[bsears]

Our startup is in the process of launching an open source product and monetizing (currently) by offering it as a SaaS solution. People will be willing to pay for something if it's going to make their life easier

The trouble with monetizing open source is that if your project isn't a "full product" like wordpress, gitlab, or discourse with a well designed interface and plugin support you don't really have a way to sell the product as a service which I think is the most lucrative way and you can then start adding premium features to this service if you want to go down the open core route.