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Comment by hit8run | Hacker News Reader

What’s your business model?

RedwoodJS is an open-source project. We are in a unique position to receive funding from Preston-Werner Ventures, which allows us to develop the codebase as well as cultivate an amazing community.

Although it's not a typical for-profit business model, we are sustainable and will enthusiastically continue building Redwood to v2 and well beyond.

You can read more about all of that in today's blog post from Tom (aka mojombo): https://tom.preston-werner.com/2022/04/04/redwood-v1-and-fun...

What’s your business model?

Instead of giving an edgy reddit-like repeated response in clear pursuit of karma, perhaps you could read the link the GP comment just gave you.

> So my million dollar spend on Redwood development comes with no strings attached, except that we continue to focus on building the best app framework for startups.

It's a personal investment and a passion project. Unless they're lying, there is no business model.

I wasn’t being edgy and I did read the link. A one-off donation isn’t a business model.

> Although it's not a typical for-profit business model, we are sustainable

If it’s sustainable, there's clearly something other than a one-off donation. What is it?

Preston-Werner is an investor in Netlify, RedwoodJS was built with Netlify in mind (though it supports others hosting companies but not to the same extend).

Netlify is competing with Vercel that has Next.js. So basically RedwoodJS was built to sell more Netlify hosting plans the same way Next.js was for Vercel. It is therefore safe to say that RedwoodJS will continue to exist as long as Netlify is a thing... unless Next.js completely owns the market and RedwoodJS's reason to exist makes no sense because of too few users.

Right now there is no business model, on purpose. This is why I'm personally supporting it. I think what David meant is that we are sustainable because I am committed to sustaining the project. Our goal is to find a properly sustainable model in the future that meshes well with our mission and ambition. It will be exciting to figure that out!

Good on you, one could've said the same about Next.js. Technically there is no business model, but one has been built providing additional services around it.

Congrats, it looks damn awesome.

Next.js was an OSS project before ZEIT (now Vercel) hired on the developers, if memory serves. Next.js was certainly not the main vision for Guillermo as far as I know, but it ended up becoming a very large focal point due to its widespread success. Now, Vercel has an entire ecosystem - Next.js is certainly a 'product' in that regard.

Not everything needs a business model. Not all projects are businesses.

Sure – so when somebody asks what your business model is, do like mojombo did and say there’s no model and there’s a patron instead of doing what thedavidprice did and say that it’s not a typical for-profit model but they are sustainable. One is a clear and simple answer, one is a weird dodge.

Millionaires Toy Project.

Much nicer for all of us than most millionaires' toys.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com