[wanghq]

  1. Join a company (usually big) that has a culture of open sourcing softwares.
  2. Start an open source project you are keen on, and make use of the resource to grow the project/community/contributors.
  3. Quit with other core maintainers and start your own company that commercializes the open source project.

[pabs3]

Some resources for the first step:

https://www.fossjobs.net/ https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources

[throwaways85989]

Remember also, that large companies have experimental expansion phases which they usually abandon once economic crisis dawns. If the thing you build is such a "experimental fort" - your parent company might be open to a "buy out", were you promise them favorable conditions by your future company with whom they share the IP.

[pritambarhate]

Essentially what Confluent (Kafka) founders did.