Is an open source startup right for you?
Open source startups have some advantages over closed source startups — but there are additional challenges, too. Closed source startups are routinely successful, and they are also the norm. No one is likely to question why a particular product is not open source. So how do you evaluate whether or not your company should be an open source startup?
I’m going to list some pros and cons, but the reality is that this is a philisophical question as much as a business or technical strategy question. Developing and maintaining an open source project is work, and community building is work. The founders who are typically most successful building an open source company chose to do so because they love open source and are committed to creating in the open. I’m not sure if I’ve ever met a founder who decided to build an open source startup after a careful consideration of pros and cons — open source founders tend to build open source companies because that is the only type of company they are interested in building.
Open Source Startup Advantages
There are some real advantages to building an open source startup, though. For example:
Development and innovation velocity: getting feedback from community members can increase your development velocity and allow you to get more feedback, more quickly than if you had to sell your product before getting feedback
Loyalty: open source community members can become your biggest evangelists — and you don’t have to pay them! Software engineers are more likely to be evangelists for a project than they are for a paid product their manager told them they have to use.
Open Source Startup Challenges
There are also some real challenges to building an open source startup. For example:
Getting pulled in many directions: You have to spin more plates in an open source startup than in a closed source startup. You have to build community, develop a paid product and an open source project, position them in relation to each other, market to two (or more) audiences, write even better docs and more.
Your first paying customer might take longer to land: This depends a bit on how mature the project was when the startup launched, but because most open source startups develop their open source project first, launch that, then work on a commercial offering and sell that, it ends up taking them longer to ramp up their revenue.
So which should you choose? The tricky thing is that open source startups can be really powerful, but usually only when done right, ie with real dedication to open source. Regardless of the benefits, my recommendation remains: choose to build an open source startup because that’s the kind of startup you want to build. And if that’s not for you — own it. Closed source startups are successful every day, too.