Monetizing Open-Source Contributions Through Crypto with Max Howell

The Business of Open Source

Max Howell is the CEO of Tea, a revolutionary open-source project that is seeking to help open-source contributors get paid for their work through crypto. Throughout our conversation, Max explains how he’s created some prolific open-source projects but was still unable to monetize them to the point where open source could be his full-time job, and how that provided the inspiration for Tea. Max and I discuss the importance of re-framing open-source projects in business terms of value, and not simply referring to supporting projects as charity work, and Max also shares valuable insights into the world of open-source crypto development.

Highlights:

• Intro (00:00)
• I introduce Max, the CEO of tea.xyz, and he explains his career background and how he started Tea (01:00)
• Max and I discuss the shift that open source needs to make from relying on charity to speaking in business and value terms (09:39)
• Max describes how Tea is representing the existing value of open source and translating it into monetary form (12:32)
• The administrative challenges of paying for open-source tools that are business-critical and how Tea helps solve them (14:36)
• Tea’s business strategy for monetizing their own open-source project (18:05)
• How Max’s goal of being able to work on the open-source projects he loves full time has played out with Tea (24:06)
• Max describes how he successfully pitched Tea to investors (25:21)
• Tea’s relationship with the rest of the crypto industry (27:32)
• The biggest challenge Max and his team are working on at the moment (29:06)
• What Max wishes he would have done differently and what he’s learned from the mistakes he’s made (31:59)
• Where you can go to learn more about Tea and connect with Max (38:53)

Links:

Max

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mxcl/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/mxcl
• Company: https://tea.xyz/