Thoughtbot isn't actually a VC backed startup. They have always developed products by building tools to fit needs in their consultancy work and unfortunately n

Thoughtbot isn't actually a VC backed startup. They have always developed products by building tools to fit needs in their consultancy work and unfortunately not all the products were successful enough to keep going. The reality for Copycopter is that it's a really useful item in the Rails developers toolkit. It didn't find a wide enough audience within the community which is what eventually doomed it as a SaaS. The cost of spending even 5-10 hours a week working on it burns more capital than I imagine it generated as a SaaS. That's why I think it's a perfect fit of an OSS project.