Why every startup should be built on open-source... 🤔🤔
Tags: webdev, productivity, discuss, opensource
Published: 2023-09-03 17:32:02

Last year was the first time I heard of an open-source startup as SaaS.
I didn’t even understand what it meant. How do you monetize such a thing?
Everybody can come, take your code and compete with you.

I couldn’t even understand how we get from GitHub stars to customers 🤯
But that was one of the craziest growth I have ever seen in my world of entrepreneurship.
If you are planning on building a SaaS, make it open-source.


![Explode](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ix2rxi69izjvpkydt5s4.gif)


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## Are you like me? 🤷🏻‍♂️

There’s a high chance that you are like me, a developer that consumes open-source but has never been a part of the open-source community - when’s the last time you contributed anything?

If that’s true, then you don’t know what an open-source community is.
I had built startups before and usually had to build the community around me.
But in open-source, it was different. There is a community already just looking at where to contribute to. This is exponential growth; it’s better than any marketing.
99% of most of the enterprises we signed said they heard of us from a friend.

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## Everybody can come and take your code 🙀

It’s true, but it doesn’t matter. When people take your code, they expand the market - that’s good. In the end, the best marketing/product wins, and we will dominate the market :)

{% embed https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1669258341225480192 %}

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## There’s a new market opportunity 💹

People always try to create their [blue ocean inside of their red ocean](https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/tools/red-ocean-vs-blue-ocean-strategy/) - with open-source, you can. Let’s look at [Cal.com](http://Cal.com). They are an open-source alternative to Calendly. They have gained massive growth, enough even to replace Calendly in the future. Once you tap into open source, you have removed your competition and created a new market. Here are a few reasons why:

- Developers can use and integrate them into their internal systems.
- Developers can see your code and gain your transparency and credibility.
- Developers can change your system to their needs.

{% embed https://twitter.com/JosephJacks_/status/1663649385056710656 %}

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## Novu - the open-source notification infrastructure 📳

I joined Novu in 2021. I met the founders in a coworking space, and we worked on different products. They had the same product as today but as a normal B2B SaaS. It didn’t work for them, and I was sad seeing this. But one day, something changed. They pushed some of their code to GitHub and [posted an article about what they want to build](https://dev.to/scopsy/building-the-first-open-source-notification-infrastructure-5h9k) on the DEV community. They got trending on GitHub with [2000 stars in 4 days](https://dev.to/scopsy/how-we-got-2000-stars-in-4-days-from-a-devto-post-hlb) and raised $6.6m (after covid) in a month.


![Money](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/7bblg5aajs7yq36rbeye.gif)


I sold my company (I was working on back at the coworking space), and two months after that, I joined the company 🎉

{% embed https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1557048605042565120 %}

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## We had a very fruitful year 🍇

We have grown from 2k stars to 20k stars. It’s very uncommon for companies to grow at such a speed we have even signed a partnership with GitHub. And closed a few enterprise deals (in the first year).

We did an entire year of growth, a sprint from week to week of bringing traffic and community member to our GitHub library.

Many people asked me how we did it since:

- We almost have no followers on social media
- We never ran any ads
- We barely have any SEO.

I feel we were kind of cheating because, really, nobody understood how we were growing so fast.

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## Trend every week 📈

Do you know this magical moment when you write a tweet, and suddenly it becomes super trendy? Until today, it happened to me once (actually, a pretty stupid tweet). It’s definitely not happening a lot, and it was not in the context of any agenda.

{% embed https://twitter.com/nevodavid/status/1664103278794137601 %}

How good would it be if you trend every week? How much growth would you get from that? We did it repeatedly, over and over - just not on Twitter. We did it on **GitHub**.
Almost any marketplace has this trending thing:

- Shopify
- Wix
- Webflow
- AppSumo

And they all have the same concept - get a lot of sales in a short period of time, and we will promote you - it’s good for them, they make more money.


![Trending](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/mnag3gpxc3ra9omi70ym.gif)


But the GitHub marketplace (trending tab) is a bit different.

It works on the activity of your GitHub library. The more engagement you have (from different resources), the higher chance you will trend - and with each of those trends, we got thousands of stars and users.

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## Developers grow companies 👩🏻‍🔬

With Novu, we got from 2k stars to 24k stars.


![Novu](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/i6sgu8hn47tc3co4x2ho.png)


I had a chance to work with a few more companies. Here’s some of their growth.

[Wasp](https://wasp-lang.dev/) managed to get 4000 people to use their GPT code agent from a [single article](https://dev.to/wasp/gpt-web-app-generator-let-ai-create-a-full-stack-react-nodejs-codebase-based-on-your-description-2g39).
Now they post every week on DEV and experience constant growth.


![Wasp](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/2o1owkpaupfjp7fvzgqv.png)


[LiveCycle](https://livecycle.io/), built an external product called [Preevy](https://github.com/livecycle/preevy). They are almost at 2k stars and have already benefited from more community members and customers!


![LiveCycle](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/1to794sbutwwdtrnfvk2.png)

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## Gitroom ⭐️

I have set on a mission to help people grow through open source by giving weekly knowledge.
This newsletter is good for you if:

- You are considering open-sourcing your product (or building a new one).
- You are considering opening a by-product and open-source it (to reflect on your main product).
- You are in tech and want the growth without the stars / without GitHub trending.

It’s a 100% free newsletter (and always will be). Feel free to register at:

[https://gitroom.com](https://gitroom.com/)

![In for tech](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/86ywkzncq6erg44d6xy9.gif)

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Will you open-source your next startup?