More details here,
Early musings on "Exit to Community" for Open Collective 
This reminds of how Blender became open-sourced back in 2000/2001.
The people at the company had realised that they weren’t going to be able to compete with Adobe, so they were going to shut the company down, but the users of the company’s software were NOT happy about that.
Someone asked them how much money it had cost them to produce the software, and they said ~$200K. They were then asked, if that amount was raised, would they open-source the code.
After they said yes, within two days the full amount was raised, and, they released Blender as a fully open-source package.
That was when i changed the way that i look at both software and hardware niches within the economic energy ecology.
I now see them as fixed-size market niches, where there’s a limit to how much you can charge for the devices.
As one colleague from the London Hackspace said, “Every time i sell a 3d-printer that can be used to make another 3d-printer, i’m empowering my competition.”
This translates to the approach of finding a situation that can be improved by the use of technology, but working on it as a fixed-price opportunity.
This would make it easier to chase other forms of funding, rather than having to go for the VC model.