What really determines success or failure in a software startup? In this keynote, I’ll share the three pillars that matter most: a viable business model, clear product positioning, and sustainable user acquisition. These principles aren’t theoretical — they’re distilled from seven years of building JuiceFS, a distributed file system that went from closed-source to open-source, from SaaS-only to on-premises deployment, and from zero to adoption in some of the most demanding data infrastructures.

I’ll share hard-won lessons, strategic pivots, and industry shifts I’ve seen along the way. If you’re building, investing in, or contributing to software ventures — especially open source — this talk will offer practical insights to navigate what truly matters.

Speakers:

Rui Su: Open-source advocate and co-founder of JuiceFS, a cloud-native distributed file system

Rui Su is the co-founder of Juicedata, creator of JuiceFS, an open-source distributed file system built on object storage. Over the past 7 years, he has led its evolution from a proprietary system to a globally adopted Apache 2.0 project. Rui is active in the distributed storage community. Before Juicedata, he founded a startup and led development of an online community that won China’s only Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica.