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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

#261

Post by hennell »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #243
robertjpayne wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What’s the problem with the lifetime purchase?

It's the difference between one-off revenue and recurring revenue. If you're making new components, making new changes for the new version, adding new css and browser support it's hard to keep going with only income from new customers.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#262

Post by etothet »

306bobby wrote: post #88
johnnyanmac wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they have 3 left, that's 9 engineers. I doubt it'll bring them back unless this is a huge package. a few million only delays the inevitable by a year or 2.

From what I understand, 3 left and they had 4 total. Not 3 are there and they had 9 total

They had 8 people total: 3 founders (who is still there), 1 businessy/partner program person (who is still there) and 4 devs, 3 of which were laid off.

They now have 5 people total - 3 founders, the business person, and 1 other dev, which according to Adam’s podcast was the first dev they hired.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#263

Post by ryanSrich »

birken wrote: post #111
ricardobeat wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No ill will towards the team, but isn’t it almost absurd that a CSS library is funded to the tune of 1m+ yearly and is still in financial difficulty? It is technically complete. There is no major research work or churn like in React, no monstruous complexity like Webpack.

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

That's barely two low level faang engineers after full load.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#264

Post by ryanSrich »

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.

> Salaries for developers are well under $150k in most of the United States, for example, and that is for senior engineers

As someone who has hired hundreds of SWEs over the last 12 years from 20+ states, I have to disagree.

$150k is on the lower end for base for a Sr. SWE, and well below the total comp someone would expect. You can make the argument that $150k base is reasonable, but even Sr. SWE in the middle of the country are looking for closer to $180k -$200k OTE.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#265

Post by Guillaume86 »

FootballMuse wrote: post #201
eek2121 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They were hiring about two years ago: https://tailwindcss.com/blog/hiring-a-design-engineer-and-st... A Design Engineer and Staff Software Engineer both for $275k

Well that explains it then, don't offer stupid salaries before you make stupid money...

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#266

Post by hennell »

raincole wrote: post #187
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.

Blender pays their developers ~ $3M/year. [0] I'm having a very hard time to believe you need one third of that to maintain a library that does "shorter names for standard CSS." Of course I might be underestimating Tailwind a lot. [0] https://download.blender.org/foundation/Blender-Foundation-A... [1] But given the unit is euro in this report, I guess the solution is to not hire developers in the US.

Tailwind (like most things) is way more complex than it first appears.

Sure the main thing was originally 'just' mapping `.p-4` to `padding: 1rem`. But it's also about grepping the code to see if `p-4` is used so it only builds needed classes. It also needs to work with things like their responsive and state classes so `md:p-4` or `hover:p-4` add the padding only on medium or larger screens, or when hovered etc.

All of which increased to support more and more css features and arbitrary values so `not-supports-[display:grid]:p-[5px]` generates the required code to check if grid is supported and add 5px padding or whatever other values you put in the [].

You can question if that's really a sensible idea, but it is undeniably a pretty complex challenge. Not sure it compares to blender, I imagine that has a lot more maths involved - put probably less edge cases and weird displays odd in X browser bugs.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#267

Post by skybrian »

onion2k wrote: post #210
redox99 wrote: post #135

Last year they claimed they had $800k in ARR from sponsors alone[1]. Add to that whatever they made by selling Tailwind Plus ($299 individual / $979 teams one time payment) How much money do you really need to maintain a CSS library? I understand everyone wants a really fancy office in an expensive city, lots of employees with very high salaries and generous perks, and so on. But all that is not needed to maintain a…

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…

This seems kinda circular: they need to release new versions to pay developers. They need to pay developers to create new versions.

I hope they have better reasons to release new versions? Not releasing new versions also has its charm: less churn.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#268

Post by jrjeksjd8d »

knallfrosch wrote: post #94
jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AI issue was that their docs advertise their paid offerings. When AI plagiarizes the docs it doesn't include the ads.

It was a problem with their revenue stream, which was documentation website -> banner for lifetime payment. All customers already had lifetime access and couldn't pay more. Plus noone was reading the docs on the webpage anymore. Recurring subscriptions, ads in AI products (think Tailwind MCP server telling you about subscription features.) Those were just two things I pulled out of the hat in a minute.

I can understand recurring subscriptions and ads in MCP being a bright line that the team doesn't want to cross. You will probably say it's a bad business model to not make everything a recurring charge and packed full of ads.

I've experienced this in my own life - I ran my own business and I had to choose between doing a worse job and enshittifying the product to make more money, or doing a good job but risking bankruptcy. I choose bankruptcy, because I believed strongly in doing a good job and not enshittifying the product. I don't regret it.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#269

Post by skybrian »

Culonavirus wrote: post #229
redox99 wrote: post #135

Last year they claimed they had $800k in ARR from sponsors alone[1]. Add to that whatever they made by selling Tailwind Plus ($299 individual / $979 teams one time payment) How much money do you really need to maintain a CSS library? I understand everyone wants a really fancy office in an expensive city, lots of employees with very high salaries and generous perks, and so on. But all that is not needed to maintain a…

> How much money do you really need to maintain a CSS library? Seems to me like Tailwind is a relatively complex beast covering a lot of ground, not to mention that web browsers are living/evergreen projects that are costantly moving forward, and so the lib needs frequent updates. I don't think you can avoid this (just by the nature of the project). You also need to be a css expert who follows the browser and feature…

If browsers are breaking old CSS, making new releases necessary, then that seems like a bad situation. I thought browsers were good at maintaining backward compatibility? Not so for Tailwind?

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#270

Post by mexicocitinluez »

exceptione wrote: post #222
sonofhans wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can find a way to do it better or cheaper you’re welcome to try. No one else has. Don’t think it’s a small problem. The number of user agents and platforms supported by Tailwind would melt plenty of larger organizations.

Maybe we accidentally found a more meaningful chance for having a discussion about LLMs. As CSS is limited in scope, ultra-well defined, testable and declarative, this should be a home run for LLMs.

Nah, Tailwind is way more important for LLMs than vanilla CSS.

Models work in contexts. If my context is "my entire app's styling", then it's going to be really difficult to write styles in line unless it's already pretty perfect.

Tailwind doesn't have that problem. It's local. I can define a single theme and KNOW FOR A FACT how something will look before it even touches my code. That's the beauty of utility-like libraries.

I stopped working in marketing and advertising (which DID need custom styles), and went to strictly app dev where my needs completely changed.

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