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Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

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Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#231

Post by ahmetomer »

bodge5000 wrote: post #160

There are a lot of comments to the tune of "why does a CSS library need 1m+ (or any money at all) to survive?". I'm no expert on this kind of thing, but Tailwind 0.1.0 first released on November 2017. Since then, there's been continual improvements up until last month with 4.1.18, totalling 8 years of dev work. A simple CSS library wouldn't have much need to go past 0.1.0, certainly not 1.0.0. Clearly tailwind did, w…

I had a similar thought. If a project like Vue or Nuxt can stay afloat with consistent development and updates, without suffering financial difficulties, then it's worth asking why Tailwind hasn't been able to do the same. Yes it is a huge project, with incredible support across all browsers, and needs a lot of care. That's for sure. But I think the business decisions taken by the Tailwind team can be put in the spotlight in this case.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#232

Post by mocana »

If one of the most widely used UI libraries in the world cannot sustain a small team of developers, why would anybody attempt to start a company around an open source library? Does not speak well of the open source business model. At least for software libraries.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#234

Post by wanderlust123 »

Ameo wrote: post #115

My perspective on this is that maybe Tailwind Labs shouldn't have been a for-profit business, or at least not one of the size that it grew to be. I was reading a writeup on this history of Tailwind[1] made by Adam Wathan (who created Tailwind). It seems like he was working on a variety of different business ideas including "Reddit meets Pinterest meets Twitter" and "a developer-focused, webhook-driven checkout platfo…

Sounds like your conclusion is: work hard to create something and just give it away for free.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#235

Post by troupo »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #220
tpmoney wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you're paying your devs $100k / year. All in costs on those devs are probably $150k or so. That means your $1m / year will fund 6 full time developers with a little left over. This podcast from the CEO[1] says their engineering team was 4 people and the remaining staff is the 3 owners, the 1 remaining engineer, and one part time customer support person. So assuming every full time person was costing $150k i…

The question is still why you need multiple devs worth 150-250kpa to maintain a CSS library.

They don't only make TailwindCSS. They also make a large collection of components and templates at https://tailwindcss.com/plus

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#236

Post by troupo »

runako wrote: post #200
ericmcer wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked on design system teams before people can burn a lot of time and money doing overly nuanced stuff. I have been in meetings discussing removing/adding a property on a React component before. That said 3 motivated developers and a designer should be more than sufficient to build a css library, but you could 100% have a team of 20 and they would find stuff to do.

> 3 motivated developers and a designer Curious how much cash folks think it takes to cover this headcount. I have a feeling people are wildly underestimating the cost of a team this size.

At 100k per person per month it's 400k per month (the actual cost is higher. 100k in salary is easily 150k with all the taxes included).

Times that by 12...

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#237

Post by andruby »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #220
tpmoney wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you're paying your devs $100k / year. All in costs on those devs are probably $150k or so. That means your $1m / year will fund 6 full time developers with a little left over. This podcast from the CEO[1] says their engineering team was 4 people and the remaining staff is the 3 owners, the 1 remaining engineer, and one part time customer support person. So assuming every full time person was costing $150k i…

The question is still why you need multiple devs worth 150-250kpa to maintain a CSS library.

The question isn't "what is the lowest cost that a CSS library could be maintained for"

The question is rather, how can the most popular UI system (especially for AI models) have a healthy business model?

Think of the immense value that Tailwind is bringing to all the companies and developers using it. Surely there should be a way for the creators to capture a small slice of that in our economic system.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#238

Post by troupo »

eek2121 wrote: post #147
birken wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of headcount do you estimate $1MM/year can reliably support? That's like ~2 engineers at FAANG.

FAANG isn't the world. Salaries for developers are well under $150k in most of the United States, for example, and that is for senior engineers. Most startups are paying $90k-$140k for senior devs, for example (I haven't done the math, but from my own experience, $100-$120k is the general sweet spot). Larger companies pay a bit more, but move beyond that and you are talking management.

100k per month per person is over 1 million a year.

So 2 million per year barely gets you two people.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#239

Post by robertjpayne »

troupo wrote: post #235
AlecSchueler wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is still why you need multiple devs worth 150-250kpa to maintain a CSS library.

They don't only make TailwindCSS. They also make a large collection of components and templates at https://tailwindcss.com/plus

Yes but Tailwind Plus has a flawed business model, AI was not really the reason nobody bought it, it's that it's a lifetime purchase and that shadcn + LLMs has eaten their cake left right and central.

If LLMs didn't exist but shadcn still did, do you think people would pay and use Tailwind+ or shadcn?

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#240

Post by ib33 »

hu3 wrote: post #218
onion2k wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much money do you really need to maintain a CSS library? If you want to continue to develop new versions, you need enough to pay as many engineers as you need to do that. If you're not developing new versions then the money from sponsors will eventually stop. And they used the AI bad get out of jail free card when a lot of their drop in sales probably comes from shadcn/ui and others which offer something similar…

> shadcn is built on top of Tailwind. If Tailwind dies, so does shadcn. They can fork tailwind into openwind and keep using the stable version for a looong time with minor fixes. And that would probably benefit shadcn somewhat since they would have more control.

And how would you adjust Shadcn salaries to account for this additional work? Do we expect open source labour to be subsidised by maintainers while the rest of us find work at FAANG?
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