Jim Collins’ Five Stages of Decline shows how many great companies overstep themselves and suddenly find themselves falling, more and more rapidly. See, most startups only care about early growth—just like tech debt, we think we can always come back to sustainability after we’ve made it. Open source community is a great way to kickstart that initial success and growth. It’s practically free and your users are throwing contributions at you left and right….

We hit that peak much sooner than we anticipated and without having built a sustainable community foundation we shoot right off the cliff and go screaming down the decline on the other side. As we fall, we grasp at whatever straws we can, chasing new technologies or rapidly throwing new products at the wall hoping they’ll stick. Nothing does, of course. The accountants show up to bleed you dry, and then the lawyers finish you off.

And you? You’ve probably still got a few of those rad swag t-shirts from the heyday, right?

This doesn’t have to be the only story. David is here to tell you how to recognize when you’ve reached maturity so you know how to ease into the long tail of maintenance, engaging and working with your community to build a long-term sustainable business, solving the problems your customers bring to you. It’s hard work and it takes every-single-day consistency. But it does get easier with practice.

David Sandilands is an author and I.T. infrastructure expert who focuses on the management of Puppet’s development ecosystem and integrations. Prior to this, he worked within Puppet’s customer