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atonse 3 hours ago

I don't agree with "nor should it be" - the market decided it was clearly needed. And this isn't unique to Tailwind. For decades, companies in many ecosystems (like .NET, JS, etc) have made lots of money selling component libraries that save developers and companies a lot of time. And I even bought UI.sh in April, and it really was great until the models just natively got much better.

I happily paid for Tailwind UI because it was worth it. I paid for ui.sh and got plenty of my $130 (or whatever) value. The market spoke in a good way initially, and now it's sending a different message.

They've just got to do the next thing, which is find an AI-resistant steward of the project now.

bdcravens 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"nor should it be" is connected to "being worth millions". It's not that it isn't worth money, but it's more of a lifestyle business than the sort of thing that will drive a tech company with employees, marketing, and conference budgets.

ryanbrunner 32 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I think if you said "couldn't be a venture backed startup", I'd 100% agree with you. Can't support employees or a marketing budget is a much lower bar, and I think that's perfectly achievable by something like Tailwind (or I guess was prior to AI)

coffeebeqn an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’m not sure what their valuation was but single digits millions sounds totally reasonable for a company you’re describing. Just to hire 10 engineers you’ll need to be in low millions

iohvvbhdyh an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Indeed. I saw their job ad just months before this with full remote 300K salary.

wongarsu 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Just for reference, in the .NET ecosystem there are multiple vendors selling UI component libraries for sums ranging from lower three digits to upper three digits per dev, per year. This was generally considered good value (might no longer be great value post-AI)

eitally 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As an engineering leader back in the day (2000-2015) I considered it terrific value to license Telerik and others. In fact, it looks like Progress has acquired a large catalog of the most common .NET dev tools over the past ten years.

everfrustrated 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Problem was tailwind had a very weak component library. I'd have been happy to pay for a more expansive set of components.

Pedro_Ribeiro 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hey do you have any opinion on the current utility of ui.sh? I wanted to buy it but I'm a bit wary of it just not being useful and they don't have a preview of a single skill.

joleyj 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think that “lots of money” needs to be put in perspective when thinking about software that’s used by developers. When you compare the size of the market for these kinds of tools compared to a truly massive market for something like an office suite, it looks pretty puny.

Developers are also very fickle and the one constant is change. Sometimes it seems like change for changes sake alone.

I’m not saying that any businesses easy just that it seems to me after seeing a lot of companies come and go, but this is one of the more difficult markets to capitalize on.

win311fwg 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I happily paid for Tailwind UI because it was worth it.

The business was worth something. But, as the earlier comment questions, was it worth millions? Or was that the free money, tech hype talking? Maybe in a more normal market it would have only been a simple mom and pop.

00ze 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"The market" for Tailwind only existed due to ignorance and obfuscation fueled by hype for web dev jobs.

Completely artificial market built on propaganda and low interest rate money printing. Same as the rest of SaaS. Nothing about the tech industry since the '08 crash has been organic investment. Was 100% collusion between government and private interests to manipulate public opinion.

> They've just got to do the next thing, which is find an AI-resistant steward of the project now.

Good luck with that:

https://www.openui.com/blog/oui-1

Aside; all the leaked emails, chats, and going back further in time, telegrams, letters, travel logs on display in court yet the myth the economy is an organic free market this whole time persists

Such belief is nought but a quirk of biology that allowed humans to latch onto the idea Benevolent but Punitive Sky Wizard watches out for them; total cope. In Wealth of Nations Adam Smith called it the "invisible hand" and later came to realize he was wrong. He reconsidered and concluded the avarice of man will not be stopped by philosophy of national unity.