ReactVision: Exploring Long-term Monetisation Options
My current thinking around how we could make ReactVision more financially robust in the long term.
This week, I’ve been diving into ways we could monetise ReactVision to better support its ongoing development. In this post, I want to share some of the ideas I’ve been exploring. Heads up: there’s no definitive conclusion here—this is very much a work in progress.
Where We Stand Today
Right now, ReactVision is funded through Morrow’s profits, which was always part of the plan. We’re in a good position to continue this throughout the year. But if we can successfully monetise ReactVision, it would not only secure the project’s resources independently of our broader business but also allow us to move beyond mostly maintenance with occasional features. Our goal is to be regularly adding exciting new features (per community requirements), speeding up our release cycles, and squashing bugs even faster.
Short-Term Solution: Development Services
The most obvious short-term approach is something we’re already working on—offering development services. Morrow is well-known as a service provider, and since we already help companies and startups build apps with React Native, expanding into AR development (through React Native) feels like a natural next step. In fact, we’re already in talks with several companies interested in leveraging our expertise for their AR projects.
This model has its perks. It could even lead to companies paying us to add features they need into the library. However, it comes with some challenges too—sales cycles tend to be slow and unpredictable, and there’s a risk that our AR resources might end up tied up servicing clients rather than focusing on the libraries themselves.
Beyond Services: Other Monetisation Ideas
Donations:
Many open-source projects rely on donations to fuel their development. Pairing donations with revenues from our service offerings might provide ReactVision with the extra boost it needs. On the flip side, since ReactVision is currently a project within the larger Morrow ecosystem, donations might not resonate as well with the community as they would for a standalone project.
Premium Hosted Services:
Another intriguing option is to create a premium offering—similar to how Supabase is open-source and allows free self-hosting but charges for their hosted service. With this approach, we’d keep the core open-source libraries free, while our premium, deeply integrated offerings become the revenue engine. This model could even transition ReactVision from being a project under Morrow to a standalone business. Personally, I believe this is the most promising long-term route. In the meantime, development services will serve as our short-term solution.
I’ve been reaching out to founders in the AR space and those who’ve built businesses around open-source projects to gather feedback and insights on these ideas. If you have experience in either area, please reach out—I’d love to chat.
In Conclusion
For now, we plan to kick things off with Morrow’s service offerings. Looking ahead, though, I’m leaning toward building a premium offering that can scale up our resources and further accelerate ReactVision’s development.
Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to explore these options!
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