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Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

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

#641

Post by paxys »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #231

Something’s wrong when a key piece of foundational web tech is staring down unsustainability. Tailwind is almost ubiquitous these days. It needs to continue to exist. Small businesses being eaten by AI is a net negative, because they’re in a unique position whereby they need to actually have to listen to customers vs just optimizing for a rando middle manger’s promotion in BigTech.

This "key piece of foundational web tech" was released 5 years ago and gained prominence maybe 2-3 years ago. Let's not exaggerate its impact. We were perfectly fine before Tailwind and will be fine after it.

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

#642

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

sureglymop wrote: post #532
jact wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

However, why is that even surprising? Tailwind is essentially a frontend css stylesheet. What business could there possibly be around that? I understand, they have UI kits, books, etc. but just fundamentally, it was never going to be easy to monetize around that long term, with or without AI.

The comment you are responding to said their revenue is down 80%. So they did monetize training and services, and I don't see how that would have been a problem long term if AI didn't come along and make all of that unnecessary.

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

#643

Post by mootothemax »

camdenreslink wrote: post #237
stevoski wrote: post #46

As a fellow business owner, I’ll always feel bad when business owners need to make these types of decisions. I bought Tailwind UI - I always thought it was a critically bad business decision from their end to keep giving me additional new stuff for free. It seemed to me that it should have been a subscription. However, knowing nothing about the inside of their business, I have no idea how that would have affected the…

He goes into detail the motivation/decision to do lifetime pricing vs subscription pricing here: https://hackersincorporated.com/episodes/lifetime-pricing-is... The idea is that subscription businesses have churn, and if you can capture the lifetime value of a customer with your one time price, there isn't any difference (other than people feeling grateful when you add new content for "free").

That’s an excellent point, thanks for linking.

My takeaway from this thread is: his theory’s great until you discover that your customers are wiling pay *so* much more.

On a more positive note, I’ve been blown away by the (largely, one conspicuous troll-like annoyance aside) positive thoughts in the comments. Maybe it’s not too late?

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

#644

Post by paxys »

While I'm sure AI is partially to blame, I feel like the real problem is that (1) they don't have a sensible business model and (2) they have saturated their market.

There are relatively few individuals and organizations out there with products that are worth spending vendor money on, especially for something like a CSS library. Companies that do have this need are ready to spend BIG.

Tailwind charges a one-time fee in the hundreds of dollars range and pledges lifetime support.

When they say revenue is down 80%, it's because everyone already bought their library in its first few years of existence. And looking at their site there is nothing else to spend money on. So how are they planning to sustain their revenue?

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

#645

Post by mootothemax »

freedomben wrote: post #93
stevoski wrote: post #46

As a fellow business owner, I’ll always feel bad when business owners need to make these types of decisions. I bought Tailwind UI - I always thought it was a critically bad business decision from their end to keep giving me additional new stuff for free. It seemed to me that it should have been a subscription. However, knowing nothing about the inside of their business, I have no idea how that would have affected the…

> I always thought it was a critically bad business decision from their end to keep giving me additional new stuff for free. It seemed to me that it should have been a subscription. Maybe. One data point isn't all that useful, but I never would have bought it if it weren't for the model he chose. I will never, ever do a subscription for something like that.

I guess this is what makes marketing so tricky; I myself would’ve bought a $10/mo subscription so much sooner given the chance, which by now - and happily, incidentally - would’ve brought in way more dosh than my one-off payment.

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

#646

Post by gaigalas »

I don't like tailwind. However, I don't wish that to anyone.

Despite any of my preferences, it was real work that deserved a chance. It cannot be denied that AI slurping their content contributed to less paying customers.

IMHO, this is content draught starting to appear. To an extreme, it should lead to no one having any real incentive (possible business, possible recognition, etc) to do new and original stuff.

I don't see a way of changing this. I think jobs will be fine, but content of all kinds (especially code) won't.

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

#647

Post by charlie0 »

Shoutout to Adam Wathan and team. I rarely shell out any money, but Tailwind was an exception. They actually made front end development fun for me and added tons of value with their UI kit etc. Even though I rarely use it, I bought the lifetime to support their mission. Hope they can continue supporting the framework. It was the best thing to happen to front end in a long time imo.

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

#648

Post by hdra »

paxys wrote: post #644

While I'm sure AI is partially to blame, I feel like the real problem is that (1) they don't have a sensible business model and (2) they have saturated their market. There are relatively few individuals and organizations out there with products that are worth spending vendor money on, especially for something like a CSS library. Companies that do have this need are ready to spend BIG. Tailwind charges a one-time fee…

i remember listening to Adam in one of the podcast he was in (I think it was either the Hackers Inc, or the Art of Product, but could've been something else where he was a guest) - and I remember that he mentioned that idea that there are always a new wave of new developers that they can sell the product to.

I still think he was correct. I myself bought tailwindUI as an aspirational purchase, and i doubt people would pay for it as a subscription.

But I think a lot has changed in the last few years. There arent probably as many new developers given the market, and among those there are probably even less that are willing to pay $100+ for a UI library, not when there are competitions like shadcn or radix or many others as free alternative, or when you could just ask an LLM to generate them for you.

Tailwind Labs definitely need to explore new revenue streams, but i dont think UI components is the way to go. Without knowing their internal data, this is just a guess, but I doubt traffic to docs or pipeline to premium products is much of a factor in the decline.

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

#649

Post by dbbk »

paxys wrote: post #644

While I'm sure AI is partially to blame, I feel like the real problem is that (1) they don't have a sensible business model and (2) they have saturated their market. There are relatively few individuals and organizations out there with products that are worth spending vendor money on, especially for something like a CSS library. Companies that do have this need are ready to spend BIG. Tailwind charges a one-time fee…

They were selling HTML templates. Not even anything else, literally just HTML with Tailwind classes. That wasn't a sustainable business even before AI.

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

#650

Post by b34r »

It's important to remember this is just the commercial arm. The OSS side has as many maintainers as Adam allows and the community is quite active with PRs and volunteer work. Tailwind the project will be ok. Someone will fork it if stales thanks to its popularity. That being said, many more companies should sponsor considering its ubiquitous adoption.
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