Practical advice filled with movie memes.

No where in the article does the author discuss open source software. It only talks about marketing from day one, finding that niche, iterating and building with customers and how you can't be the only customer.

But if you are the only customer; if you're building something for you to start with, then no matter what you won't fail. You will always learn and you will always at least build something that fulfils your need. Keeping it open means other people can contribute if they wish. If you can host it and make it profitable, and you want to start a business, then good for you. You can even sell support for people who self host. If you can't even get it to fit your needs, well then you learned something about programming, the problem space, frameworks, etc. You never really lose out unless you don't try.

If you hate the idea of running your own business, then just keep it open and people will have to run it on their own. But not ever great idea will be profitable. Profitability should not == success. I wish we would start measuring success differently.