1.
ROSS Index
Annual report 2022

2.
ROSS Index: the fastest-growing open-source startups
The Runa Open Source Startup (ROSS) Index is a regularly updated ranking of the
fastest-growing open-source startups. It was created and maintained by Runa Capital
since 2020.
We use a simple and transparent methodology:
1. Monitor all GitHub repos with at least 1,000 stars
2. Calculate their growth during the target period
3. Select repos that are only associated with startups
4. Highlight the top-20 open-source startups by their GitHub star growth
ROSS index usually highlights startups every quarter. In this report we decided to
apply the same approach to all of 2022.
GitHub star growth is not a perfect metric. Yet it is good enough to reflect what is
preeminent for developers. So you can view this report as the top trending
open-source products created by startups in 2022.
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Runa Capital: a global VC firm for tech-savvy founders
Runa Capital is a global venture capital firm. It was founded in 2010 by tech
entrepreneurs, who have build enterprise software companies such as
Acronis, Parallels and Acumatica. We have offices in Palo Alto, Luxembourg,
London and Berlin.
Runa has invested in 100+ early-stage tech startups from Europe and the US.
Many of those are B2B SaaS and open-source companies like Nginx, Mambu,
Ecwid, n8n and MariaDB.
ROSS index is our commitment to giving back to the global open-source
community. It is led by our London-based General Partner Konstantin
Vinogradov and Sofia-based Data Lead Bogdan Semenov.

4.
145 unique startups have appeared in ROSS Index
These are the fast-growing companies that have featured in ROSS
Index since its inception in Q2 2020. It represents the cutting edge
of the modern open-source movement. And this set is worth
analyzing!
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5.
ROSS Index is a good predictor of new VC rounds
145
unique startups have appeared
in the index since Q2 2020
40%
early-stage startups raised
VC rounds after being ranked
$1.4B
total funding raised
after starring in the index
The top-10 account for 57% of all VC funding
raised by startups after ROSS Index
The top-10 investors funded 41% of startups
that raised after ROSS Index
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6.
Supabase 🥇🥈
featured in five quarters
Q3-Q4 2020, Q1-Q3 2021
ROSS Index has its own familiar faces
Builder.io 🥇🥈
featured in five quarters
Q3-Q4 2021, Q1-Q3 2022
Jina AI 🥉
featured in four quarters
Q4 2020, Q1-Q3 2021
GitHub owner mentions in ROSS Index
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7.
ROSS Index open-source community snapshot
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Total # of stars from the index repos
1.6M+
GitHub stars overall
11K+
total # of contributors
5.6K+
contributors made
commits in the last
twelve months
4.3K+
contributors made
their first commit in
the past year
+56%
annual
growth
Aggregated metrics for ROSS Index repos

8.
ROSS Index members prefer TypeScript, Go and Rust
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JavaScript, Python and Java are the most popular languages at GitHub*, representing 41% of repos.
However, it is not the case for ROSS index members where TypeScript, Go and Rust dominate.
This trio of languages focuses on advanced performance, safety and scalability and is preferred by the
current wave of open-source startups, besides the ubiquitous Python.
Language popularity among repos
* research dataset = all GitHub repos with 1K+ stars

9.
ROSS Index members use more protective licenses
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MIT open source license is the most popular choice at GitHub, used by 46% repos*. However, startups
care more about business than the average GitHub org, so they tend to use more protective licenses.
ROSS Index members like Apache (#1) with its patent and trademark protection, and AGPLv3, which
prevents others from profiting from your repo without contribution.
* research dataset = all GitHub repos with 1K+ stars
License popularity among repos

10.
58% index members have HQs outside the US
There are clear country leaders where local open-source startups tend to secure VC funding: the US,
the UK, Germany and France. They account for 79% of all VC-funded ROSS Index members.
Despite the decentralised nature of the global open-source community, funding of OS startups is even
more concentrated on these four countries than for a typical startup* (57%).
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* research dataset = all startups listed in “Software”, “Information Technology” categories in Crunchbase
HQs of startups raised VC funding in 2020-2022

11.
75% of startups enter ROSS within five years
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What comes first for an open-source startup: the company or the repo?
For ROSS Index, only 20% of repos were created before the associated startups were founded. And for
58% startups, it took between one and three years from its creation to be featured in our index.
Repo creation relative to startup launch ROSS appearance relative to startup launch

12.
ROSS Index 2022
Top 50 fastest-growing
open-source startups

13.
Top 50 fastest-growing open-source startups in 2022
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The winners of ROSS Index 2022
The top 50 fastest-growing
open-source startups of 2022
come from 17 countries.
There are 81 founders, of whom
only 4% are female.
Builder.io has three repos within
the top 50: qwik, partytown,
mitosis.
We have selected only “qwik” as
the repo with the highest growth
rate (968% AGR*), according to
our methodology.
* AGR = annual growth rate of GitHub stars.

15.
Top 50 fastest-growing open-source startups in 2022
Rank Company Country Repo Founded Raised ($M) Stars (K) *AGR Rank Company Country Repo Founded Raised ($M) Stars (K) AGR
1 Builder USA repo 2018 17.0 14.1 968% 26 Fig USA repo 2020 2.4 21.0 146%
2 Novu Israel repo 2021 6.0 16.1 446% 27 Pipedream USA repo 2019 22.0 5.2 143%
3 refine Turkey repo 2022 1.0 6.6 395% 28 Apify Czech Rep. repo 2015 0.5 7.4 133%
4 Safing Austria repo 2017 6.0 345% 29 NetBird Germany repo 2022 0.2 4.0 128%
5 Nhost Sweden repo 2019 3.1 5.5 300% 30 Logseq China repo 2020 19.4 126%
6 ToolJet India repo 2021 1.6 15.6 256% 31 Anchore USA repo 2016 29.0 3.5 125%
7 Netmaker USA repo 2021 2.3 5.8 221% 32 OpenReplay France repo 2018 6.2 6.7 124%
8 IceWhale China repo 2020 0.4 8.0 212% 33 GrowthBook USA repo 2020 0.5 4.0 121%
9 Penpot Spain repo 2019 8.0 19.7 202% 34 SEO4Ajax France repo 2015 9.9 120%
10 MindsDB USA repo 2017 7.9 12.2 189% 35 CodeSandbox Netherlands repo 2017 15.1 2.9 119%
11 ZincSearch USA repo 2021 3.6 13.1 188% 36 Appsmith India repo 2019 51.5 23.8 117%
12 Medusa Denmark repo 2021 1.0 15.9 183% 37 LiveKit USA repo 2021 7.0 4.4 116%
13 Quickwit USA repo 2020 2.6 2.9 181% 38 AppFlowy USA repo 2021 30.5 115%
14 Umbrel India repo 2020 3.0 3.8 177% 39 Orchest Netherlands repo 2020 4.2 3.6 111%
15 NuxtLabs France repo 2017 2.0 11.0 175% 40 OpenBB USA repo 2021 8.5 18.5 110%
16 Astro USA repo 2019 7.0 23.8 172% 41 Budibase UK repo 2020 9.2 16.8 105%
17 Obsidian Canada repo 2020 3.8 165% 42 Slint Germany repo 2020 5.5 104%
18 Charm USA repo 2019 3.0 2.9 165% 43 daily.dev Israel repo 2020 9.9 103%
19 SuperTokens India repo 2019 1.5 7.8 165% 44 StarRocks USA repo 2021 3.7 103%
20 SST USA repo 2017 1.0 10.6 164% 45 Signoz India repo 2020 10.9 98%
21 Deepfence USA repo 2017 10.5 2.6 153% 46 Mattermost USA repo 2015 70.0 14.0 96%
22 Coqui Germany repo 2020 7.5 152% 47 Bahasa Indonesia repo 2021 6.0 95%
23 Amplication Israel repo 2020 6.6 9.1 150% 48 Project Discovery India repo 2019 26.7 2.1 92%
24 Bytebase China repo 2021 3.0 4.6 150% 49 Appwrite Israel repo 2019 28.1 91%
25 RustDesk Singapore repo 2020 35.2 147% 50 Dendron USA repo 2019 2.0 5.0 89%
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* AGR = annual growth rate of GitHub stars.

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Command line tools
Web app frameworks
Backend as a service
Knowledge management
Security & Privacy
Internal tool builders
ML/AI & Search
Noteworthy trends in open-source during 2022
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Databases Website scraping

17.
44% of the top-50 startups have raised capital since 2022
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startups from the top-50
raised from VCs since 2022
$169M
total VC funding raised by
ROSS Index 2022 startups
68%
of these startups
raised seed investment
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Appsmith 󰏝
Raised $41M in a
Series B round from
Insight Partners, Accel
& OSS Capital
Appwrite 󰏛
Raised $27M of Series
A funding from Tiger
Global, Bessemer &
Seedcamp
Project Discovery 󰏝
Raised $25M in its
Series A round from
CRV
Pipedream 󰑔
Raised $20M of Series
A funding from True
Ventures, CRV & Felicis
Ventures

18.
ROSS Index 2022 open-source community snapshot
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Total # of stars across the top-50 repos in 2022
531K+
GitHub stars
2.3K+
Total # of contributors
1.8K+
contributors made
commits in the last
twelve months
1.6K+
contributors made
their first commit in
the past year
Aggregated metrics from the top-50 repos

19.
ROSS Index 2022 members grew faster than 99.6% repos
The average GitHub* repo star
count rises at a relatively low
pace with the median repo
increasing around 5% annually.
ROSS Index 2022 grows much
faster — on average, it
increases 177% per year.
This growth rate put ROSS
members within the top 0.4%
of all GitHub repos.
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* research dataset = all GitHub repos with 1K+ stars
ROSS Index
177% annual growth
99.6% percentile

20.
Founders’ backgrounds in ROSS Index 2022
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Google and IBM featured most prominently on founders’ CVs before launching their startups.
For education, the top two universities for founders are non-US: France’s EPITECH; and the University
of Waterloo in Canada. However, founders’ backgrounds is fairly decentralised and we do not see any
noteworthy hub.
Previous employer University alumni

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Join our community!
ROSS index is a live project that evolves with the active support of the
tech community. All suggestions are welcome and can be shared with
Bogdan.
● Any company featured in ROSS Index can add the ROSS badge to their
website or GitHub page. Let your visitors know that you are one of the
fastest-growing open-source startups.
● We maintain a repo with the awesome open-source alternatives to
established SaaS products. Give it a GitHub star or simply contribute.
● All quarterly indexes are available on our website. Everyone see the
fastest-growing open-source startups for each quarter since Q2 2020.
Subscribe to ROSS Index newsletter here.