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Adam Wathan vs Mckay Wrigley

Products, revenue & stack compared side by side.

Adam Wathan avatar

Adam Wathan

Canadian creator of Tailwind CSS and founder of Tailwind Labs, now at Shopify

@adamwathan Canada
Mckay Wrigley avatar

Mckay Wrigley

Builds and teaches AI coding; creator of Chatbot UI and founder of Takeoff

@mckaywrigley

Adam Wathan vs Mckay Wrigley at a glance

Both Adam Wathan and Mckay Wrigley are bootstrapped and build in public. They overlap in Open Source Makers and Educators & Course Creators. Adam started in 2016 and Mckay in 2020. Adam Wathan has 7 products listed on IndieMakerList vs Mckay Wrigley's 7. Adam has sold 3 products. Adam self-reports Mid-seven figures/yr (2020); Mckay hasn't shared a revenue figure publicly. They share 1 tool in their stacks: Next.js. On X, Adam has about 302K followers and Mckay about 229K.

Side-by-side comparison

Based in
Adam Wathan: Cambridge, Ontario, Canada
Mckay Wrigley: —
Started
Adam Wathan: 2016 (10 yrs indie)
Mckay Wrigley: 2020 (6 yrs indie)
Revenue (self-reported)
Adam Wathan: Mid-seven figures/yr (2020)self-reported, as of 2020 · source for Adam Wathan's revenue
Mckay Wrigley: Not public
Products listed
Adam Wathan: 7
Mckay Wrigley: 7
Product status
Adam Wathan: 4 active · 3 acquired
Mckay Wrigley: 7 active
X followers
Adam Wathan: 302K
Mckay Wrigley: 229K
Categories
Adam Wathan: Open Source MakersDeveloper ToolsEducators & Course CreatorsDesign Tools
Mckay Wrigley: AI BuildersEducators & Course CreatorsOpen Source Makers
Style
Adam Wathan: bootstrappedbuilds in publicexited
Mckay Wrigley: bootstrappedbuilds in public
Courses & resources
Adam Wathan: 5
Mckay Wrigley: 2

Revenue figures are self-reported by each maker and not audited; dates and scope differ. Highlighted categories are shared by both.

Top products

Adam Wathan avatarAdam Wathan

Refactoring UI logo

Refactoring UI

refactoringui.com

Design book and video course for developers, co-written with Steve Schoger.

~$600K in 2020
Tailwind CSS logo

Tailwind CSS

tailwindcss.com

acquired

Utility-first CSS framework for building custom designs directly in your markup, installed 110M+ times per week.

Headless UI logo

Headless UI

headlessui.com

Unstyled, fully accessible UI components designed to pair with Tailwind CSS.

See all 7 products by Adam Wathan →

Mckay Wrigley avatarMckay Wrigley

MagicLearn (formerly Takeoff) logo

MagicLearn (formerly Takeoff)

magiclearn.com

AI skills school with courses, workshops and an MCP server that teach AI-assisted coding and AI for work.

Chatbot UI logo

Chatbot UI

github.com

Open-source AI chat interface that works with any model; one of the most-starred AI chat repos on GitHub.

AgentShare logo

AgentShare

agentshare.com

Workspace for creating, sharing and running AI agents on your Mac or in the cloud.

Mckay's App Template logo

Mckay's App Template

github.com

The open-source template he uses to kick off new full-stack AI projects.

See all 7 products by Mckay Wrigley →

Tech stack

1 shared tool, marked with ★: Next.js. See the indie maker tech stack.

Adam Wathan avatarAdam Wathan

Tailwind CSSLaravelReactVue Next.js (shared)

Mckay Wrigley avatarMckay Wrigley

Next.js (shared)TypeScriptSupabaseCursorClaude Code

How they build

Adam Wathan avatarAdam Wathan

  • Build tools for your own projects first — Tailwind started as stylesheets reused between side projects.
  • Give away a great open-source product and sell premium resources around it.
  • Teach in public with books, courses, podcasts and live streams to build an audience.
  • Be candid about the business, including the hard parts.

Mckay Wrigley avatarMckay Wrigley

  • Learn by building real projects with AI rather than reading about it.
  • Open-source your tools and templates to build trust and reach.
  • Treat coding agents as general-purpose agents, not just autocomplete.
  • Anyone can learn to build software now, with no prior experience.

Learn from Adam and Mckay

Adam Wathan avatarAdam Wathan

Mckay Wrigley avatarMckay Wrigley

Adam Wathan vs Mckay Wrigley FAQ

Who makes more money, Adam Wathan or Mckay Wrigley?

Adam Wathan self-reports Mid-seven figures/yr (2020). Mckay Wrigley's revenue is not public, so a direct comparison isn't possible.

Who has built more products, Adam Wathan or Mckay Wrigley?

Adam Wathan has 7 products listed (including Tailwind Plus (formerly Tailwind UI), Refactoring UI and Tailwind CSS); Mckay Wrigley has 7 products listed (including MagicLearn (formerly Takeoff), Chatbot UI and AgentShare).

What tech stack do Adam Wathan and Mckay Wrigley use?

Adam Wathan uses Tailwind CSS, Laravel, React, Vue and Next.js. Mckay Wrigley uses Next.js, TypeScript, Supabase, Cursor and Claude Code. Tools they have in common: Next.js.

Where are Adam Wathan and Mckay Wrigley based?

Adam Wathan: Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. Mckay Wrigley: not listed.

Who has been an indie maker longer, Adam Wathan or Mckay Wrigley?

Adam Wathan started in 2016 (10 years indie); Mckay Wrigley started in 2020 (6 years indie).

Are Adam Wathan and Mckay Wrigley bootstrapped?

Yes, both are listed as bootstrapped founders on IndieMakerList.

Full profiles

Read the full story, timeline and links on Adam Wathan's profile and Mckay Wrigley's profile.

More comparisons

All indie maker comparisons →