Idealogy behind business plan

Yireo was started to offer various free extensions to the world, without asking money for it. In time however, business aspects were introduced, and we started to make money with our extensions. At this point, we are still making money, but we haven't lost sight of why we started things. Not necessarily to make the world a better place, but to simply share what we created with others without asking anything for it in return - just because we're a bunch of nice guys.

The best open source projects start from practical needs. But if you don't define the purpose of the project itself, if you don't define what is driving the open source project, it might bleed to death. Just like a normal enterprise: If you don't have a business plan, there is no fundament to hold the business together - and it will die out.

A business plan and a manifest

With Yireo, we have had a business plan all a long, but for internal eyes only. It contains business stuff like who our competitors are, customer segmentation, some financial goals, etcetera. Pretty boring stuff for techies like me. But what's more important though is the statement of why we've gone into this business in the first place. Things like working from home, having freedom, not working for a boss, are ofcourse in there. But we could have done that as freelancers as well.

The true purpose of having Yireo as a business involves things like community (a word which is used and misused nowadays a lot), customer-driven development, open source business models and most of all, enthousiasm about the technical stuff.

Interested? Read our fundamental goals here in our Yireo Manifest.