Comment by tomaskafka

A really interesting moment:

- The value they created (mindshare, shared “standards” for naming properties, and design atoms) and what they charged for (templates that AI can replace) are two different things — and AI has shortened the time it takes for this discrepancy to show up.

- Isn’t almost all of Tailwind’s value actually in that shared semantics (“mt-2” = a small top margin) — not only in users’ heads, but now also in LLM training data? Isn’t it more of a standards organization (like ISO) than a product company (yes, sure, standards are also a product/service)?

- They criticize AI for extracting value, but I wonder if Tailwind's business model is also value extraction from the standards they established.

- And isn’t it almost a miracle that a token library and the idea of “let’s name five margin sizes” (which they weren’t even the first to do - I started with Basscss) could sustain an ~7-person company for so long?

I tried this LLM prompt for deep research: "Tailwind is laying off people. I consider their business much more of a standards body (like ISO) — their main value is the mindshare and shared semantics and design atoms. What business models could they adopt from standard bodies’ business models?"

However, after reviewing the suggestions, I believe tailwind movement is probably not large/important enough to make money in a similar way (sell certification, membership with governance privileges, training ..).

Two interesting ideas: "Keep human docs free, but put machine-optimized “spec corpora” behind licensing (because AI is the channel disrupting them)."

"Stop relying on docs-as-marketing if AI is eating that funnel, and instead monetize the privileges and assurance around the standard (governance, certification, conformance, canonical distribution)."

(Don't get me wrong, I love using Tailwind, but I believe they need to see their business realistically.)