Corporate VPN startup Tailscale secures $230 million CAD Series C on back of “surprising” growth
Pennarun confirmed the company had been approached by potential acquirers, but told BetaKit that the company intends to grow as a private company and work towards an initial public offering (IPO).
“Tailscale intends to remain independent and we are on a likely IPO track, although any IPO is several years out,” Pennarun said. “Meanwhile, we have an extremely efficient business model, rapid revenue acceleration, and a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed, which means we can weather all kinds of economic storms.”
Keep that in mind as you ponder whether and when to switch to self-hosting Headscale.
Yeah and steam is closed source DRM platform. Great software sometimes is worth the trade off.
Steam is a private company, not publicly traded and has no VC funding.
VC funding and potential IPO normally means enshittification is inevitable, as they will eventually need to make insane profits by turning the screws on its users, as their business model wasn’t self sustaining.
Enshittification is inevitable for all free services (services as in with a server component). Thankfully the functions of tailscale are open source so until enshittification actually happens I will be happy with using a a useful but VC funded project. When I am not willing to make the trade off anymore I will use headscale or some other drop in replacement.
No, it is not that bleak. It is only inevitable when there is an active push for a short-term maximization of user base monetization (which is very much in the nature of VC). It can usually be avoided with products that are wholly under the ownership of all users (such as a cooperative or a government-provided service) or - only if one is lucky - with products of financially independent private enterprises under vaguely benevolent and unhurried leadership (such as Steam, to some extent)