David Shu

I guess in a sense, that's a less and less true statement every year because the large chunks of websites are just not public data anymore. Like you can't search Facebook with Google, can't search Instagram with it. You can't find a TikTok with it or anything like that.

I guess in a sense, that's a less and less true statement every year because the large chunks of websites are just not public data anymore. Like you can't search Facebook with Google, can't search Instagram with it. You can't find a TikTok with it or anything like that.

And so the existence of those, I think they sometimes get called walled gardens, says that we should have more fine-tuned tools like that. And there's just a lot of similarities there. So should a startup the size of Tailscale build customized models for that for its users, I think is sort of a big open-ended question. around how the model space will evolve.

And so the existence of those, I think they sometimes get called walled gardens, says that we should have more fine-tuned tools like that. And there's just a lot of similarities there. So should a startup the size of Tailscale build customized models for that for its users, I think is sort of a big open-ended question. around how the model space will evolve.

And I think my last year of working with models, fine tuning them, training them, carefully prompting them, you can do more and more just with carefully structured prompts and long contexts that you used to have to use fine tuning to achieve. But all of this, my sort of big takeaway is that they are actually extremely hard to turn into products.

And I think my last year of working with models, fine tuning them, training them, carefully prompting them, you can do more and more just with carefully structured prompts and long contexts that you used to have to use fine tuning to achieve. But all of this, my sort of big takeaway is that they are actually extremely hard to turn into products.

and to get those details right in a general sense for shipping to users. They're actually quite easy to get going for yourself. And I think if anything, more people should explore running models locally and playing with them because they're a ton of fun and they can be very productive very quickly.

and to get those details right in a general sense for shipping to users. They're actually quite easy to get going for yourself. And I think if anything, more people should explore running models locally and playing with them because they're a ton of fun and they can be very productive very quickly.

but in much the same way that it's really easy to write a Python script that you run yourself on your desktop versus a Python script you ship in production for users. LLMs have this huge sort of complexity gap when it comes to trying to build products for others. And so... I agree that that sort of tooling would be fun and should exist.

but in much the same way that it's really easy to write a Python script that you run yourself on your desktop versus a Python script you ship in production for users. LLMs have this huge sort of complexity gap when it comes to trying to build products for others. And so... I agree that that sort of tooling would be fun and should exist.

I also think where we are today, it's quite hard for a team the size of a startup to ship that as not part of the core product experience.

I also think where we are today, it's quite hard for a team the size of a startup to ship that as not part of the core product experience.

I think that is exactly the right way to frame the question for a business. And I don't know the answer to a lot of those questions. I can talk to some of the more technical costs involved. What the benefits would be to the company is extremely open-ended to me. I can't imagine a way to measure that. Based on talking to customers of Tailscale who deploy it,

I think that is exactly the right way to frame the question for a business. And I don't know the answer to a lot of those questions. I can talk to some of the more technical costs involved. What the benefits would be to the company is extremely open-ended to me. I can't imagine a way to measure that. Based on talking to customers of Tailscale who deploy it,

thinking about the companies where, and so to go back to something you said earlier about how you use it and you don't pay for it, I think that's great because Tailscale has no intention of making money off individual users. That's not a major source of revenue for the company. The company's major source of revenue is corporate deployments. And there's a blog post by my co-founder Avery about a

thinking about the companies where, and so to go back to something you said earlier about how you use it and you don't pay for it, I think that's great because Tailscale has no intention of making money off individual users. That's not a major source of revenue for the company. The company's major source of revenue is corporate deployments. And there's a blog post by my co-founder Avery about a

how the free plan stays free on our website, which sort of explains this, that individual users help bring Tailscale to companies who use it for business purposes and they fund the company's existence. So looking at those business deployments, you do see Tailscale gets rolled out initially at companies for some tiny subset of the things it could be used for.

how the free plan stays free on our website, which sort of explains this, that individual users help bring Tailscale to companies who use it for business purposes and they fund the company's existence. So looking at those business deployments, you do see Tailscale gets rolled out initially at companies for some tiny subset of the things it could be used for.

And it often takes quite a while to roll out for more. And even if the company has a really good roadmap and a really good understanding of all of the ways they could use it, it can take a very long time to solve all of their problems with it. And that's assuming they have a really good understanding of all of the things it can do.

And it often takes quite a while to roll out for more. And even if the company has a really good roadmap and a really good understanding of all of the ways they could use it, it can take a very long time to solve all of their problems with it. And that's assuming they have a really good understanding of all of the things it can do.