> One thing very much any sensible investor asks is: "How easy someone can steal your lunch?" And that's the problem, asking investors for their opinion. Look,

> One thing very much any sensible investor asks is: "How easy someone can steal your lunch?" And that's the problem, asking investors for their opinion. Look, I'm a capitalist as much as the next person but you don't start a company based on highly liberal ideals and then expect nothing to change after bringing on outside investors. If you want your non-traditional business model to succeed, don't hand over your vision to someone else. They will demand that you switch your business model to something that feels "safer" to them, and you lose the main thing that differentiates you from your competitors. > With an open source product, it's like putting lunch on a table at a busy high street and leaving it unattended. No, that's not a good analogy. It's like putting lunch on a table at a busy high street and _inviting people to help themselves_. With the hope (not necessarily expectation) of forming a relationship that will benefit everyone in the future. Even that was a little awkward but more concretely, here's an example of Adafruit's business model. They sell hardware, at prices generally higher than what you'd find for the Chinese clones of their products on Amazon and eBay (not to mention AliExp). But what sets them apart from the clones is they write great documentation, tutorials, and articles. They produce educational videos and show-and-tells. They highlight customer projects showing all of the neat things people are doing with their hardware. They pay people to write open-source libraries for a variety of microcontrollers and devices that they sell, so that people can use them easily. They host forums, they are active on social media, they speak at conferences. An open source-business only succeeds when you build a vibrant community around it. If you can't do that, then yes, the Chinese cloners are going to eat your lunch.