Conversion Tooling

Conversion tooling is an area where I plan to focus much of my intellectual energy. I believe it’s a space in which I can create substantial value for my partners. At this stage, I don’t expect partners to take on any upfront risk associated with adopting these tools.

To that end, my approach is to work with the first affiliates for free on these conversion tools. This allows us to experiment and refine the offerings together, ensuring we achieve real impact from the outset.

However, time constraints are inevitable: I only have eight hours in a day. Over time, I expect that, because I will genuinely create a great deal of value, a natural equilibrium will emerge. I’ll be able to choose which affiliates I personally enjoy working with. As our collaborations deepen, it seems likely that these affiliates will want to compensate me for my time, attention, and focus. If I can make them even a percentage more capable, that will add up to a significant commercial advantage, yielding much better margins in the conversion process.

It’s important to note that the conversion tools themselves will not be open source. These will be my primary commercial product moving forward. While I may offer a shared source license to select affiliates, this will be the chief way I intend to generate income in the future.

In the short term, I recognize that my income may drop to zero as I invest in building and proving out these tools. I’m entirely comfortable with that tradeoff.