Building a Business Around Open Source

We're building a software business around a pretty sophisticated open source product. I'm hoping to lean into the open source concept as a brand differentiator (versus VC-backed "as a service" incumbents). It also allows us to get started with a product without having to build a product.

We're formally joining the membership for the open source community, which effectively is a commercial partnership with the project sponsor.

Any thoughts or advice around building a business on an open source ecosystem?

Our goals:

• Use open source to have a differentiated marketing message
• Generate services revenue implementing the open source product to bootstrap the business
• Build value-add products around the open source project to build a product revenue stream, ideally in the long term this is the primary way we monetize

Thanks!