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    Tailscale has raised $160M

    (tailscale.com)
    655 points louis-paul | 20 comments | 08 Apr 25 10:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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    elAhmo ◴[08 Apr 25 14:09 UTC] No.43621983[source]▶
    When I saw the new round, I was instantly worried about change in direction that will most likely come with this, and effectively drive away regular users from a tool that seems universally loved.

    Similar sentiment can be seen in the discussion from three years ago [1] when they raised $100M.

    [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31259950

    replies(5): >>43622328 #>>43622975 #>>43624385 #>>43624453 #>>43625024 #
    pomatic ◴[08 Apr 25 17:38 UTC] No.43624385[source]▶
    When they raised the 100M three years ago, I'm pretty sure they said they didn't need it and were saving it for a rainy day (or words to that effect), always seemed very odd at the time. Two q's for anyone who cares to speculate: have they burnt the original investment already? And if not, why would they need more funding? AFAICS there's no real competition in the market place for their product today, the only thing I can conceive is that they have a secret 'tailscale 2' project in the wings which is massively developer or capital intensive. Let's hope it is nothing related to AI band wagoning :-)
    replies(6): >>43624951 #>>43625524 #>>43626172 #>>43628716 #>>43629560 #>>43656604 #
    chubot ◴[08 Apr 25 18:26 UTC] No.43624951[source]▶
    Hm OK well thinking out loud, $100M / 3 is $33M / year?

    I don't know much about Tailscale, nor about how much it costs to run a company, but I thought it was mostly a software company?

    I would imagine that salaries are the main cost, and revenue could cover salaries? (seems like they have a solid model - https://tailscale.com/pricing)

    I'm sure they have some cloud fees, but I thought it was mostly "control plane" and not data plane, so it should be cheap?

    I could be massively misunderstanding what Tailscale is ...

    Did the product change a lot in the last 3 years?

    replies(3): >>43625548 #>>43626127 #>>43629080 #
    1. fragmede ◴[08 Apr 25 19:22 UTC] No.43625548[source]▶
    > I don't know much about Tailscale, nor about how much it costs to run a company

    $33m/year is only 33 fully loaded software developers including all overhead like HR and managers and office space, and also a cloud hosting bill.

    33 really isn't that many.

    replies(2): >>43625984 #>>43629441 #
    2. johnbellone ◴[08 Apr 25 20:11 UTC] No.43625984[source]▶
    I'd be surprised if the average package for SWE is $1M/year (fully loaded).
    replies(2): >>43626023 #>>43631035 #
    3. YetAnotherNick ◴[08 Apr 25 20:16 UTC] No.43626023[source]▶
    Generally package is around half of what company spends per extra engineer. And $500k average for a tech heavy product company doesn't sound too far off.
    replies(4): >>43626241 #>>43626872 #>>43627592 #>>43628380 #
    4. MrDarcy ◴[08 Apr 25 20:42 UTC] No.43626241{3}[source]▶
    This is just wrong. What exactly do think companies are spending 500k on per engineer beyond the TC package?
    replies(3): >>43626467 #>>43626483 #>>43628622 #
    5. throwaway98797 ◴[08 Apr 25 21:05 UTC] No.43626467{4}[source]▶
    office space of course!
    6. andruby ◴[08 Apr 25 21:07 UTC] No.43626483{4}[source]▶
    HR, marketing, sales, management, office space, servers, licenses, insurance, etc.

    It seems on the high end, but not too unrealistic.

    replies(3): >>43627133 #>>43628243 #>>43628489 #
    7. nialv7 ◴[08 Apr 25 21:56 UTC] No.43626872{3}[source]▶
    Holy hell I need to ask for a raise.
    replies(1): >>43628513 #
    8. hug ◴[08 Apr 25 22:33 UTC] No.43627133{5}[source]▶
    It’s wildly and hugely unrealistic.

    The rule of thumb that employees actually cost a business roughly twice their salary is based on two things:

    1. Retention. Hiring costs are “huge”, and so if you have a higher or lower average retention, may make up a disproportionate cost compared to salary. Ramp up time and institutional knowledge loss is no joke either.

    2. A spread of average wages. 500k is not average, and a huge number of the costs are relatively fixed. $1,000 a month worth of software licensing isn’t an uncommon number and is fully 1/3 of the salary of a $3k a month or $36k/year junior clerk. It’s peanuts when you look at it next to a $500k/year salary. It may be that the clerk is, all in, costing the company 3x their salary after indemnity insurance and so on. The dev will never reach 10%.

    replies(1): >>43628134 #
    9. rafram ◴[08 Apr 25 23:50 UTC] No.43627592{3}[source]▶
    > $500k average for a tech heavy product company doesn't sound too far off.

    Tailscale puts salary ranges on their job postings. The salaries aren’t bad, but no, they aren’t $500k.

    replies(1): >>43629171 #
    10. purplepatrick ◴[09 Apr 25 01:40 UTC] No.43628134{6}[source]▶
    Non-salary cost such as payroll taxes, benefits, workers comp, training, equipment, space add another 25-50% typically.
    11. Loudergood ◴[09 Apr 25 01:58 UTC] No.43628243{5}[source]▶
    US Health Insurance is stupid expensive as well.
    replies(1): >>43628387 #
    12. xeromal ◴[09 Apr 25 02:30 UTC] No.43628380{3}[source]▶
    Funny enough, you could double that to 70 engineers and that's still a TINY amount of engineers.
    13. xeromal ◴[09 Apr 25 02:32 UTC] No.43628387{6}[source]▶
    It's really not at scale. It's on the order of 500$ a month per dev for "gold" level care for a company of 50 people. I'm sure it's less the larger you get.
    replies(1): >>43628951 #
    14. jesseendahl ◴[09 Apr 25 02:57 UTC] No.43628489{5}[source]▶
    I haven't traditionally seen these areas of spend rolled into Eng costs in the budgeting process.
    15. klooney ◴[09 Apr 25 03:02 UTC] No.43628513{4}[source]▶
    When people say they get 500k they mean they get paid 200k in salary and got 300k in RSUs, with the details mixed around the edges. ICs aren't getting 500k salary except in a few rare cases.
    16. hiddencost ◴[09 Apr 25 03:25 UTC] No.43628622{4}[source]▶
    Nope. 2x total comp is standard fully loaded cost.
    17. dgoldstein0 ◴[09 Apr 25 04:46 UTC] No.43628951{7}[source]▶
    It might depend on the state and the age pool but I have to pay a percentage and based on that it's more like $10k/year. So you are almost 2x undercounting

    ... But maybe if the average employee of a company is 25 they could get a better deal

    18. YetAnotherNick ◴[09 Apr 25 05:33 UTC] No.43629171{4}[source]▶
    Didn't knew that. It's significantly lower than $500k.
    19. anilakar ◴[09 Apr 25 06:30 UTC] No.43629441[source]▶
    33M would be 33 software consultants each making 250k a year.
    20. udev4096 ◴[09 Apr 25 11:41 UTC] No.43631035[source]▶
    This might be true for HFT companies. They usually start at 200-300k and mid senior engineers probably make close to a million