Today, I'm not sure. But a few years ago, you raised VC money, gained a user base, used that to raise more money, and then ran a 10 person team on $20m for a while. I think the next step is a docker desktop move,or a hashicorp move where you offer a managed offering on top of your open source project.

Eternally rasing more VC money. The core devs were previously snowpack and skypack, both VC funded that never got bought or sold a product.

There no doubt that writing a popular frameworks boosts your status which could make it easier to get a job at VC funded startups. Vercel hired the top devs working on React and the creator of svelte. Netlify hired the creator of solid.

Some rely on donations from companies that use their frameworks. Eg: Evan You (creator of Vue)

They have a react job to fund their side-project (/jk) :o)