Open source ecosystems that become big enough often end up either producing unicorns, or failing that, producing unicorn-level returns for existing companies.

Open source ecosystems that become big enough often end up either producing unicorns, or failing that, producing unicorn-level returns for existing companies. There’s no guarantee that the creator of the ecosystem will be one of the unicorns, but they’re as good a bet as any other company to pull it off. VCs aren’t looking for 100% certainty, just a plausible path.