Freedom, not Funding: Vendure Sets A Course for Bootstrapped Growth

Vendure started out as a solo project built by Michael Bromley, aimed at solving a simple problem: the lack of a great commerce platform built with a modern Node.js & TypeScript stack. Initially built to power the website of a family-run art supplies business, it was soon discovered by others. Over the next few years it grew organically and before long had been adopted by companies of all sizes - from niche mechanical keyboard specialists all the way to Fortune 500 companies.

In 2022, the agency ALPIN11, who specialize in building large-scale commerce applications, also discovered Vendure. After numerous discussions with ALPIN11’s founder David Höck, it became clear that there was a great fit to build the foundations of a company around the project. Thus, Vendure GmbH was formed with the goal of ensuring the continued growth and sustainability of the open source project, with David and Michael as the co-founders.

Sustainable open source? Is that even possible? Much ink has been spilled trying to answer this question, and many well-known open source companies continue to struggle with it. But fundamentally the choice comes down to two main paths:

• Get investment, typically in the form of venture capital (VC) to fund development

• Generate income yourself by selling something - services, support, paid extensions. Also known as “bootstrapping”.

The following two years were defined by a process of trial and error as we attempted to navigate both of these paths. We started out providing support, consulting, and also developed paid extensions. But we continued to run into the simple problem of lack of people to do everything we needed. Not just development, but marketing, sales, and the hundreds of operational tasks that come with running a business. Bootstrapping is hard.

Looking at our competitors, we saw a clear trend towards raising VC funding as the solution to this problem. Indeed, in the tech industry as a whole, VC seems to be the default path.

So towards the end of 2023 we started speaking with potential investors. Once we have a couple of million in the bank, we thought, we can start thinking about how we are going to really grow this thing.

We spent a significant amount of time speaking to VCs, with David in particular having over two hundred meetings in total. However, the more that we learned about this path, the less we saw a fit with our vision for Vendure. The cash is great, but it comes with its own set of pressures. These pressures have a tendency to leak into the entire product, influencing the roadmap and vision in a way that does not always align with what users expect or want. At some point, the open source project needs to somehow generate venture-scale returns. And frankly, this is not always compatible with sustainable long-term stability and open source values.

So in case it wasn't already obvious by now: this isn’t a fundraising announcement post.

Rather, this is an announcement that we have found a path that allows Vendure to grow sustainably without the need for investment, all while supplying the resources - development, marketing, sales, operations - that we need to grow.

This is how it looks in practice:

• ALPIN11, which has now rebranded to Elevantiq, has acquired majority ownership of Vendure GmbH.

• The Elevantiq leadership team comprises David as CEO, Michael as CTO, and Max Page (who has long supported Vendure behind the scenes) as the COO. All three are co-owners of the company.

• As CTO, Michael will guide the Elevantiq developers not only on their existing client projects (which are some of the largest, most complex Vendure applications out there), but also on core Vendure development.

This means that Vendure now has a professional core team, all of whom have significant real-world Vendure experience. Not only that: Vendure now has resources dedicated to design, marketing and operations.

Over the coming weeks and months you’ll see new names contributing to our core packages as we onboard our team.

The entire story of Vendure, from solo project to fledgling company to today’s announcement has been one marked by persistence and continuous learning. We have never felt more confident that we are on the right path to realize the full potential of Vendure as a world-class commerce platform.