[spectre256]

Honestly, if the open source project we maintain ever becomes popular enough that a big company like Amazon puts effort into supplanting us, great.

We'll be known as the team that created and grew the project, and we'll have a guaranteed job at Amazon and a bunch of other places doing something we have unique experience with.

My goal isn't to leverage open-source software into enough of a moat to build a billion dollar company. If it was, then I might be unhappy if Amazon broke that moat.

I'm totally happy building a sustainable small business. Maybe even one that won't last forever. Our team is small, our costs are low, and we are comfortable. We are growing, sustainably, and providing real value to our customers in the process (or they wouldn't pay us the rates we require to stay in business).

[mikesokolov]

This is a refreshing POV, tanks for sharing. How about a model where you release with some restrictions for some time, enough to grow some customers, and then open up after a delay. Is it enough to preserve some competitive advantage while also participating in a truly open software ecosystem?

[loukrazy]

It seems like VC funding is the real key to changing the calculus. If you get as much money as Elastic did, you damn well start digging that moat and get to monetizing.

[spectre256]

Exactly! VC funding has its place, but it also greatly restricts the types of outcomes that are favorable.

I mean, in our case, we're building a geocoder. We'd have to raise, no exaggeration, tens of billions to build a moat considering the current market leader is Google. There's no way to guarantee that outcome.

On the other hand, there is _so_ much room left after Google for other companies if they don't have to get massive. There's room for us, and at least a dozen other companies I know of that have their own take on geocoding that their own customers appreciate.

[houseofzeus]

The VC funding is what appears to introduce it, but really it should be there from the start. By that I mean VC funding forces the founders to consider that simply having a viable project does not mean you have a viable product, but founders who don't realize that are on a path to this destination already before the VC turns up, the VC just accelerates it.