Funding Open Source Projects, Leaving Homebrew, and Launching Tea with Max Howell

Working on open source projects is a largely thankless job and a labor of love. The developers behind these projects often juggle full-time jobs to pay their bills while maintaining the software that keeps so much of the internet afloat.

Max Howell, CEO of tea.inc., pivoted from chemistry to web development because of his fascination for open source. He worked full-time and did pull requests for Homebrew during his free time. After hustling to build a package manager used by engineers working for corporate giants like Google and Microsoft, he reached an inevitable burnout. Max created tea.inc. to fairly compensate open source developers for the work they do with the hope that open source work will be lucrative and sustainable full-time. The project has raised 18 million so far and it's set to launch in early November.

In this episode, Max talks to Chuck and Robbie about the burnout of working on underfunded open source projects, why he left Homebrew despite its success, and launching tea.inc. as a Web3 solution for funding open source.

Key Takeaways

• [00:21] - An introduction to Max Howell.
• [01:15] - A whiskey review - American Highway Reserve Bourbon.
• [07:18] - Max's new project, tea.inc.
• [26:21] - Max speaks about England.
• [32:12] - Max discusses his U.S. journey.
• [33:28] - Why Google turned down Max.

Quotes

[08:15] - "I look back on the iPhone as the pivotal moment, really, when development suddenly became cool." ~ Max Howell [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mxcl]

[13:27]- "I had a moment of inspiration where I could see how the open source ecosystem, with all its dependencies and all these packages could be similarly compensated." ~ Max Howell [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mxcl]

[22:50] - "The bottom fell out of the boot camp market because it was a bit of a scam in some ways. You can't learn to program in 10 weeks is the truth of it." ~ Max Howell [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mxcl]

Links

• Max Howell [https://mxcl.dev/]
• Max Howell Twitter [https://twitter.com/mxcl]
• MaxHowell LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mxcl]
• Tea.xyz [https://tea.xyz/https://tea.xyz/]
• Homebrew [https://brew.sh/]
• Microsoft [https://www.microsoft.com/]
• American Highway Reserve [https://seelbachs.com/products/american-highway-reserve]
• Jefferson's Ocean [https://jeffersonsbourbon.com/jeffersons-ocean-bourbon/]
• Sacred Stave [https://santanspirits.com/santan-spirits/sacred-stave-bourbon/]
• Russell Crowe [https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000128/]
• Mac  [https://www.apple.com/lae/mac/]
• Windows [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows]
• Linux [https://www.linux.org/]
• Sagamore [https://www.nativespiritsonline.com/products/sagamore-signature-rye]
• iPhone [https://www.apple.com/lae/iphone/]
• PromiseKit [https://github.com/PromiseKit]
• Timothy Lewis [https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothytlewis]
• Faker.js [https://fakerjs.dev/guide/]
• GitHub [https://github.com/]
• Slack [https://slack.com/]
• Heineken [https://www.heineken.com/]
• Google [https://www.google.com/]
• Twitter [https://twitter.com/]
• Weather.com [https://weather.com/]
• Hacker News [https://thehackernews.com/]
• Mark Zuckerburg [https://www.instagram.com/zuck/?hl=en]
• Apple [https://www.apple.com/store]

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