Your first hires define the balance between community and commerce.
As the team grows, codify norms early. OSS teams thrive on transparency, so share roadmaps publicly, post changelogs, and acknowledge mistakes.
An OSS company eventually splits into two organisms:
The best founders make these work in harmony — not competition. At MuleSoft, Ross Mason made open APIs the center of both motions. The OSS Mule project built credibility with developers, and the enterprise offering gave IT departments the reliability they needed.
Checklist: Leadership principles for OSS founders
Open source founders are missionaries and engineers in equal measure. They build movements as much as they build products.
When done right, OSS isn’t a weaker version of SaaS — it’s a stronger one. The code speaks for itself. The users become your marketing. The community becomes your moat.The challenge is sequencing: build adoption, then trust, then revenue. If you can turn contribution into credibility and credibility into commercial success, you’ll create something rare: a company the world uses and believes in.
