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lastmod 2026-07-16created 2023-01-0227 edits

Business (Korean: saeop (事業) or bijeuniseu; English: business; Munhwaŏ (North Korean standard language): bijineseu) is a legally recognized organizational entity or activity that exists within a country with enough economic freedom to sell goods or services to customers or other businesses.

Business is the act of producing, or buying and selling, products (e.g., goods and services) to make a living or earn money. A business is "any activity or enterprise carried on for profit."

A business does not necessarily have to be separate from its owner, and creditors can hold the owner responsible for debts the business has incurred. The taxation system for businesses differs from that of corporations. The business structure does not allow for corporate tax rates. The owner is personally taxed on all income generated by the business.

In law and public office, the term business is distinguished from companies such as corporations and cooperatives.

Corporations are distinguished from sole proprietors and partnerships. They are separate legal entities and provide limited liability to their owners and members. Corporate tax rates apply. They are also more complex and expensive to set up, but offer more protection and benefits to owners and members.

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The most impressive one-person companies

Stardew Valley - Eric Barone
Country-life role-playing game. $300M+ (380 billion won) in revenue over 6 years
BuiltWith - Gary Brewer
Shows what technologies a website is built with. $14M (17 billion won) in revenue per year
Viral Nova - Scott Delong
Curation site for viral content on the internet. $5~10M (6 billion~12.7 billion won) in revenue per year at its peak. 100 million monthly visitors
Photopea - Ivan Kutskir
Free photo editor. $1.5M (2 billion won) in revenue per year. 10 million monthly visitors
Digital Inspiration - Amit Agarwal
Makes plugins for Google Docs/Sheets/Slides. $10M (12.7 billion won) in revenue per year. 5 million monthly visitors. Over 40 million downloads
Rego Apps - Allen Wong
$100M (127 billion won) in revenue from 3 apps, including Tesla Remote / Police Scanner
Multiple businesses - Justin Welsh
Built various businesses with $3M+ (3.8 billion won) or more in revenue. 94% margin. Took 3 years to build this up
Brumate - Dylan Jacob
Sells cans that keep beer/wine cold for 24+ hours. $20M (2.6 billion won) in revenue
Multiple businesses - Pieter Levels
Built sites such as a remote-work job market, AI photos, and a nomad community, for ~$3M+ (3.8 billion won) in revenue
Carrd - ajlkn
One-page website builder, $1M+ (1.2 billion) in revenue per year. 4 million sites created

How I turned my open-source project into a business

  • The author first started writing and distributing open-source software about 15 years ago, and at the time used only permissive licenses such as MIT or BSD.
  • The author considered it an honor that A-list companies used their open-source libraries such as Nodemailer, but also turned down a donation offer from the founder of a large email service.
  • But when a startup using Nodemailer was acquired for $500 million, the author began to wonder what they had gotten out of it.
  • When starting EmailEngine, the author tried to protect themselves as much as possible, using the LGPL license and setting up a CLA (Contributor License Agreement) process.
  • Many people dislike CLAs, but since the author had personally written 98.1% of Nodemailer's code and 99.8% of EmailEngine's, PRs (pull requests) not getting merged was not a big problem.
  • To generate revenue from the new project, the author released it under the LGPL license and made the MIT version available only by subscription, with an annual subscription fee of 250 euros.
  • But this business model failed, and total revenue over a year and a half was only 750 euros.
  • The author had the app's UI professionally redesigned and introduced a license key system; using EmailEngine required a license key that only paying subscribers could get.
  • The license changed from LGPL to a commercial license; the source code is still public on GitHub, but it is no longer open source and is now "source-available."
  • The author keeps releasing smaller tools under the MIT license, but not the main projects.
  • For example, the IMAP client functionality was extracted from EmailEngine and released under the MIT license as a general IMAP client library for Node.js, and this module offers much better performance than existing alternatives.
  • At first there was no trial option; if a valid license key was not provided within 15 minutes of starting the application, the app stopped working.
  • The price was kept the same, and selling 1,750 euros' worth of subscriptions in the first month decided the project's fate.
  • The price was gradually raised, and this did not reduce the number of customers; for businesses, an amount under $1,000 does not seem to be much of a burden.
  • EmailEngine's monthly recurring revenue (MRR) is now 6,100 euros, which in Estonia lets the author pay themselves a reasonable salary and focus on the project.

GN⁺'s opinion

  • This article shares the process of turning an open-source project into a commercial business, showing open-source developers the potential for generating revenue.
  • It emphasizes that giving away open-source software for free can be disadvantageous to developers in the long run, and shows that switching to a commercial license can bring stable revenue.
  • This article offers insight into the importance of CLAs within the open-source community and how license choice affects the business model.
  • The types of licenses and their legal and financial implications must be considered, and when commercializing an open-source project, it is important to anticipate the community's reaction and contributions.
  • The benefits of choosing this approach are stable revenue and an environment where you can focus on professional product development, but the drawback is that you may lose support and contributions from the open-source community.

Hacker News comments

  • I turned my open-source project into a full-time business | Hacker News
  • The crux of the story is that the author started getting subscribers when they made the software stop working without a license.
    • If a valid license key is not provided within 15 minutes of starting the application, the app stops working.
    • For most users, license changes (MIT/LGPL, etc.) do not matter. Hacker News (HN) is sensitive to these subtle differences, but it probably won't matter much to company employees trying to get actual work done.
    • Users search for software to solve a problem, install it, check whether it works, and get on with their day. But if the software stops working after 15 minutes, they have to deal with being blocked.
    • You might assume users will read the code and remove the license check, but some users prefer to pay with a credit card instead.
  • The author's experience with open-source software is that when it is offered for free, companies rarely pay even if they recognize its value. On the other hand, a small amount like 1,000 USD a year is something developers at most companies can buy without much paperwork.
    • Once you move into enterprise sales, things get much more complicated and sales cycles get longer. For a solo founder, this pricing is perfect.
  • On the part where the author began to wonder what they had gotten out of it when a startup using Nodemailer was acquired for $500 million.
    • While you work to improve the commons, there are companies optimized to maximize short-term profit. They will give nothing back.
    • This can happen to any open-source developer, and it is human to see companies making lots of money and feel you should get some of the revenue.
    • FOSS makes the world a better place, so it is sad when it makes someone think it was a mistake and conclude that they should instead build projects that FOSS institutions cannot use.
    • If you build the best FOSS software, everyone benefits, and you can take pride in the fact that individuals have access to the same resources as large corporations.
    • Cautiously in favor of the idea of scaring large corporations with GPLv3- or AGPL-licensed software.
  • For those curious about the license, explains that the standard signature uses an EC (sect239k1) key.
    • The author can write the validity date/license details (hostname, etc.), sign them, and give them to the customer.
  • On being surprised that the number of customers did not drop when prices started going up.
    • For businesses, an amount under $1,000 is not a big deal, so raising prices only improves revenue.
  • Open-source developers identify with users, but businesses that get a return on investment (ROI) are different from consumers.
  • Nobody works for free; we work to get money, status, or enjoyment.
    • One way to get people to work without paying them is ad-supported social media sites. They give people enjoyment and get their attention for ads for free.
    • If you focus on working for status, a PhD is a good example. If you get a PhD and stay in academia, the salary is very low compared to industry, but there is the promise of status.
    • Open source is the same; debates about purity and claims of self-sacrifice are evidence that people are getting status instead of money.
    • This is not bad in itself (for either open source or academia), and people should be free to choose how to sell their time.
    • The problem is that those who profit from the work-for-status structure (large corporations, universities, and their leaders) have an incentive to use dark patterns to maintain it.
  • The title is misleading. The author changed an open-source project into a commercial product with public source. It is a license change, not a business built around an open-source project as the title implies.
  • On the author's only regret being that they published only free open-source software instead of starting to sell software earlier.
  • A comment wondering whether the author ever asked for sponsorship for Nodemailer.

Article

A Go-To-Market guide for B2B founders: from Idea to Product-Market Fit

  • Many founders think of a go-to-market strategy (GTM) as a perfect outbound campaign or a sales team beating its targets
  • But what actually matters is the 0-to-1 process of finding Product-Market Fit
  • The initial strategy is set during this process, and if the direction is wrong, it is hard to correct later

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If you're senior, own a graph

  • If you're senior, own a graph | GeekNews
  • The more senior an engineer, PM, or designer is, the more they should own at least one key metric graph, and this is one of the fastest ways to do good work
  • Most important problems to tackle at the senior level can be expressed as graphs, and you are expected to directly own metrics that show change over the long term, such as page count, performance, cost, revenue, and churn rate
  • A graph reveals scale, trend, volatility, and timing all at once better than a sentence like "reduced it by 15%," and it is the most powerful communication tool for explaining impact and earning verifiable trust
  • A loop that combines graphs with goal setting and check-ins makes tracking results and feedback extremely simple, and can make the difference between high performance and losing your job
  • A good graph should be one of a few important ones that others refer to often, and a senior's core role is to own one graph in areas such as quality, support, revenue, or retention all the way through and make it move

How to prevent customer churn

  • How to prevent customer churn: everything I learned in 10 years | GeekNews
  • Customer churn in a subscription business depends heavily not only on product quality but on the market, customer segment, and frequency of use; you should find the customers who stay long, build the product for them, and acquire more of the same type
  • Once monthly churn exceeds 8%, scaling becomes hard, and at 10% you have to replace about 70% of your user base every year, so just maintaining $100 million ARR requires $10 million in new ARR every month
  • Connect onboarding surveys with churn data to identify the ideal customer profile (ICP) with high retention, understand what is happening with quantitative data, and then use interviews to find out cancellation reasons, replacement products, and conditions for coming back
  • Design the free plan as an activation tool rather than a payment barrier, optimize the moment users experience core value and the time to value, and then charge at appropriate usage, feature, or seat thresholds
  • The strongest structure is one where seats and product usage expand naturally so that expansion revenue exceeds churned revenue; conversely, a business that combines churn of 20% or more with low gross margin can collapse quickly once revenue starts to decline

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