Not affiliated with OP and therefore unable to answer your question, but there's a lot of products that built traction that way: WordPress, GitLab, Discourse, Docker, Ubuntu, ...
I think it solves the problem of gaining traction today, at the expense of future market power. Then they face a choice of pulling a HashiCorp or being OK with being a commodity provider rather than a fancy unicorn.
I can see the appeal, a humble business is better than no business, isn't it?