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Discovery, curation and support is what we offer on the front for people looking for solutions. For developers, we provide a complete platform to turn their ope

by pytrin 13y ago

Discovery, curation and support is what we offer on the front for people looking for solutions. For developers, we provide a complete platform to turn their open-source project into a business, something that is usually only accessible to the most popular projects due to the overhead involved. We handle marketing, distribution, licensing, payments, payouts and more. If you are someone who can do all of that himself, and has the reach and marketing skills to reach an audience - you don't need a service like us. From our experience (before we even started this service), most developers do not have those abilities.

neilxdsouza 13y ago
You should also consider seed funding. If the Open source project is in good shape and has a viable business model, you could seed fund and take some equity. I am from India, and it is really difficult to raise even a small amount of money here. The deal I was offered by a Seed Investment firm was - give us 5% stake (for 0 investment) and we will prepare you for seed funding. This is how bad it is here: I have working compilers and a client. What I was looking for from seed funding was about Rs 50,000 a month which is about USD 1000 a month, so that I can work full time on my project and move it forward.
- pytrin 13y ago
  Interesting point. We're considering something along those lines - a crowdfunding option for open-source projects, i.e, kickstarter for open-source. The problem with pre-funding a project, is that it's much harder to create interest (unless you hit a very common, painful need) vs. an existing solution that can be used right now. We'll be looking into it more in the future.
  - neilxdsouza 13y ago
    My point was along the lines of something like nginx (before it was commercialised), a growing open source project. If you felt you could make a business off nginx, you could have approached the author directly made an investment and taken some equity.

by pytrin 13y ago

neilxdsouza 13y ago

You should also consider seed funding. If the Open source project is in good shape and has a viable business model, you could seed fund and take some equity. I am from India, and it is really difficult to raise even a small amount of money here. The deal I was offered by a Seed Investment firm was - give us 5% stake (for 0 investment) and we will prepare you for seed funding. This is how bad it is here: I have working compilers and a client. What I was looking for from seed funding was about Rs 50,000 a month which is about USD 1000 a month, so that I can work full time on my project and move it forward.

pytrin 13y ago
Interesting point. We're considering something along those lines - a crowdfunding option for open-source projects, i.e, kickstarter for open-source. The problem with pre-funding a project, is that it's much harder to create interest (unless you hit a very common, painful need) vs. an existing solution that can be used right now. We'll be looking into it more in the future.
- neilxdsouza 13y ago
  My point was along the lines of something like nginx (before it was commercialised), a growing open source project. If you felt you could make a business off nginx, you could have approached the author directly made an investment and taken some equity.