A friend who worked at Mozilla told me about a new program they were launching called Mozilla Pioneers last month. I decided to apply and while I was at it, develop a proof of concept of the idea I wanted to build if accepted. Application deadline was yesterday though we won't find out who is accepted for another few weeks, but I figure now is a good time as any to share what I built.

What is Mozilla Pioneers

The Mozilla Pioneers program seems to be a new initiative at Mozilla aimed at inviting product builders to partner and collaborate with Mozilla on developing new ideas for Mozilla, with the long term goal of finding a product Mozilla would like to continue to invest into long term.

The terms of the program is to find 2-4 participants who is interested and accepted into the program, to work with Mozilla remotely over two months (on your own time) developing these new ideas. In exchange, Mozilla is willing to pay a stipend of $19K per month and offer weekly mentorship if needed, as well as provide tools you could use for prototyping. Their website has more details but ultimately whatever idea you're pitching, you need to be comfortable with Mozilla owning this idea.

Why I am Applying

I thought this could be fun and I do have some ideas that I thought would be interesting and fit directly with Mozilla's corporate ethos and mission. More importantly, they're ideas I don't mind Mozilla taking ownership of and running with, even if I'm not selected for the program. And two months to see where this could potentially go is short enough of a commitment that I thought it would be fun to give it a go.

So I applied, and decided to take it one step further and design a proof of concept landing page for the idea I wanted to pitch if I was accepted into the program. Now it's important to note that the Mozilla Pioneers website makes it clear you should not share your idea during the application process and if you do, you fully understand you're giving Mozilla rights to the idea. As noted above, I was okay with this.

My Understanding of Mozilla

Mozilla has two flagship products that, in my opinion, are their two most successful products: Firefox and Thunderbird. Firefox is their web browser and Thunderbird is their email client. As far as I know, they don't really have a highly successful third product. More recenly, there have been attempts in incorporating more AI into their web browser which are getting mixed reviews online depending on which community you frequent.

Mozilla's mission, as stated on their website, is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent. With that in mind, along with their two flagship products, I wanted to propose an idea that had three key elements to it:

  • An idea that respected their overall mission and ethos.
  • An idea that had the potential to directly work with their existing flagship products.
  • An idea that could be monetized from day one growing a new reliable revenue source for Mozilla.

Finding an idea that would fit all three criteria seems hard, especially since I wanted to intentionally stay clear of the AI controversy they were already experiencing. I spent some time thinking about it and came up with what I thought was the perfect fit.

My Idea for Mozilla

I call the idea Mozilla Works and it is essentially an open source or open core enterprise competitor to Google Workspace and Microsoft Office 365. Open source or open core to reflect Mozilla's mission of an open internet, but sold as a SaaS service for anyone, particularly businesses, who wants an alternative to Google or Microsoft from a company who respects your privacy.

The idea was you would develop an email service that would allow people and businesses to setup their domain emails with you, and the email service would directly integrate with Thunderbird in a way that enhances the email experience. Along with this, you would also get a full alternative office suite, an online calendar system, and online storage. You would also develop out a SSO competitor that also connects your email profile directly to Firefox in much the same way email profiles exist for Chrome, but this would be tied to your Mozilla SSO system. This would open the potential for other expansion ideas down the road as well.

One thought was you could expand the Firefox extension market to go beyond just Firefox and extend this to Mozilla Works and Thunderbird (admittedly I didn't check to see if Thunderbird already has a similar feature). You can see my proof of concept landing page here.

My friend showed it internally to his team (notably not the Pioneers team), and the team was excited about this. I won't find out if I'm accepted into the program for a few more weeks but even if I'm not, I would love for Mozilla to steal this idea and do something with it.