How Pangolin Works
Pangolin is a zero-trust access platform that provides secure, identity-centric access to applications and infrastructure - without opening firewall ports or deploying traditional VPNs. Let's walk through how the system works.
People love using open-source software, but how do the businesses behind them make the work financially sustainable? Some projects stay as side hustles, some bootstrap with paid features or services, and a few turn into venture‑funded companies. We chose the last route - partly because Pangolin’s early adoption convinced us the demand was there, and partly because we wanted to see how far we could push this idea.
In under a year, Pangolin has grown past 15,000 GitHub stars, 3,600 Discord members, and nearly 1,000 individual donors with continued steady, organic traction. There hasn’t been a one‑time viral spike and growth has been consistent, mostly from word of mouth from many YouTube videos, podcasts, articles, and industry publications. That sort of momentum is the clearest sign you’ve reached product–community fit: people find it useful, they tell their peers, and the project starts to spread on its own.
Not every OSS project needs to raise. Many can happily stay side projects funded by passion or small donations. For us, Pangolin was always meant to go beyond a hobby. We saw a chance to build something genuinely ambitious, and that meant moving faster and investing in the community at the same time.
The choice was either keep it a part‑time pursuit and grow slowly, or raise capital to give the project full focus, hire a team, and build responsibly for the long term. We chose the latter.
Donations have been amazing and helped us get here. Nearly 1,000 individuals have supported Pangolin directly which is deeply motivating. But even at that scale, donations simply don’t add up to sustainable funding for a team. Companies depend on Pangolin, but they’re rarely incentivized to contribute meaningfully via donations. What takes a company minutes to spend on a SaaS subscription can take years to raise through community donations.
Donations are a great way to validate interest, but they’re not enough to fund a durable business or full‑time contributors.
That pace reinforced our conviction: you don’t get this kind of adoption unless the problem resonates widely.
In August, we closed a $4.7M seed round, backed by Chemistry, Y Combinator, BLAST Capital, 468 Capital, Transpose Platform, Pioneer Fund, and a number of supportive angels.
That funding buys us time to invest in the OSS core, to support the community properly, and to figure out which business routes make sense for sustainability.
One critique we heard often in fundraising is that we hadn't figured out monetization. That’s normal for early OSS. Most open‑source companies need more time and runway than a SaaS startup before monetization makes sense. You first prove real adoption (product–community fit), then begin exploring business models.
Raising early is about buying enough time to grow naturally without forcing premature monetization.
Of course, turning an open‑source project into a business is controversial. Some argue OSS and VC don’t mix; others worry about features being “held back” for commercial editions. We don’t think there’s a single right answer, but our perspective is that the OSS project stays free and useful and the company exists to make sure it stays alive and keeps improving.
If we do it right, the two should reinforce each other.
