The Maybe Finance Pivot: When VC Money Meets Open Source Reality
Well, there goes another one. Maybe Finance, the personal finance app that caught my attention with its sleek design and open-source promise, has just announced they’re shutting down their consumer-facing product to pivot to B2B. Their final version 0.6.0 dropped on GitHub with what I’d call a refreshingly honest explanation, but it still stings for anyone who bought into the vision.
This whole situation has me thinking about the fundamental tension between venture capital and open source software. When Maybe first appeared on my radar, something felt off about the setup. Here’s a company that raised VC money, promised an open-source personal finance tool, and then – surprise – discovered that giving away software for free doesn’t generate the returns their investors were expecting. Who could have seen that coming?
The cynic in me wants to say this was always the plan. Get some community engagement, build up a user base with the open-source carrot, then pivot to where the real money is: enterprise customers who can’t easily jump ship once they’re integrated into your workflows. It’s a playbook we’ve seen before, and frankly, it’s getting tiresome.
But then I read through some of the discussion around this news, and one developer’s perspective really hit home. They shared their experience maintaining open-source software with over 10 million Docker Hub downloads – and receiving exactly zero dollars in sponsorship from the self-hosted community. Zero. That’s pretty sobering when you think about it. Here’s someone providing genuine value to thousands of people, dealing with ungrateful feedback and negativity, while struggling to make mortgage payments.
This tension between idealism and reality is something I see constantly in the DevOps world. Everyone wants the benefits of open-source software – the customisation, the transparency, the community – but very few want to actually fund it. We’ll happily spin up instances on our fancy hardware, complain when the UI doesn’t match commercial alternatives, and then act surprised when developers can’t sustain their projects on goodwill alone.
The developer I mentioned made a point about infrastructure providers being the real winners here. Every self-hosted instance running on AWS, Google Cloud, or even local hardware is generating value for someone – just not necessarily the person who wrote the code. It’s like having a talented street musician playing outside your café, drawing in customers, while you pocket the profits and maybe toss them a few coins if you’re feeling generous.
What frustrates me most about the Maybe situation isn’t that they’re pivoting – businesses need to survive, and developers deserve to eat. It’s the initial framing that bothers me. If you take VC money, be upfront about what that means for your long-term commitment to open source. Don’t position yourself as a community-driven project when you’ve got investors breathing down your neck for returns.
The good news is that Maybe used the AGPL license, which means the community can pick up where they left off. Whether anyone actually will is another question entirely. Maintaining software is hard work, and it’s particularly hard when you’re doing it for free while dealing with users who treat your labour of love like a product they’re entitled to.
Perhaps we need to get more comfortable with the idea that sustainable open source often means some form of commercialisation. Look at companies like Canonical or Red Hat – they’ve built successful businesses around open-source software while still contributing meaningfully to the ecosystem. The key is transparency about your business model from day one.
The Maybe team deserves credit for their honesty in this transition. They’re not pulling a MinIO-style rug pull or quietly abandoning the project. They’ve communicated clearly, released their final version, and left the door open for community maintenance. That’s more than we can say for a lot of other companies in similar situations.
Still, it’s hard not to feel like we’re watching the same movie over and over again. VC-funded company promises open-source utopia, discovers reality of software economics, pivots to enterprise model. Roll credits. The pattern is so predictable that experienced folks in the self-hosted community were calling it out months ago.
Maybe this will serve as a lesson for both sides. For entrepreneurs: if you’re taking VC money, be honest about your exit strategy from the start. For users: if you value open-source software, find ways to support it financially, whether through donations, sponsorships, or choosing commercially-backed alternatives that give back to the community.
The silver lining? Projects like Actual Budget continue to thrive with sustainable business models and active communities. The open-source ecosystem is resilient, even if individual projects come and go. We just need to be smarter about supporting the ones that align with our values – and honest about what that support actually requires.