Figuring out what to do next (Adam Wathan)

Welcome to The Panel: where smart founders discuss the realities of building better products and a better life. I'm Justin Jackson, the cofounder of Transistor.fm .

And I'm Brian Castle. I'm the founder of Clarity Flow, and I'm currently working on instrumental components for Rails.

And in a moment, you're going to hear from our guest.

Adam Wathan. I am the creator of Tailwind CSS.

And Brian, this was kind of the perfect episode in my mind.

I agree.

This is three founders sitting around, shooting the shit, talking about, like, the real things we're going through at the moment.

We were shooting the shit. It was great to catch up with Adam, but it was more than that. I think we got we got deep. There was a lot of real talk Mhmm. Here.

Yeah. I love that. Like, every every stage has its, like, benefits and its drawbacks. And, you know, like, this talk reminded me of, like, being in that early stage and how you kind of, like, sometimes long for those times where you're building stuff. But when you're building stuff, you're just so desperate to get to product market fit or whatever. Yeah. I think regardless of what stage you're in building a business, you'll find something here. There's gonna be something a lot of perspective.

For sure.

You'll get a lot of perspective from this. For sure.

I think we're already starting to see some, like, running themes or recurring things that are coming up. I mean, on this one, we talked a ton about YouTube and the value of of content in in video form. Mhmm. I think another running theme, at least in my mind, is this idea of, like, how personal business is and how there is no right or wrong way to do it. And, actually, the right way to do it is to trust your own instinct and your own strengths and weaknesses.

Totally. Let's let's get right into it. Let's roll the tape. I wanna hear about some of those thoughts you shared with me in Telegram.

Yeah. I mean, I guess I I guess I don't know where to start, but I I mean, if anyone's listened to me on podcast for the last couple years, I I I almost feel bad because I feel like it's mostly just like me being, like, sad and down about things and not being able to figure out my life. But I still kinda still kinda wrestling with that. I think like I we did this video course, this free email course that I put out a couple weeks ago. I don't know if you guys saw it, but I had this idea after giving someone else some advice on like, you know, basically building out a funnel to sell their thing to do this free email course.

Sound sounds good so far.

Just to pause on that real quick. It's it's I'm guess and that makes a lot of sense because I'm guessing that today in 2025, probably the vast majority of your customer base for the paid stuff is just coming from the open source Tailwind project. That's

Yeah, like tailwindcss.com is our distribution channel, right?

Yeah. So that being as huge as it is, like that's just sending a of traffic. But now you're missing what you had in the earliest days. Like the earliest days people were following you on Twitter and YouTube and and really trusting you, Adam. Where whereas like now it's just like this tailwind thing.

Totally. And I I kinda it was kinda funny because when I did this video course, a lot of people in the YouTube comments and stuff were like, woah. This is the guy who made Tailwind? You know, it's like, wow. That's hilarious to me because, like, I I sore I totally missed that tipping point where people know the tool but don't know me.

Mhmm.

And then on the fifth email, the last one, it's kind of like a harder pitch. Like, hope you enjoyed this. You know? If you're you got a lot of value out of it, this is the best way to support Tailwind. Helps us, you know, really try and sell it in every way that I could. So we got, like, I don't know how many sign ups we have right now. It's, over 15,000 people

Okay.

On this list in like three weeks or something. We get like 500 people a day sign up.

And where does that come from? Just the website?

Just the website. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So And maybe Twitter and So you guys I not even really Twitter because I didn't really promote it that hard there because it was it was kind of like an experiment in my head. I kinda wanna see like what is the distribution channel, the Evergreen sort of like self serve distribution channel do. Insane amount of people signing up. Right? Good stuff. But I'm I wanna if you guys have to guess, like, what do you think the conversion rate is on this email course?

The thing that I that comes to mind in terms of thinking about this traffic is that I'm guessing so I wonder how much of that 10,000,000 are like me. Like, I come to the site all the time to check docs. You know, like I'm a daily user of Taylor.

Thousand people signed up for the email course. I would say 13,000 of them were not existing customers. So 13,000 people getting emails from me who do not own Tailwind July.

Okay.

But they I mean, they opted into a course. It's not like so they're doing something else than like, I just come to check a quick thing in the docs and they came to learn.

Well, they signed up for the course. There's some small percentage of the regular daily traffic that converts to the free email course, you know, and then some of them bought. But I'm curious

I mean, I my guess off the problem is this funnel is a little bit different than how I I typically evaluate funnels because with SaaS, you would say, well, a visitor to trial and then try trial to paid, and those are kind of two separate things. So I would say, you know, if

you were

converting 5% to paid, that would be high. Mhmm. My guess is it would be maybe even lower than that. So I'm I'm guessing under 5%.

Yeah. So 25 people have purchased out of 15,000.

Okay. And you're not happy about this?

Yeah. That's one way to put it. It's not like I'm angry about it. I'm more like discouraged, you know, because I think I was really pumped like, man, I think this is like sort of low hanging fruit obvious thing for us to do that's gonna have like a big impact. Like, maybe this will bag us like seven to 10 sales a day that we weren't getting before because which see totally seemed like realistic to me, and it's been like less maybe one, you know, instead.

Yeah.

And you know what happened? Literally, the conversion rate perfectly balanced with the price increase such that if you looked at the chart, it's literally impossible to know when we changed the price up and when we changed it back down. Impossible. Completely impossible.

How long was that test?

Average daily sales, exactly the same. We ran that for two weeks before just reverting it because it felt like more customers is better than fewer customers if we're gonna make the exact same amount of money.

I know you have a ton of volume, but that that still feels a little bit short.

When you reverted it, it just went it it continued on the mean? Like, continued the same

Just went exactly the same. Just like the universe is just like, nothing you do is allowed to affect anything.

On the video course thing, just for a second, my read on that is that this market is developers. And I'm sort of convinced that, especially for more technical, like, designers, developers, product people, the video or the email course thing in general that leads to a sale at the end, that's not the go to pathway to buying a product for this type of product.

Mhmm.

But I still think that the act of releasing this course and releasing content in general is a good move. I think it goes back to that let's get Adam out in front

I agree with that.

Thing. Like, if that course were were just released on YouTube or just or there's some regular cadence of of of these course style videos coming out on a regular basis, like, it's the kind of thing that you won't really be able to track or or attribute. No. It's just good because it it I and it might not you might not even see it in the revenue numbers. But I I tend to think more about like what creates a higher quality customer. Like a customer who really gets it, gets our philosophy,

you know. Yeah. So and then even before that price increase, like, last thing we did before that was this, like, catalyst UI kit that we worked on for, like, probably nine months. And we thought, you know, the application UI package that we sell, which is, like, little examples of how to build inputs and buttons and stuff, that's the thing that people, like, seem to want the most. Because if you look at our sales, when people don't buy the full package, that's the smaller package they buy always.

Like your instincts and stuff?

Yeah. Yeah. A %.

The my first thought about this is I love this. I I this is so good to talk about because immediately, I'm thinking about this idea that other people have brought up, which is, you know, the Basecamp guy is saying Basecamp is our best idea. And Ian Landsman saying, Helpspot is my best idea. And there is this weird phenomenon, which is often, for whatever reason, the first idea that really hits although in your case, Adam might argue, you had you had some ideas before that really hit. So but at your current position on the staircase or the ladder or whatever, it does seem that entrepreneurs eventually hit some sort of maximum.

Uh-huh.

And is that just is that just our destiny? It's an interesting thought. Like, maybe it's just our destiny. Like, although, HAY, I don't know what revenues of HAY, how they compared to

To Basecamp.

To Basecamp. And I honestly still don't understand how Basecamp the reason this probably makes sense is how does Basecamp still make money? I it's like, when you ask people if they know, like brand recognition, it doesn't have the brand recognition, like man on the street, if you talk man on the street, like name a project management tool. My guess is you're not gonna hear Base Camp very often.

Yeah. But my but my guess is their their whole business, past and current, is is built on loyalty that that grows over time. And, like because their their their churn is probably pretty low for long time Base Camp lovers.

Yeah. My guess is it's a lot of word-of-mouth, but it just it just shows that I think there is a lot of value in that that original rock that you heave into the lake and makes all the ripples. Like, the size of that initial impact does kinda determine your life sometimes, it seems like.

But I I actually think that that's a good analogy to tail end. And my my high level question for you, Adam, is like, what's actually motivating all of this of this like effort to try like, you have a ton of traffic, you have a ton of users, and is it like are you seeing like the same baseline sales every month? Is the traffic decreasing? No. Traffic is increasing. So the convert the conversions are decreasing?

Conversions are decreasing. I can only speculate, like, there's, like, a lot more free alternatives to the stuff we sell now. AI, I know, has taken, a big chunk out of, like people just ask tools to generate stuff for them instead of, like, coming in buying stuff and copying and pasting stuff. I think that's part of it. I think another part of it is just, like, it's a lifetime one time purchase thing, which I still would defend to my grave as being, like, the right decision for what we did.

A lifetime thing. I I do question that because if you think about all these people who love Tailwind and they've only paid you once.

I think we so I do think we should find ways to get give those people a chance to buy something else from us. I still don't believe that, like, making Tailwind UI a subscription would have been good. I think we could have charged a hundred bucks a year for it and everyone had churned before the third year because it's not it's just like you you could subscribe for a month and download everything and and cancel, you know.

So But there could be other benefits that come with that. I mean, I'm I'm literally building a components product in the Rails ecosystem right now and I'm I'm planning on doing like an annual license with it. I expect to see a ton of churn with that, but I'm also thinking like, especially with you branding it like Tailwind Plus, there could be more to it than just

Yeah. And and that's kind of the that's kind of the the play now. Yeah. But it's still one time purchase at the moment. I still don't really wanna pivot it to being subscription honestly because I I just think the conversion rate would drop by so much that it'll counteract any of the recurring benefits? Like, to be, like, candid

think of, like, annual recurring licenses as essentially, like, one time purchases that they just have to, like, choose to purchase again each year. You know? Even if it's automatic, it's still sort of a decision. Like, do I still want this?

Yeah. Yeah. It's true. Yeah. I think, like, we've talked about maybe doing subscriptions for Teams because we actually have companies email us telling us they wanna cancel. And we're like, hey. Good news. Like, it's not a subscription. So that might be something to, like, experiment with. But I guess, like I mean, even looking at, like, the motivation for even doing any of this stuff.

Yeah. I mean, emotional side is that's the that's the wild thing that I think a lot of people don't I mean, I remember when I was just striving to get something that worked. You know, the first thing I ever did that really worked was marketing for developers, this course. And then it was like, okay, this feels great. But now I need to make this sustainable.

Yeah. Yeah. But

the the hunger to like find something that works, you just think once I get there, it's golden. Like, I'm never gonna have to struggle or worry again. And the truth is, is that eventually, you're like, you there's an emotional side to it where you're especially if you have ambition, or you're just used to or addicted to or like the feeling of having impact. When things are not up and to the right, that is difficult.

Yeah. I'm in a different place than both of you. And this tends to be a trend on this podcast. But like, the thing that comes to mind today and I just all of this really resonates with me big time because this year in 2025, I feel like I'm finally turning a corner. I I I've gone through like three or four really, really tough years.

Yeah. For sure.

Yeah. Like And I I really And this is why I'm I'm I'm starting to, like, really under Truly understand the value of, like, a scratch my own itch kind of product. Yeah. You know? I've done other products that I that I like, that I use. But like the one that I'm building now, this this Rails components thing, like, I don't even care if other people buy it. Like, I'm I'm the only customer that needs to be happy with this product.

Yeah. Sure.

Like, tailwind from what I remember, from what I understand is like, you sort of just hacked this little thing for your own use. Right? Totally. To make writing CSS easier. Yeah.

Yeah.

Or not just another accounting software. This is a totally new it's taking CSS and flipping it on its head. It's a totally different way of looking at it. Like, I think that's where these, like, scratch your own itch. It's like weird. It's different. This one person loves it. And then you're gonna find, like, 10 people who are, like, obsessed with it. And that's how it actually spreads, you know? Yeah.

know? %, dude. Yeah. I struggle with that hugely. I think a lot of that happened for me, like, when we start to grow the team.

Like, how involved were you in, like, the build out and release of of Tailwind four? Like, were you in the weeds in the in the design and development?

In the early of it, part of it, I was. But then, not so much. Then it became a lot of just coordinating and just making sure that we were working on the right things, that the right people were working on the right things, and just a lot of surface level involvement in, like, six different things at the same time versus, like, just heads down, listen to music, slinging code. It just, like, it's more efficient for me to just, like, almost use, like, people as my programming language, which is, you know, not fun for me, but, like, it's how we get the best results of the company. You know?

right now.

Have no idea what it would even be. Like, I I'm starting to get some ideas, like, just this week, which I think would be, like, something that we can talk about. But the thing that's hard with Tailwind as a product when when you're getting kicked in the balls, like, feel like I had been with these ideas, not, like, panning out, it's it's hard not to sit back and think, like, every website I look at on the entire Internet is built with Tailwind. Yeah. ChatGPT is built with Tailwind.

What? Give

me the keys. You know? Like because you know what I'm saying?

Yeah. That's I mean, that might be something to try.

I mean, I'm not saying that that would actually work, but I just kinda I just kinda feel like we are not getting the most out of what it is. And I also feel like, candidly, it's probably not even possible. There's only certain types of open source projects that even have the potential to be real significant businesses, I think. And we're lucky that we can even make anything. And at the end of the day, it's a great business. It's an it's an insane business,

really.

But again, it really just boils down to, like, the idea is just, like, not working and how that just kinda stings. And then combine that with, okay. So what's the what's the logical next step for that? Because, like, the thing that we we've talked about a lot internally that I've wrestled with for a long time is do we try to get more out of what we're doing? Or do we say, okay.

Yeah.

Maybe now we do the SaaS thing, you know, which I've always thought I wanted to do. But I honestly am struggling to even get excited about I don't think I think I would hate running a SaaS company, to be honest with you. Yeah. Even though I love the idea of building the software and crafting the interactions and making it like a great tool, when I really think hard about it, it's like, well, I'm gonna need to hire support people. I'm gonna need to deal with those support people.

Mhmm.

And it's like, I don't have those problems, like, right now. Like, why the fuck do I want those problems when, like, I already make more money than I need? Mhmm. But but it's also leaves you in this unsatisfying position where it's like, there's all these reasons not to do that because I don't think it would make my life I think my life would probably be worse, but I might enjoy some small part of the process more than, like, the stuff that I'm doing right now, if that makes sense. So you just end up in this place where even if you think there's something that could be sort of rewarding, it's it's it's so easy to convince yourself not to do it because you're not as hungry.

I don't know if it, like, checks the box for, like, the thing that will fire you up every day. But I I do think that at this point, given everything and given your position with all this traffic and this entity of Tailwind, like a YouTube channel or content brand makes a lot of sense to me. Educational content that a lot of it free, maybe some of it premium behind a subscription paywall. But like, you probably already have a YouTube channel that's like has an awesome baseline.

I'm I got this in the mail on Monday. You

know? My Oh, there you go.

My hundred k.

Wow.

You know? But like that

that's the thing that that comes to mind because it's it's still even as as popular as Tailwind is, I still get people, like, kinda skeptical on, like, the Tailwind concept. You know?

So it's funny that you say this because that's actually, like, exactly the thing that I've started getting really jazzed about at the end of last week and the beginning of this week. I kinda, like, had this day where we wanted to do this video course. Steve came over to my house for the whole day to, like, set up all the new gear that I bought and, like, get the camera angles and the lighting working and stuff. And just like at the end of that day, I was just like, man, this was like the most fun that I have had at work in years. And I think a lot of it is just like being physically in person

Mhmm.

Moving stuff. And then we did the I did the video course. I actually had, like, quite a bit of fun, like, recording the videos and stuff too. And the feedback on the videos has been really good, which has been, like, good. Yeah.

I mean, the fact that you're getting comments from people saying, woah, this is the guy that created Tailwind is there is some evidence there that you have a lot of white space to explore. To increase your visibility might be a really good thing to be known as, well, that is the creator of Tailwind. And he's regularly putting out content, and I'm following him. I'm getting jazzed about using Tailwind. I'm maybe just getting jazzed about web development because he pumps me up.

Yeah.

Or a podcast you recorded ten years ago, or I've known you ever since you started your newsletter.

Makes your thing like the default choice when when they're ready.

And yeah. And it I would it's hard to quantify it in a percentage, but I I wouldn't be surprised if it's ten, fifteen, 20 percent of our new sign ups to this day. And building up that profile and maintaining that profile, but continuing to build it. And to me, there's just tons of greenfield there because, know, lately, I've been on LinkedIn and I'm like, man, none of these LinkedIn people know who I am. And it's kind of fun to figure this out and like how I can create a profile here and be talking and exploring interesting things through writing and video and podcasts that then in turn, like, might generate new business for us tomorrow or in six months or in six years.

Mhmm.

So I think there's a lot of opportunity there that and I think in an AI world, in a generic marketing, whatever world, the enduring pieces of a brand is like Jason Fried, DHH, Taylor Otwell, Adam Wathen.

They they can shift from blogs to newsletters to video to podcasts. It's still just the the person that you follow.

Yeah. And it doesn't work for everybody. It's not for every company. It's not but for those that can do it, and those that like it, it's a really potent way of creating awareness and eventually, I think, sales for your company.

Do think that this year, and this is already a theme on this podcast on multiple episodes now, is just YouTube and video as, like, it it to me, it's the most obvious and and far and away best thing that that we can, like, invest ourselves in if in terms of like right. This year, I'm doing like at least one weekly new video on my YouTube channel. Just trying to put a real effort in into that. That's my one main marketing channel for everything that I'm doing. But I'm not even treating it like marketing.

Yeah. That's awesome.

Like, none of these people follow this podcast or follow me on Blue Sky or Twitter or have ever heard of me. They're it's the YouTube algorithm. Yeah.

You know? YouTube is great for, like, discovering things. Like, it's it's it's crazy how many videos it suggests to me that have, like, 65 views. You know? Yep. Yeah. Just to, like, find out. You know? It's like it's I don't know how what the secret sauce is there, but it really does a good job at, like, surfacing absolute nobodies to people and, like, making them into somebody's. You know? It's

And when we're talking about a high leverage activity you could do like, I'm looking at the Tailwind Labs YouTube channel. You before the video you published three weeks ago, which has 70,000 views.

Mhmm.

Your last video was a year ago, which was the Tailwind Connect twenty twenty three keynote. Yeah. That has 352,000 views. And then the last video before that is two years ago. What's new in Tailwind three point one? Hundred and twenty two thousand views. Like, I think one high leverage experiment you could do is just release more videos.

Totally. Yeah. And that's like what I kinda wanna go all in on honestly. Like, I've got so many ideas for content. Like, I think it would be awesome to have like a budget for every month we fly someone in.

hearing the original song. Is hearing, like, some metal band for the person.

I kinda just wanna do, like, Drumeo for front end development. You know? That idea. And That sounds have have that be, like, the the top of the funnel for like pure educational stuff that we could sell. Because we are gonna do like a paid tailwind course, think, this summer. Because that seems like another thing that we could finally sell to like the existing 20,000 people who bought tailwind UI who have no other way to buy anything else from us.

The other mindset thing that I I I wanna share with you, Adam, I think that it just comes back to like this like enjoyment factor of of what you do every day. And and I think that this again, I I do think that it makes a lot of sense to go in this like YouTube direction, but I actually don't think you should think so much about this as like a business model or a business plan. Yeah. I think it should just be like create good shit.

Mhmm.

And and and and keep changing it up. Like keep like that's that's it. That's all it needs to be. Eventually, it'll turn into something. You don't even know what it what it's gonna be a year from now. You know?

For sure. That I mean, that's what I miss honestly is like there was like a the early days of all this stuff was just like me scratching my own itch and just being so excited about it that I couldn't not talk about it on the Internet,

you know.

And that was just kind of like the and I've lost that for sure ever since I've, like, been delegating so much work instead of doing it myself. But I also, like, don't know, like, making video content, you need I I need to have something that drives that too. Like, that's like another sort of, like, impostery sort of feeling that I do with a lot. It's like, I just don't feel like we build real stuff. You know, like, whole business is basically making fake websites. You know?

You know, I so I have this video editor that I've been working with for for all of 2025 now. And it's been great for me to, like, be able to just record and then pass it to him and he handles the publishing and the editing. Yeah. That's been huge. But one thing was, like, early on, I wanted to build up a backlog of videos.

Yeah. Like, I've already thrown that out and rebuilt it a different way now or whatever.

Yeah. Exactly. Like, I I actually did some some Tailwind videos and like they were about Tailwind three, like a month before Tailwind four comes out. Then like, you know, and like like I trashed a couple of them. And so like, now I'm like, alright, let's just forget the backlog. Whatever I record this week, we're publishing next week. Yeah. You know? Mhmm. And just and and I I think I'm really just trying to focus on like what is interesting to me that I can record today Yeah.

I I do like that idea because I mean, that's generally how like, people always ask me, what's my marketing plan? What's my marketing schedule? What's my publishing schedule? I have none of that. I just generally go with what is driving my curiosity or what's inspiring to me in that moment, which means I publish a lot of stuff that people do not care about.

Yeah. There was something you said, Adam, maybe a year over a year ago, maybe it was a tweet or something that really stuck with me. It was like, you don't really know what's going to hit unless you are publishing all the time. Whether it's content or putting products out or putting code out, like like, I'm always surprised at, like, the things that resonate with people. Right?

I think this is a thread I wanted to pull from earlier, which is you you said you keep getting kicked in the balls, but that was, like, three things you tried.

Four. But yeah.

Four things you tried.

And it was the last four. If there was one in between, I think I would feel better. But it went from like every idea that I had, like being validated, you know, I'm feeling I I'm smart. I know what I'm doing to then hitting this tipping point where every idea is bad.

You know? I mean, I can understand that, but I also think and maybe this is the disadvantage of of having, you know, you hit two or three home runs kind of back to back. And that feeling of being so so high. Yeah. It's it's hard to replicate that. Where, in my career, I've been much more of a line drive guy, line drive, bunt, or strikeout. And that's just like, I've just had this steady

I always refer to it like that. Like, couple base hits, never a home run.

Base hits, whatever. And there's advantages and disadvantages to both. But I think in your case, unlike sports where I I mean, they're similar in the sense that you can really get in your head, You know, if you've struck out the last three three or four times and you go up to bat, you're like, fuck. Like, you're just in your head.

Yeah.

But the the way business is different is that if you can keep just doing stuff, do stuff, talk about it, publish it, do stuff, talk about it, publish it. It does, you know, it doesn't if you're relentless in trying stuff out, and and maybe you just need to move the bar, which is I tried four things, but we should probably actually be trying 10 things in a year. And if we get a line drive out of that, that's great. The other thing that's different in business, which is the other thread I wanted to pull, is that there's still like some of those things that you tried that you felt failed. You you it's still worth it to come back to those and go, like, if I sent added one email to the sequence three days after that says, why didn't you buy?

I guess in my head, it's like, man, it's done so poorly that it's like, what can I even if I optimize it, is it gonna 10 x? You know? But you never know.

I mean, that was the other thread I wanted to pull that we haven't really talked about, which is this idea that there is just a there is a local maximum for a lot of things. Totally, you may you may have just hit, like Jason Cohen talks about this a lot. Like you may have just hit, there's nothing you could do. And this is why I sometimes get frustrated with like, raise your prices. And so you've raised your prices, and it's just stayed the same.

And I think what I believe now is that, like, it doesn't it takes almost zero optimization to hit that local maximum. Like, you know how many, like, terrible websites there are?

Yeah. Yeah.

That where the product still sells, like or ecommerce websites that take eleven seconds to load and doesn't stop you from buying that pair of shoes or whatever. You know what I mean?

Like I think about this all the time because I feel like when transist when we launched Transistor, it was like at this crucial pivotal time, like serial was big. Every editorial in the New York Times was about podcasting. There hadn't been a new podcast hosting platform in years. And it, like, aligned with my audience and everything I'd been building. And in retrospect, I didn't realize how much white space there I I don't is that the right word?

But Yeah. Now the benefit of hindsight is like now you actually see what kind of moment you really did launch it.

Oh, yeah. Because now it's like, damn, like if we had when when it was the industry was here, but the potential was here, we could have spent all this money to just like gobble up as much of that opportunity as possible before we hit the constraints of the market. And now we're just all in this slow. It's like the garbage disposal in Star Wars. It's like slowly moving out now, you know, but we could have really captured that moment.

Yeah. I think like coming back to this idea of like, alright, four attempts at something and you feel like they're all failures. But I think at the end of the day, you're still operating within the business that is Tailwind Labs. Like, and that has its own set of realities. So you can't just try anything.

Yeah. Think that makes sense. Yeah. I think I think I'm starting to feel like the Tailwind plus stuff is like it's not like it's hard to discover. You know what I mean?

Mhmm.

And so now Refactoring UI, which is this book, PDF file Me and Steve released in 02/2018, you know, because of this ad on the side of the Tailwind docs. And that works because people on Tailwind docs haven't seen that site. But the course is just pitching people who are already in the place where they would have already discovered it. You know? Yeah.

Well, that's not no. No. That's not true though. Because you you you know intuitively that you gotta try some stuff, And it's in in the process of being in motion that all the good stuff in your life has ever happened. Like, you're really tailwind is a result of you failing at SaaS.

Because you tried

Yeah, dude. Because you tried to build a SaaS, and it that that was a failure. You were like, you failed at that attempt. But you ended up creating one of the most valuable open source brands that has ever existed. Mhmm.

I I hear what you're saying, Adam, though, about, like, how come you you didn't, like, you know, predict that

this was Yeah.

Yeah. How come I didn't see the the data before the data happened? Right?

I mean Yeah. Yeah.

But you can't think that way. I mean, I I've tried probably three or four different pricing experiments just in the last twelve months on Clarity Flow. Switching from free to free trial to no trial to increasing the price to lowering the price again. And each time I learned why it didn't work. And in my case, I have much lower volume, so it takes multiple months of just waiting and seeing before I

can

draw a real conclusion. Like, the price increase, maybe six, eight months ago, I increased the price and I got rid of the trial. So people pay on day one. No free trial.

Yep. Yep.

And that worked. That seemed to work for like three or four months. Like, revenue went up and it was great. Then I started to realize in month five and six, like, damn, the churn rate from this cohort is too high.

It's higher. Mhmm.

And then it started to normalize. It's like, well, I should have expected that.

I Yeah. But at the same But you

know what? The real The mindset is like, I had to test it, so now I know. Like, I had a hypothesis. I now I have real data behind it, and now I know.

Yeah. I think the other thing is like, I think historically, I've I've underestimated the impact of things that I thought were good ideas. Know, like when we're factoring UI, when me and Steve were gonna launch that, I thought it was gonna do pretty well. But, like, when we turned on the website at two in the morning the night before and didn't tell anybody and just, like, woke up the next day without even launching it to $40,000 in sales from people who had just been refreshing the website, I was like, what the hell? Yeah.

Mhmm.

I do think like you have reached some like, as as huge as your footprint is today, the word saturation just keeps rattling around my mind in in the in the tailwind world. And I just see it anecdotally, like day to day, like I because I I get a lot of feedback from developers who are looking at my instrumental prop instrumental components thing. They're filling out a survey, and my thing uses Tailwind. So, like, there's a there's still a portion of people who like, Tailwind is totally known now. Everybody knows what Tailwind is.

Yeah.

And they've seen it. And I I think probably the majority of developers these days are choosing to use it, or they're comfortable using it. And there's still like a a portion that is just like, nah, not for me, or I never got into it. But I but they know what it is.

And I'm unlikely to win those people over. Like now, like our revenue is sort of like throttled by like the fucking population growth of the planet. You know mean? Yes.

It's

Yeah. But I I do think that in in front end land, especially in CSS land, there is not there's just not enough content or educational material out there, in my opinion. Like, yes, you can learn the fundamentals of CSS. Anyone can learn that. And there's plenty of places to do that.

I'm excited about it. I think there's a lot of opportunity there. I think, like, the bigger thing that I sort of struggle with there that I'm trying to come to terms with is just feeling like it's almost like a step backwards in terms of, like, climbing that ladder, you know, of the types of business, you know, I should be running. It's hard not to feel like, okay. Well, like, I failed to try to make, like, a real product, so I'm just gonna go back to being a course boy, you know, as Peter levels would say.

I kinda think that it's cycling back. And we talked about this, I think, on the first episode, like, is is the SaaS opportunity, has it passed? I I don't think it's passed. Of course, you could still build a great SaaS business today. Mhmm. But I do think it's a lot harder. And I think that the growth of YouTube again, of course, YouTube is not new, but I feel like it's having this resurgence.

I agree. Yeah. I feel like it's it's kind of it's hard to explain it because, yeah, it is like ancient. You know what I mean? But it's sort of become something different in the last few years, it feels like.

Like, I'm still building SaaS products. That's like what I that's like my craft every day. Yeah. But I'm less interested in running a SaaS company this year as I was in previous years. I'm more interested in investing in YouTube and showing my craft on you. Like the the work that I'm doing on SaaS is mostly for material for for YouTube at the moment. Yeah. Sure. That's sort of like the the the mindset that I have. I am building, like, real products for for real markets.

Yeah. I'm trying to do the same thing. I'm trying to sorta, like I wanna build real things because I feel like without the constraints of something being real, like, it the outcome is just different. You know? Like, if if you can just say, like, well, yeah, this works in Chrome, but I don't care if it works in Firefox Mhmm.

The one thing about doing YouTube and live streaming is for me, and I think for both of you, those activities have cultivated inspiration and these collisions that have created good things in my life. And, you know, like, Tailwind came out of you doing live streams and people going, I I don't give a shit about this SaaS you're building, but what's this CSS that you're doing? And creating the ground, the the fertile ground for those kind of opportunities to come to to happen is something I think about all the time. It's like, is it worth like, I've been podcasting forever. Is it worth doing another show?

Yeah. Totally.

Or meet somebody or whatever. And I think it does change as you get older. Like, I've said this a few times. You know, I hired this college kid to build a Laravel app over the summer. And working with somebody younger than me was so inspirational that I'd like to make that a regular habit.

Had a great post the other day about Apple. Like, their whole board is, like, over the age

of 60.

Yes. And, like, you can start to see it in some of their

products. Too old. You know? It's like, I'm at the point where I don't allow myself to sometimes have creative ideas because I just wanna sleep through the night.

Totally. You're

right. So so it's like it's like I'm, like, turning that part of my brain off. Like, no. No. No. I can't stay up all night. I gotta I gotta sleep.

That freaks me out a lot where it's like, I'll it'd be late in the day or late at night, and I'm just, like, trying to grind to keep to keep shipping more at the end of the day. And I think that I'm awake, and I think that I'm sitting here coding. Yeah. And then I I finally go to bed. I wake up the next morning, and like in the first five minutes of the morning, I have like an idea that that is so far and away better than what I was doing last night.

Mhmm.

And it's like, was I drunk yesterday?

Like, that's

that's kinda how I feel, like, when I wake up and try and see work that I did, like, late night. It's like, I must have been drunk or something.

Yeah. This is I think my point is that there's other path like, some of the old pathways still work for us, I think, like live streaming, making videos, publishing articles, publishing podcasts, all of that stuff has increased increased my surface area for luck and has paid incredible dividends, I think it's still worth doing that stuff. But I'm also acknowledging I'm getting older. And the new pathways that are I've I'm starting to discover that are exciting for me are working with younger people. Like, I think a lot of our teams have people that are way too old, and we need to be working with younger people.

and Steve are both renovating our houses right now and trying to find, like, software to do, like, three d mock ups and stuff. And we both were like, oh, man. I wish I was smart enough to build, like, a better version of this because

it looks really hard. But that's the kind of challenge that might be perfect for you. I I think about Caleb at Panic a lot. So talk about local maximum. Caleb makes Yeah. Mac desktop apps. FTP software is their number one seller. Like, they've reached their local maximum ages ago. Yeah. But they took that money.

Coda used to be the thing. And it just got

They took that money and they still make sales or whatever. They took that money. And now they're making games. They're making like, they've got a game

studio. They're

making little hardware things.

The the the what is it? The the play date? The play date?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's right.

I think there's some models with other people that have done gone before us here as well that we can follow that could be inspiring.

I am inspired by stuff like that. I was so psyched to see Panic just taking a complete left turn into, like, gaming hardware after after creating software. You know, another guy I for years, I've been following is is Josh Pigford. You know? I mean Yeah. Long time SaaS entrepreneur. But now, like, he's, you know, he he's got, a three d print toy store, you know. Yeah.

He's stuck to, like,

off the wall.

He's unmatched to just, like, never being bored. You know? Yeah.

Yeah. It's just like the the the creativity. I mean, thought I I think that I have a lot of projects that where I'm context switching. I don't I don't know how someone like that operates day to day.

But Yeah. And there is still opportunities in Tailwind land. Like, an adjacent market, I think you haven't even touched is marketers. Mhmm. And I'm even looking at your page, like, you've got you've got two little calls to action for plus. Like, there's this little thing up in this on the right. And then way down at the bottom, you have a button for section and a button for plus.

Well, if you're in the docs and you click templates in the sidebar or components in the sidebar, if you if you do command k and you type in nav bar, you know, you're gonna end up until a plus. There's lots of little little secret entries.

I think if you were inclined and now if you if it doesn't pump you up, then that's your answer. But it would be interesting. The a huge place where web dev intersects with another market is marketing. People are building marketing websites with you guys as components. And what's interesting is a marketer will look at a page like your homepage, and they'll go, I would probably add five times more buttons to buy, like calls to action.

Sure.

Every time I add more buttons to home pages, my I get more clicks and I get more people buying. And I would put some ugly buttons in there. Like, all these things that Steve's gonna hate, I would personally love that content.

Yeah.

Now, if you guys aren't into it, then you shouldn't pursue it. But there are these adjacent, I think, markets that are massive. And for sure, there's a big percentage of your user base that are marketers. I think that's another way to get inspiration is just to send an email with a survey to all your customers and say, who the hell are you? And why are you here?

I think that's true. But then I come back to what Brian was saying, which feels right for me, which is like, I need to build something that's like solving a problem that I have and just hope that enough other people give a shit about it. Yeah. Because

I I think even that is like maybe two steps down the line that you shouldn't even shouldn't even be thinking about. I, to me, I I just love the idea of, like, YouTube creating content, getting Adam out there more on a regular basis, and just follow they call them creators for a reason. Like, just create like, just create content, something that you, like, I'm sure you already have a list of 50 ideas that would that you think are interesting ideas to put out on the Internet. You know?

Yeah. Maybe. Like I don't know. I struggle with that, man. Like, again, I I building out building out this physical studio is, like, the first idea I've had in several years that I'm, like, actually excited about.

I just know I know every day I create something, I feel better at the end of the day. And so I just have to follow what's driving me. And if that's like to think about whatever whatever topic it is that people don't some people don't give a shit about. But if I care about it and I make something about it, I feel better.

I'll tell you something that I've struggled with this year with with videos, and I'm I'm starting to get over it, I think, is this impostor syndrome. Like, I'm it's it I'm not new to creating content and putting myself out there even on video. I'm I'm comfortable with that. What I've never really been comfortable with is me showing my code or talking about code on video. Like, huge level of impostor syndrome for me.

I think I think the opportunity for both of you as well is to to lean into like, you if you think about the videos that really have a hook, they're just constantly retelling their story in one line. So hi. I'm Brian. I'm a designer turned developer, and I'm working on this. I'm gonna show you something.

that. I also think that there could be I think there's a big opportunity for behind the scenes with Tailwind. There's so much of of under the hood on Tailwind that I had no idea how that magic works. And and, you know, I think about this a lot. I have no idea what it looks like on the inside of your team.

better to

do it this way. Yeah. And that kind of stuff can come straight out of your GitHub issues. Find a popular GitHub issue. I'm sure there's 10 videos that come out of that. You know?

Yep. Yeah. I think this is like what like Brad said, this is so personal. And I think leaning into your characteristics, like, I think another thing I've missed from your content, Adam, is you were always the guy that was if you were talking to someone, like, if you were doing an interview with anybody, you would, like, challenge people and dig into things in a way that I'd never seen. Like, there's this, like, lack of bullshit.

wanna see a series of videos of, like, Adam building a design in talent versus somebody building it with a non talent approach.

Dude, I've wanted to do that for so long at, like, a conference, like, a fucking front end death match.

Yeah.

You know? Where it would be so fun.

That would

be great.

Yeah. This did feel like a little bit like talking at the bar at a conference. I I feel like we got we got into it.

Yeah. Yeah. I like this one.

Yeah. Yeah. It's good.