A lot of open source projects are very tech centered. Stek.io’s mission is to change that and “make installing and hosting tools like a blog, a forum or a project management app a one-click affair”. Stek.io is a Dutch-Greek open source software-as-a-service that includes Ghost, a blogging platform, Discourse, a forum and community builder, and Hackpad that can be used to collaborate on docs, texts, to do lists or projects.
Stek.io: open source non-techies
The Dutch startup is an initiative of Erwin Blom (Fast Moving Targets), Mark Pors (former WatchMouse) and Dimi Balaouras (former WatchMouse), a trio with decades of experience regarding media, open source, and software development. CEO Erwin Blom explains how it makes open source easy for non-techies.
How did you launch Stek.io?
We started thinking about Stek.io and working on it since last year and released it just a week ago.
A long time ago I said somewhere online: ‘wouldn’t it be nice if there was a place where a nontechie as myself could easily install and host open source software’. Mark is a very technical guy. And a long time later he asked me: ‘Erwin, did you do anything with it’? He liked the idea and wanted to pick it up. So we did. He lives in Athens and asked Greek programmer Dimi to join. That’s how it started. At first, we worked remotely with each other. Until a couple of weeks ago. Then we met in person for the first time.