Ignite Startups: How Open Source and AI Are Transforming Modern Software with Marc Seitz | Ep205

Ignite: Conversations on Startups, Venture Capital, Tech, Future, and Society

Marc Seitz is the founder of Papermark, an open-source alternative to DocSend that helps startups share documents more securely and affordably. With a background spanning physics, hackathons, and startup building—from co-founding HackerBay to launching Intel Ignite Europe—Marc brings deep insights into open source innovation, founder culture, and the evolving intersection of AI and software development.

In this episode, he discusses how open source is reshaping enterprise software, the “hackathon mentality” that drives rapid iteration, and why transparency and community are becoming core competitive advantages in tech. Marc also shares his perspective on building Papermark, navigating licensing, handling community pull requests, and how AI is transforming open source collaboration.

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

00:01 Introduction and Guest Overview

00:28 From Physics to Software

01:41 Discovering the Physics-to-Software Path

03:06 The Appeal of Instant Feedback in Coding

04:36 Founding HackerBay

05:15 The Rise of Dropout Culture in Startups

06:14 Lessons from Early Experiments

07:25 The Hackathon Mentality

10:30 The Aha Moment for Papermark

11:39 Building an Open-Source Data Room

13:53 Why Founders Embrace Open Source

14:49 Open Source vs Proprietary Software

15:26 Selling to Enterprises and Data Sovereignty

17:14 Transparency and Trust Through Open Source

19:04 Who Uses Papermark

20:59 Licensing Models and AGPL Explained

22:27 Enforcing Open-Source Licenses

23:33 Legal and Ethical Issues in Open Source

24:50 Enterprise Adoption and Pricing

25:31 Papermark’s Growth and Free Tier

28:15 Competing with Incumbents

29:22 Community Contributions and AI Integration

30:45 AI and the Future of Open Source Collaboration

33:43 Control vs Convenience in Software

36:13 Surprising Community Pull Requests

38:22 Managing Product Bloat and Feature Creep

40:32 The Role of Maintainers and Contributors

42:04 Leveraging Community and Capital Efficiency

43:55 Building Publicly and Growing a Developer Community

46:01 AI, RAG, and Secure Document Search

47:15 Is Data Ever Truly Secure?

48:32 Transparency and Audit Logs in M&A

50:31 Evolution of Data Rooms and Compliance

51:02 Adding e-Signatures and Future Roadmap

51:49 The Future of Open Source Software

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