1) Team

A superb team is a must in all start-ups. The special thing with open source startups is that they may have a history as an open source *project* before becoming a commercial business. The team must understand how to master this evolutionary transition.

2) Innovation

It’s not enough to be less expensive, or faster, or the same as others but open source. There has to be a genuine, value-adding innovation that users and customers get a new benefit from.

3) Participation

The strength of open source lies in massive participation by users worldwide. It takes special dedication and skill to build an
architecture of participation.

-1) Open source as the silver bullet

Well, it isn’t. It’s dangerous to think that opensourcing something will solve all problems. It probably won’t. Open source accelerates what would happen anyway. If you have a crappy product, it will die sooner if you opensource it. If you have a great product, it will succeed sooner if you opensource it. Open source also is not a business model in itself. You have to figure out the business model as a separate exercise
(there is a handful of good alternatives).

-2) Too much money

If you have too much (VC) money, you may not notice soon enough that you need to change something in your model or your product.

-3) Impatience

Great businesses take time to build. Sure, you should have a very ambitious plan with success waiting around the corner. But you should also have the patience to keep going even when things don’t look good. The night is coldest just before the sun rises.