Hi community. Who here is currently or was in the past working on turning their FoC project into a business? I'm considering it and would love to talk to somebody who has some experience with going in that direction.

Well, I hope to do that in the future or at least use my project in other (paid) projects. But a lot of work and thinking needs to be done before I am at that point, having the right focus/goal for my product is important. In the netherlands we have a special arrangement which you can apply for to get a subsidy for innovative projects("wbso"), that at least helps me to spend more time on development. This subsidy is a discount on your taxes.

My project has a heavy focus on business use cases and will be commercialised in the future. I currently I live off another project (not FoC focussed) I turned into a business and am happy to offer any advice in that regard. What's your project? And who does it benefit?

My Beads project will be commercial eventually. I have built many tool oriented products in the past (word processor, desktop publishing, label design, bitmap painting). The commercialization of software tools has moved almost entirely to ipad and iphone as predatory firms like Google have used their near monopolies in search advertising to subsidize free tools that undermine commercial enterprises, while their overall goal is to destroy the operating systems by substituting the web as the universal VM. In the history of software we are in an unusual phase that shows the need for antitrust regulations. The one bright aspect of today's marketplace is that it is now accepted by some to pay a subscription fee for software and that gives companies much greater financial strength compared to the old days of shrinkwrapped product that had an initial purchase with perhaps an upgrade or two down the line. I actually prefer the fixed price model, as that is how i buy hammers and other durable tools. If a software tool is well made it won't need constant updating.

@Nikolas we are bringing Storyscript as a business to the market. Happy to share how/why

Lynxtool is also a company now. 🙂

YC startup school is free - and you get paid to do YCombinator, also if you complete you get $100,000 last I checked. There is also http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html - you can find top 10 lists for these essays. Many good videos here https://huzzaz.com/createdby/startuptheory the ones with paul graham in tend to stand out. While I like these videos, I think the essays are better. There are other training course, but they are dwarfed by YC.

Awesome thanks for the responses and the pointers. I will DM you individually.

Yazz Pilot has generated revenues (probably 1.5m - 2m USD) for individuals (consulting) and companies (building demo dashboards), but we have decided not to monetize it ourselves at this time.