Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 893 posts

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#291

Post by bryanrasmussen »

jact wrote: post #235
Alex2037 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and he's being honest oh, come the fuck on. it's "AI made us do it" drivel that companies began to justify layoffs with in 2023 (!!!). Tailwind is just another FOTM frontend thing. I saw dozens of them come, gain some popularity, then abruptly disappear once the marketing budget ran out.

He mentions that tailwind is more popular than ever before but their revenue is down 80% so unless he’s lying about that it makes sense rather than tailwind going out of style.

I suppose Tailwind might be more popular because it fits AI development better?

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#293

Post by ozozozd »

simlevesque wrote: post #177
jstummbillig wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguments for... somebody wanting to get paid for their work? What are you doing?

Normally you ask for payment upfront, not years after.

Once you give it for free, you must work for free forever!

/s

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#294

Post by Aurornis »

risyachka wrote: post #206
freedomben wrote: post #6

Very sad to hear, I bought Tailwind UI years ago and although it was a lot more expensive than I wanted, I've appreciated the care and precision and highly recommend buying it (It's now called Tailwind Plus) even still (maybe even especially now). Mad props to Adam for his honesty and transparency. Adam if you're reading, just know that the voices criticizing you are not the only voices out there. Thanks for all you'…

What most don’t realize is that this will happen to most businesses in all categories as more people rely on ChatGPT and Claude for discovery. No discovery - no business. And same with ads.if OpenAI decides not to add ads - prepare for even faster business consolidation. Those businesses preferred by llms will exponentially grow, others will quickly go out of business

> as more people rely on ChatGPT and Claude for discovery

In my limited web dev experience with these tools, they suggest and push Tailwind CSS very often when asked for advice.

The Tailwind company wasn't selling that, though. They were selling premium packages of components, templates, and themes. The demand for that type of material has dropped off significantly now that you can get an LLM to do a moderately good job of making common layouts and components. Then you can adjust them yourself until they're exactly what you want.

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#295

Post by burningChrome »

risyachka wrote: post #206
freedomben wrote: post #6

Very sad to hear, I bought Tailwind UI years ago and although it was a lot more expensive than I wanted, I've appreciated the care and precision and highly recommend buying it (It's now called Tailwind Plus) even still (maybe even especially now). Mad props to Adam for his honesty and transparency. Adam if you're reading, just know that the voices criticizing you are not the only voices out there. Thanks for all you'…

What most don’t realize is that this will happen to most businesses in all categories as more people rely on ChatGPT and Claude for discovery. No discovery - no business. And same with ads.if OpenAI decides not to add ads - prepare for even faster business consolidation. Those businesses preferred by llms will exponentially grow, others will quickly go out of business

> No discovery - no business.

I do SEO as a side gig to my 9-5 as a developer. All four of my freelance companies I work with have seen their traffic drop up to 40% since LLM's have effectively taken over and people are using search engines less and less.

We've had to pivot to short form social media advertising which seems to be closing the gap whereas before the majority of our leads were coming from organic search and being ranked high in their respective industries. It certainly takes more effort to craft a script, film it, edit it to add text overlays, animations and catchy effects, but its showing me its being effective in the leads we're generating.

I'm not sure if this is a sort of generational thing back when my parents were so engrained to use the yellow pages and then that stopped once the internet got into the advertising business - but it feels like a similar transition is taking place again.

As many have already told me, "Ignore AI at your peril"

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#296

Post by satvikpendem »

thundergolfer wrote: post #91
satvikpendem wrote: post #87

Sadly, selling pre-made components and templates was never a sound business model, especially in the wake of AI. One thing I learned being on HN for so long and launching my own products is that a product is not a business . Don't conflate the two, at your peril. Lots of people make great products but actually turning that into a business is fundamentally a different skill. It seems like Tailwind grew too fast, havin…

It is a business. Envato was a billion dollar business in 2017. I agree that AI makes these kinds of businesses vulnerable, but it's overstepping to say that these things aren't businesses.

I never said Tailwind the company wasn't a business, when I said "a product is not a business" I meant that as advice to creators in general, not in specific to Tailwind; of course it is, it made millions in revenue. What I meant was that even though businesses may exist, having a long-term, durable business model is not always viable.

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#297

Post by ozozozd »

simlevesque wrote: post #156
simonw wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the ethically bad thing Tailwind did here? Not merging that pull request?

I'd feel lied to if someone offers me a free tool and later the person that controls it chooses to make it worse just to make more money. I got bit by that many times and do my best to avoid it but when it happens it's a stab in the back.

Did they send you an email or call you? I doubt it.

You found their homepage. You found that they didn’t ask for money, and allowed you to use their product for free. You decided to use it.

And now, they’re liars. How dare they try to make money?

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#298

Post by Aurornis »

freedomben wrote: post #6

Very sad to hear, I bought Tailwind UI years ago and although it was a lot more expensive than I wanted, I've appreciated the care and precision and highly recommend buying it (It's now called Tailwind Plus) even still (maybe even especially now). Mad props to Adam for his honesty and transparency. Adam if you're reading, just know that the voices criticizing you are not the only voices out there. Thanks for all you'…

Tailwind did a great job of building a fanbase. Even without LLMs I always thought they were on a collision course with market saturation, though. They generously gave lifetime access for a one-time payment, which was bound to run into problems as free alternatives became better and their core fanbase didn't have any reason to spend more money.

Their business model also missed the boat on the rise of Figma and similar tools. I can think back to a couple different projects where the web developers wanted to use Tailwind [Plus] components but the company had a process that started in Figma. It's hard to sell the designers on using someone else's component library when they have to redraw it in Figma anyway.

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#299

Post by satvikpendem »

KallDrexx wrote: post #122
satvikpendem wrote: post #87

Sadly, selling pre-made components and templates was never a sound business model, especially in the wake of AI. One thing I learned being on HN for so long and launching my own products is that a product is not a business . Don't conflate the two, at your peril. Lots of people make great products but actually turning that into a business is fundamentally a different skill. It seems like Tailwind grew too fast, havin…

Telerik, DevExpress, and a lot of other companies have made profitable businesses that have lasted well over a decade on that business premise. Selling solid and easy to integrate pre-made components has been a pretty good business for a while.

I wonder how they're doing too then, as we don't have public stats about them (Telerik was acquired by a public company Progress Software but they do not break down revenue by Telerik specifically). Ultimately, this business of selling components is not sound in the age of AI.

Another thing to consider, it seems JS devs use more AI for work than .NET devs for example, which might be in more old-school companies and industries. I can't verify this but there seems to be a correlation between companies who use hip new CSS and JS frameworks, and their AI usage, thus accelerating Tailwind Corp's cannibalization by AI, as most vibe coders are building web apps from what I've seen and Tailwind and React are very well represented in the training set.

Post reply on HN