“One of the most interesting (and relatively subjective)
business discussions in IT today is around what exactly constitutes
‘Intellectual Property’ in open source start-ups.“From the VC perspective… before delivering a term sheet to a
potential open source start-up, it’s about crossing off potential
risk areas at every step of the way. Can the company build a
product around the technology? Is there a market for the product?
How do you market it, scale it, execute on the plan? Are the
multipliers on the original investment attractive enough to justify
the investment risk? These are all the sorts of well-known
questions that the VC’s examine, pre-investment…”