Careful license choice and intentionally crippling things such that they are objectively useless unless you meet the exact needs that I have.

I've kind of given up on elemental-ircd and left it unmaintained and archived, but I would probably send a job application in to that place if said unicorn startup happened. A few people have tried to take over elemental in the past, but as a whole the IRC ecosystem is on a downturn so they don't last long. It's a complicated situation though. At some level I'd be shocked that they managed to turn that pile of shit into something usable!