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Tailscale has raised $160M

tailscale.com

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Re: Tailscale has raised $160M

#221

Post by ytpete »

crmd wrote: post #201
api wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't raise VC money and save it for a rainy day. If VCs wanted their money in a bank they'd just put it in a bank. If you raise $100M you have to put $100M to work or you'll hear constant shit from your board over it. If they raised $160M they're going to spend $160M on something. My guess would be a lot of enterprise features and product integrations.

Thank you. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to write “we don’t need the money but are saving for a rainy day” CEO talking points and press releases for companies that were < 90 days from not being able to make payroll.

I guess technically they weren't lying, just holding back on disclosing that they already knew a rainy day was coming and it was coming very soon...

Re: Tailscale has raised $160M

#222

Post by LeoPanthera »

apitman wrote: post #20

Even if it could mean Tailscale enshittifies eventually, this is probably a good thing for the ecosystem. As one example, the bigger they get, the more likely operating systems will build better APIs to support what they do (for example maybe Apple will provide a way to do mDNS over Tailscale), and those APIs can be used by all. There are plenty of open source alternatives cropping up[0]. I'm curious to see what Tail…

Apple had a Tailscale-style feature called "Back to my Mac" that was part of MobileMe. They killed it off with the rest of MobileMe, presumably because they just wanted you to store everything in iCloud.

Re: Tailscale has raised $160M

#223

Post by dewey »

dexterdog wrote: post #220
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>$6/user/m, but if you want to use ACLs to control anything in a workable way, it jumps 3x to $18/u/m. It's market segmentation, needing ACLs is a sign you're at least an SMB, and to a business of nearly any actual size, the difference between $6/user and $18/user is 0.

Um, it's 3x the cost to get one feature. By your logic they should be charging $100/user/mo for the feature since that must also be the same. This is typical "enterprise" nonsense pricing and it will absolutely drive some adopters to look elsewhere.

It's a perfectly valid part of a pricing strategy to drive people away if they are not the customers you want.

Re: Tailscale has raised $160M

#224

Post by dgoldstein0 »

xeromal wrote: post #208
Loudergood wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US Health Insurance is stupid expensive as well.

It's really not at scale. It's on the order of 500$ a month per dev for "gold" level care for a company of 50 people. I'm sure it's less the larger you get.

It might depend on the state and the age pool but I have to pay a percentage and based on that it's more like $10k/year. So you are almost 2x undercounting

... But maybe if the average employee of a company is 25 they could get a better deal

Re: Tailscale has raised $160M

#225

Post by chrisshroba »

chubot wrote: post #70
pomatic wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they raised the 100M three years ago, I'm pretty sure they said they didn't need it and were saving it for a rainy day (or words to that effect), always seemed very odd at the time. Two q's for anyone who cares to speculate: have they burnt the original investment already? And if not, why would they need more funding? AFAICS there's no real competition in the market place for their product today, the only thing…

Hm OK well thinking out loud, $100M / 3 is $33M / year? I don't know much about Tailscale, nor about how much it costs to run a company, but I thought it was mostly a software company? I would imagine that salaries are the main cost, and revenue could cover salaries? (seems like they have a solid model - https://tailscale.com/pricing ) I'm sure they have some cloud fees, but I thought it was mostly "control plane" an…

>I'm sure they have some cloud fees, but I thought it was mostly "control plane" and not data plane

Don't they host the relay servers that are the fallback if NAT hole punching and their other bag of tricks doesn't work?

Re: Tailscale has raised $160M

#226

Post by YetAnotherNick »

rafram wrote: post #193
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally package is around half of what company spends per extra engineer. And $500k average for a tech heavy product company doesn't sound too far off.

> $500k average for a tech heavy product company doesn't sound too far off. Tailscale puts salary ranges on their job postings. The salaries aren’t bad, but no, they aren’t $500k.

Didn't knew that. It's significantly lower than $500k.

Re: Tailscale has raised $160M

#227

Post by ErigmolCt »

The shift toward identity-first networking is also super interesting. Feels like we're finally moving past the idea that IPs = trust, and into a world where access control actually maps to human (or service) intent

Re: Tailscale has raised $160M

#228

Post by ErigmolCt »

briHass wrote: post #192

I'm a fan of TS and have been a paying customer for work infra for almost a year now. It really is well put together and easy to use, but I do run up against some issues/complaints when diving deep that I hope they can work out: * The pricing tiers and included features by tier penalizes you in frustrating ways. The base plan is a reasonable $6/user/m, but if you want to use ACLs to control anything in a workable way…

I really hope with this funding they can improve observability and give more love to power users who occasionally need to dig deeper without going full bare metal

Re: Tailscale has raised $160M

#229

Post by ErigmolCt »

suralind wrote: post #18

Off-topic, but it makes me laugh that companies will list their “investors”, “advisors”, etc. on their company page, but not the people working there. That said, Tailscale is one of the products that just works.

Feels like tech companies treat engineers like implementation details until they need to hire more of them.

Re: Tailscale has raised $160M

#230

Post by rjgray »

briHass wrote: post #192

I'm a fan of TS and have been a paying customer for work infra for almost a year now. It really is well put together and easy to use, but I do run up against some issues/complaints when diving deep that I hope they can work out: * The pricing tiers and included features by tier penalizes you in frustrating ways. The base plan is a reasonable $6/user/m, but if you want to use ACLs to control anything in a workable way…

Do you mind sharing the better solutions you'd consider at the higher price point?
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