship

Sequoia Open Source
Fellowship

Open source is the lifeblood of software. Almost every company today relies on libraries and programs made better and more reliable by open source contributors around the world. While we have worked with many incredible companies who have deep open source roots, including Temporal, Confluent and MongoDB, we also recognize that open source projects that don’t become businesses are still critical tools for our portfolio companies and the broader community. We started this fellowship to support open source software outside of the walls of companies.

FAQs

• We want to support open source creators and projects that have real world adoption. That’s not always the same as having lots of stars on GitHub.

  Our goal is to help our fellows make significant improvements or investments in existing open source projects or support their expansion.

• You do! We do not expect anything in return for sponsorship. Any code written before or after the program is yours to decide what to do with. You are also welcome to decide what to work on and we do not expect to have any influence over your roadmap.

• Am I  expected to start a company or can I just work on my project?

  We don’t expect you to start a company or require an entity to secure funding. You’re welcome to work at your own pace on either your existing project or even to begin something new.

• No, it is location agnostic. You can live and work from anywhere. Digital nomads welcome!

• No travel required, but you are welcome to join for Sequoia founder events.

• Why did you start the fellowship?

  The entire tech ecosystem, from startups to large companies, is built on a foundation of open source software maintained by OSS developers. We are supporting this work because we all rely on it in order to thrive.

• How many people are in the program?

  We will likely select 2-3 fellows per year. We will take applications and accept fellows on a rolling basis.

• Our goal is to cover reasonable living expenses for a 6 to 12 month period for our fellows. We do not take any equity or consider this to be an investment in any future company.

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