Core team. Why is it so important?
Quite recently, at one of the meetings, I was asked what can be the key to the success and profitability of an open-source project. This question was asked by a person who is a part of the community of IT entrepreneurs. And this was not the first such question, especially from Ukrainian businessmen and engineers. Such dialogues characterize what people know about open-source projects.
Chief Executive Officer BoostHubUA
Any open source community is perceived as a disparate community of fans of some software product, which invests personal free time and expertise into the improvement of this product. As a hobby.
Partly it is correct. But there are a few basic features that turn a startup into an international company, and a weekend hobby into a successful and large open-source community. I will describe these features today.
Open source projects start out as a hobby and gather around them only devoted fans of the product. They rely on the enthusiasm of community members who are ready to sacrifice their personal free time for the project and work on it at night or on weekends. But, if this approach is maintained for a long time, then sooner or later the enthusiasm of the participants can go down, priorities can change and the work becomes irregular.
That’s why а main element of a successful project is a motivated team that leads the process. The most important role of this team at a certain stage is to support the motivation of the entire community, as well as determine the direction of the project development. After all, it is not so important what you do, as who is next to you at the same time.
The second element, which cannot be dispensed with, is the idea and the problems that the project solves. Whether it’s an application, a service, or any other solution, it must have a community request for solving a specific problem and provide the community with the appropriate convenient and simple tools. Usually, such a problem exists for a long time, the team only needs to find it and think about how to take care of it.
In the next stage, when the solution has already been developed, the most important step is the creation of a product prototype and feedback from users. If the prototype is tested and feedback is received, this allows the team to either make sure that it is moving in the right direction or realize that there are some critical flaws in the product or service that are important to fix at a very early stage of development.
It is also important to have a clear business strategy. And if it accurately describes positioning and marketing, sets the development vector, and provides ways to monetize, then such an open-source project has a high chance to become successful. Having a good strategy has two key benefits. Foremost, community members initially understand that their hobby can turn into a source of income in the future. And secondly, it gives the community a clear understanding of where to go, how to develop the project, what to refine in order to make a good product or service, and then a profitable business.
Well, and, of course, at some point, even the most motivated community “runs into the ceiling” of its capabilities. Further, in order to develop the project, scale it, and promote it, you need the right plan and support from a potential investor. The appearance of an investor can significantly strengthen the project, enable the team to fully focus on its development, and attract external developers or other specialists. At the scaling stage, this allows you to pay attention to marketing, which significantly accelerates the growth of the project, attracts the attention of the audience to it, and opens up new opportunities.
Of course, there are many more aspects to the success of open-source projects that can be seen in a very detailed examination. But all of them are purely individual. These in this article are the key ones and you can’t develop a project without them in any case.
