AKA: Founding Startup
Getting funding to build a startup / company from the OSS using venture capital. Often a very good business case is required but can result in a stable income for the next years (even if the startup is not successful).
Requires:
Variants & Options:
| Characteristics | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Effort to set-up | Months | Basically, setup of a full business and fundraising |
| Effort to maintain | Medium | In the beginning fundraising every 18 months; Later hopefully break-even, IPO, etc. |
| Cost to set-up | Low | Might require small investment in domain name, trademark, etc. |
| Cost to maintain | None | After seed-round the invested money can be used from the startup |
| One-time Income | Low | Accelerators or incubators might only contribute little on-time |
| Recurring Income | Medium | Probably a below-average salary but high potential when an exit occurs |
| Income Predictability | Medium | Stable for a runway of ~18 month; New fundraising necessary |
| Full income Threshold | 10+ | Probably several investors or angels necessary |
| Recipient | C | The Startup will get the investment but founders (probably maintainers) get a salary |
| Additional Work | High | Will require to build a pitch deck, business plan, website, etc. |
| Visibility | High | VCs get approached; Press will report |
| Necessity to pay | Low | High competition but easier with good business model |
| Entry Threshold | High | Clarification of copyrights; Due dilligence on Team, Tech, etc. |
| Countervalue | Shares | |
| Scalability | Medium | Scales with the number of interested investors |
| Effort for marketing | Medium | Finding VCs & pitching is work but VCs are interested in investing |
| Competitors | None | If another group of maintainers would want to start a competing startup no VC would invest |
| Software types | Special | Often stand-alone software with (potentially) many users (e.g., tools, databases, OS, LMS, etc.) |