# Investing In Open-Source Projects: Here’s What VCs Are Looking For (crunchbase news) - boldstart ventures

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Ideas · 2021-12-11

# Investing In Open-Source Projects: Here’s What VCs Are Looking For (crunchbase news)

![Investing In Open-Source Projects: Here’s What VCs Are Looking For (crunchbase news)](/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Bank_Rebundle.png)

*By[Shomik Ghosh](https://www.crunchbase.com/person/shomik-ghosh)*

[Red Hat](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/red-hat)’s IPO was more than 20 years ago, and open-source is hardly a novel new approach to software. But the recent astronomical success of public companies like[MongoDB](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mongodb-inc) and[Elastic](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/elasticsearch) has created an investor feeding frenzy for would-be startups with open-source origins.

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If you’ve been steadily growing your project and wondering if you’ve got what it takes to attract venture funding, let’s take a look at some of the key criteria for getting VCs excited.

## Solving a frequent problem for millions of developers

One of the most attractive characteristics of open-source from an investment perspective is pretty obvious: The enormous total addressable market of tens of millions of developers on the planet. As investors, we get really excited when we see open-source projects that scratch an itch faced by the majority of this massive market.

[CloudQuery](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cloudquery), a[boldstart ventures](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/boldstart-ventures)-backed company, is a great example.

[More here…](https://news.crunchbase.com/news/open-source-startup-investment-vc-devops/)

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