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Slack S-1

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61–70 of 469 posts

Re: Slack S-1

#61
post #53

I'm staggered that there are 575 companies paying slack $100k / year. I don't even have anything against slack but what is possibly worth $100k a year from a comms software?

Anything that saves a single engineer-year of effort, or less than half an engineer-year in a high COL area. Which for quite a lot of large companies, would cover their internal comms stack. It probably vanishes in comparison to, say, what they pay Cisco for their phones.

Re: Slack S-1

#62
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any other industry where a company can go public having lost $500,000,000 over the last 3 years? I get it their “market share” is increasing every year and the loses are staying the same...and even that is not the full picture of a path to profit. But if the company could turn a profit, then why not do it privately, show that and then go public? My guess like Uber and Lyft...they can’t turn a profit, and for…

Don’t understand this take at all. The public is free to just not buy the stock if they don’t want. You think the problem is that investors are leaving too much potential for growth on the table when companies IPO? They should wait even longer and keep more of that growth private?

I think a company going public should not operating at $150M losses using VC money...letting them cash out and profit by selling to the public.

I also think there are other fundamental benefits to the economy. Yes the public is free not to buy...just as non-accredited investors would be free not to invest in unregistered securities yet regulations are still in place for a reason to protect would be investors.

It doesn’t seem unreasonable that is your company operates at a $500,000,000.00 loss over 3 years you can’t avail yourself to the public market and sell your stock to non accredited investors.

Re: Slack S-1

#63
post #53

I'm staggered that there are 575 companies paying slack $100k / year. I don't even have anything against slack but what is possibly worth $100k a year from a comms software?

Big companies with thousands of employees license Slack with advanced features, mostly per user basis. So the payment is in direct proportion to number of people using it. $100k/year is nothing for any big organization.

Re: Slack S-1

#64
post #11

"Our revenue was $105.2 million, $220.5 million, and $400.6 million in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively, representing annual growth of 110% and 82%, respectively. Our growth is global with international revenue representing 34%, 34%, and 36% of total revenue in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively. We continue to invest in growing our business to capitalize on our market opportunity. As a re…

Is there any other industry where a company can go public having lost $500,000,000 over the last 3 years? I get it their “market share” is increasing every year and the loses are staying the same...and even that is not the full picture of a path to profit. But if the company could turn a profit, then why not do it privately, show that and then go public? My guess like Uber and Lyft...they can’t turn a profit, and for…

Is there any other industry where developing an instant messaging system can result in $500 million in losses despite $700 million in revenue?

Re: Slack S-1

#65
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s still mind boggling that all these unicorns haven’t found a way to make money even after being in business for years and having a mature product. It’s a strange world.

It's still mind boggling that all these unicorns haven't stopped growing after being in business for years and having a mature product. It's a strange world.

Don't forget that products like Slack, Uber, Airbnb, etc. all could have basically everyone as their customer. These companies influence the daily lives of millions of people, with comparatively few employees, thanks to the scaling skills of technology. That's why they are valued so high and are still growing. Sure, they might be overvalued and one day the bubble can burst, but neither is it just a ponzi scheme, there is definitely a business behind it.

Re: Slack S-1

#66
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SEC fundamentally believes it's ok to lose money investing. It's up to you to assess the investments and decide where to put your money.

That’s not the point/issue though. The markets are regulated to protect consumers/investors...private companies can’t just have unregistered public offerings to non accredited investors...so it’s not just “up to you to assess the investments” there are rules and nothing is stopping additional rules to not permit registration of a public offering when the company is operating at a $150,000,000.00 annual loss or more t…

It's not a popular idea here because:

  Capital is extremely cheap
  Markets are at record highs
  FOMO in tech right now is extremely strong 
I can't wait to see the sentiment in two years.

Re: Slack S-1

#67
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s still mind boggling that all these unicorns haven’t found a way to make money even after being in business for years and having a mature product. It’s a strange world.

Well, these guys do have a good way to make money. Enterprise contracts are worth their weight in gold. As you could see from the quote, their revenue has increased more than their losses - which mean that they are on their way to become profitable. Arguably they could be now, if they didn't invest in growth as much.

> Arguably they could be now, if they didn't invest in growth as much.

Bingo bango

https://qz.com/1196256/it-took-amazon-amzn-14-years-to-make-...

> Keep in mind that Amazon consistently lost money for its first several years as a public company. It first reported a quarterly profit in the fourth quarter of 2001 [...]

Re: Slack S-1

#68
post #53

I'm staggered that there are 575 companies paying slack $100k / year. I don't even have anything against slack but what is possibly worth $100k a year from a comms software?

If you run a company with 1000 employees, that just $100 per seat, that's not that bad. Telephony is usually quite a lot more expensive than that.

Re: Slack S-1

#69
post #37

Slack has a 5-year, $50M/year minimum commitment with AWS. From the document: > In April 2018, the Company executed an amendment to its existing agreement with Amazon Web Services (“AWS”). The amended agreement was effective as of May 1, 2018 and continues through July 31, 2023. The Company has minimum annual commitments of $50.0 million each year of the agreement term for a total minimum commitment of $250.0 million…

Perhaps I'm just not aware how things work in companies of Slack's size, but... what do you think $4M/mo is spent on, for what essentially amounts to a chat app? I realise there a lot of extras in Slack (attachments cost S3 storage, video calls take bandwidth, webhooks take some processing), but as of January 2019, they had 10M daily active users. $50M/365 gives us $137K per day. $137K per day just to serve 10M activ…

4.2M / month on AWS is a hefty bill but it's not unheard of. Slack is, I suspect, paying for all the marked up extras such as various expensive regulation compliance addons, at-rest encryption, multi-AZ+multi-region backups and mirrors and what not. There's also probably a huge amount of stuff they use on their side to run their own tooling and analytics on their clients; costs that won't necessarily rise per user.

The part that "essentially amounts to a chat app" is probably one of the least expensive portions.

It's still high don't get me wrong, but not shockingly high considering how slack is used and trusted by so many companies.

Re: Slack S-1

#70
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obligatory “this may be boilerplate nowadays, but there is nothing traditional about unprofitable companies making public offerings” comment. Edit: I stand corrected. https://www.wsj.com/articles/red-ink-floods-ipo-market-15383... provides historical context that this is not a new phenomenon, though it is more common than ever.

They are already profitable. They're just warning it's possible they might become unprofitable. Just like any other company.

No, they're not already profitable. From the document on which we're commenting:

"...we incurred net losses of $146.9 million, $140.1 million, and $138.9 million in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively."

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