Slack confirms it has raised $427M at a post-money valuation of over $7B • Hacker News Board

Re: Slack confirms it has raised $427M at a post-money valuation of over $7B

#31

Post by joelhaasnoot » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

maxehmookau wrote: post #17

Still waiting for a native MacOS app that doesn't slow my machine down to a crawl and runs the fans whenever I made a video call. $7.1B folks. $7.1 billion.

And honestly, how hard can it be? Put a 5 man team on it and in a few months it'll be done and workable. Few million down the drain but your software is insanely more useable. I guess that doesn't sell the service...

Re: Slack confirms it has raised $427M at a post-money valuation of over $7B

#32

Post by davidwparker » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

everyone wrote: post #12

Has anyone considered using Discord instead of Slack? They seem very similar.

We use Discord instead of Slack for work. It works well, most of the time. But it's not a perfect solution, and some bots / things that are just a few clicks away in Slack we've had to build out manually. That said, prefer it to Slack anyway.

Re: Slack confirms it has raised $427M at a post-money valuation of over $7B

#33

Post by EvilEndures » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

namibj wrote: post #22

wut42 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's Matrix and Riot. it's still a bit rough on the edges but overall it's very cool projects.

He asked about slack, not Whatsapp. ;)

I've used Riot as a Slack replacement and setup notification bots. Its effective for the task and I could use the IRC bridge for a similar function.

Only reason I moved over to Discord was too many chat apps and the hobby users were all on Discord anyway.

Re: Slack confirms it has raised $427M at a post-money valuation of over $7B

#34

Post by everyone » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

fbnlsr wrote: post #18

everyone wrote: post #12

Has anyone considered using Discord instead of Slack? They seem very similar.

Discord is MUCH better than Slack. But since it's primarily aimed at the gaming community it doesn't get the same audience.

I used Slack at work about a year and a half ago.. I have recently setup a Discord server for one of my own games. Discord seems to, have more features, work more reliably, and be a lot easier to administrate.. Also its free!

Maybe Slack has advanced in the past year and a half tho..

Re: Slack confirms it has raised $427M at a post-money valuation of over $7B

#35

Post by bachmeier » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

forthispurpose wrote: post #11

What is the good alternative to Slack now? Cheaper / OS / self-hosted etc?

If you have just a few users, Rocket is very easy to install and has always worked well on a $5 DO instance. My preference is for Zulip, as it's easier to track multiple discussions, but I don't have an incentive to switch now that my Rocket instance is running.

I have no experience with more than a few users. If you want a hosted solution, I have seen reports that Zulip works well with a large number of users.

Re: Slack confirms it has raised $427M at a post-money valuation of over $7B

#36

Post by tootie » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

It seems to me that Slack is very vulnerable. Their core product isn't all that innovative and already has credible competitors who could probably beat their price. In fact, I don't understand how they beat HipChat so soundly. I wonder if their next tack will be to start digging a moat of proprietary tooling now that they have a critical mass of adoption.

Re: Slack confirms it has raised $427M at a post-money valuation of over $7B

#37

Post by growtofill » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

Pinbenterjamin wrote: post #16

That's a crazy evaluation, is that company really worth 7.1Instagrams? It really is a nice product, but it feels like a 'First-To-Market' success story. Especially since it's built on top of electron, which I'm still trying to accept as a real platform for application development, and not the '3d printer' of the software world. I hope they don't use this money to feature-swamp the app, and instead focus inward on per…

Comparing Slack (B2B) to Instagram (B2C) doesn't seem correct to me. Slack wasn't the first-to-market (there's been Hipchat), but to my understanding, Slack was radically better, that's why it became so successful.

As for using Electron for its desktop app: do end users really care?

Re: Slack confirms it has raised $427M at a post-money valuation of over $7B

#38

Post by brazzledazzle » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

mechazawa wrote: post #6

How come Slack is worth $7.1B? I can't imagine they produce that much value or have a high enough revenue to warrant this valuation.

Tool integration and automation with Slack are things that people have come to depend on. There’s not much unique to Slack in that regard but they have the momentum and many products will either be Slack-first or be integrated exclusively with Slack. There’s a lot more out there in terms of APIs these days so people can, and do, develop their own integrations for other chat platforms but that’s not quite the same.

I don’t know about 7 billion but based on how technical and non-technical teams alike use and depend on Slack I can easily see 1 Billion or more. But 1 and 7 billion are really far apart. If I were a Slack employee I’d be thinking about my stock. If it sold for 2 billion would I be shit out of luck? Legitimately asking, I don’t know how stock preference works when the VC investment comes after stock has been issued to an employee.

Re: Slack confirms it has raised $427M at a post-money valuation of over $7B

#39

Post by conception » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

Pinbenterjamin wrote: post #16

That's a crazy evaluation, is that company really worth 7.1Instagrams? It really is a nice product, but it feels like a 'First-To-Market' success story. Especially since it's built on top of electron, which I'm still trying to accept as a real platform for application development, and not the '3d printer' of the software world. I hope they don't use this money to feature-swamp the app, and instead focus inward on per…

I always count these by Star Wars franchises. Is slack worth the rights to almost two Star Wars sized franchises? No. It's not.

Re: Slack confirms it has raised $427M at a post-money valuation of over $7B

#40

Post by paulpauper » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 2:16 PM UTC

So much for that inevitable/impending Web 2.0 'bubble burst' that the financial and tech media has been predicting since 2012. Nothing has changed from now and 4 years ago .same high valuations.