Open source gives away value you could charge for. That makes it much more likely the business will fail. The only reason to base a business on open source is

Open source gives away value you could charge for. That makes it much more likely the business will fail. The only reason to base a business on open source is if the software can’t be used to deprive you of value (Facebook and Google’s strategy), or if you yourself need to exploit some pre-existing open source software, so you have no choice, or for weakish marketing reasons around vendor lock-in. Do it for any other reason and your business succeeded despite your choice.