How Eleventy Survived: Funding, Growth, and Open Source Reality

How Eleventy Survived: Funding, Growth, and Open Source Reality

From Podcast Awesome by Font Awesome

February 3, 2026 · 29 min · Season 4 · Episode 2

About this episode

Zach Leatherman discusses the realities of funding and maintaining open source projects like Eleventy.

Eleventy started as a side project. Now it’s a critical infrastructure for thousands of websites. TL;DR: Open source isn’t broken. But the way we fund it often is. Let’s talk about what actually works. In this episode, we sit down with Zach Leatherman, creator of Eleventy (11ty), to talk honestly about what happens after open source succeeds. From nap-time coding and nights-and-weekends maintenance to venture capital pressure, burnout risk, and the reality of funding long-lived developer to...

People in this episode

Host: Font Awesome

Guest: Zach Leatherman

Topics covered

  • open source
  • funding
  • growth
  • developer experience
  • venture capital
  • burnout

Keywords

  • Eleventy
  • open source
  • funding
  • growth
  • venture capital
  • developer burnout

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Eleventy, Font Awesome

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