Every decade or so, a new movement reshapes how software is built, distributed, and adopted. In the early 2000s, it was SaaS. Today, it’s open source.
At Unusual, we’ve had the privilege of partnering with founders who’ve turned open-source projects into enduring businesses — companies like MuleSoft, MongoDB, and Harness. Each began the same way: a small, determined group of builders releasing code into the wild, earning trust line by line, contributor by contributor.
But building an open source company is not the same as building a SaaS business. You can’t simply “launch” a product and start selling it. You have to build a community before a company, and learn to convert free usage into commercial adoption — without betraying the values that made your project successful in the first place.
This section of the Field Guide is about that balance. It’s about how founders can follow the same Unusual Way — insight, discovery, product-market fit, and go-to-market — but adapt it for the open source reality.
We’ll cover the five modules every OSS founder needs to master:
Throughout, we’ll include diagrams, checklists, and real examples to help you navigate the open source journey from “cool project” to category-defining business.
