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Case study · Tailwind Labs

How Tailwind Labs turned a free CSS framework into more than $4 million in revenue in under two years

TL;DR

Tailwind Labs grew out of the stylesheets Adam Wathan reused across abandoned side projects. He open-sourced Tailwind CSS in October 2017, went full-time on it, and with designer Steve Schoger launched Tailwind UI, a paid library of professionally designed components, in February 2020. By August 2020 Wathan said the business had done over $4 million in revenue in under two years. The lesson: build in public, give away a useful tool, and sell the finished work built on top of it.

How it started

Wathan writes that in 2015 he and Steve Schoger had a side project called Digest. He built a custom Less styling system for it with many component classes and a small set of utility classes. The project was abandoned, but he kept copying the stylesheets into new projects and noticed the utilities were the only portable part.

He and Schoger later worked on KiteTail, a developer-focused checkout platform, and Wathan live-streamed building it on YouTube using those utility styles. Viewers kept asking about the CSS. He says that Tailwind Labs would not exist if he had not been live-streaming that side project.

Tailwind CSS was open-sourced in 2017. Wathan, with help from Jonathan Reinink, spent several months making it good enough, then moved the framework to PostCSS. The team was finishing the first release and its documentation on Halloween night 2017, and v0.1.0 was announced on November 1, 2017.

How they got the first customers

Tailwind CSS itself was free, so its first users were developers who found it through Wathan’s streams and posts. Before Tailwind UI, Wathan and Schoger had released a book, Refactoring UI, in December 2018. Wathan says the book’s success gave him a big bankroll that let him go full-time on Tailwind.

Tailwind UI launched in early access on February 26, 2020. In March 2019 Wathan had described the idea as hundreds of fully responsive, professionally designed components that users could copy and adjust. A Hacker News thread links Wathan’s post that Tailwind UI made over $500,000 in sales in its first three days. By early August 2020 he said it was about to cross $2 million in revenue.

What drove growth

After open-sourcing the framework, Wathan announced he would go full-time on Tailwind CSS after about a year of releases and a growing community. Tailwind CSS v1.0 came out on May 13, 2019. Wathan and Schoger then spent the rest of 2019 trying to work out what Tailwind the business would be, prototyping and discarding many ideas before choosing Tailwind UI.

In his August 2020 post, Wathan wrote that Tailwind had cracked 10 million total installs, Tailwind UI was about to cross $2 million about five months after release, and Tailwind Labs had done over $4 million in revenue in under two years. The revenue let him start building a team.

Lessons you can copy

  1. 1Work in publicWathan says the business exists because people watched his side project and asked about the CSS. Streaming and posting your work can reveal what others value.
  2. 2Productize the thing people keep asking aboutViewers kept asking about the CSS, so he released it. Then he built paid components on top of it.
  3. 3Give the tool away and sell the finished workTailwind CSS is free, while Tailwind UI sells ready-made designed components. The free product builds trust and demand for the paid one.
  4. 4Use earlier revenue to fund the next betThe Refactoring UI book funded the time to build Tailwind. A smaller digital product can bankroll a bigger one.
  5. 5Spend a year finding the businessWathan and Schoger tried many ideas for a revenue model before settling on Tailwind UI. A popular free tool still needs a clear paid offer.

Frequently asked questions

Is Tailwind Labs bootstrapped?

Wathan wrote that the business was funded by earlier product revenue, especially the Refactoring UI book, which he called a big bankroll. The sources reviewed do not mention outside investors.

What is Tailwind UI?

A paid library of professionally designed, responsive components built with Tailwind CSS. Wathan described it as components you copy and customize.

How can a small founder copy this model?

Share useful work openly, notice what people ask about, and offer a paid product that saves them time, such as templates, components, or themes. Revenue figures here are self-reported by Wathan as of 2020.

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