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Slack’s Shares Plunge After It Predicts a Larger Loss

nytimes.com

11–20 of 224 posts

Re: Slack’s Shares Plunge After It Predicts a Larger Loss

#12
post #8

>> Revenue rose to $145 million from $92 million a year earlier. Slack said it had more than 100,000 paying customers, a 37 percent increase over last year. They should be fine. $307m of the loss was stock-related compensation. How could you screw up a business who has a product as popular as Slack?

By taking too much investment, needing to pay back too much so you end up destroying your business for short term gains.

edit: Just look at what's happening to Patreon

Re: Slack’s Shares Plunge After It Predicts a Larger Loss

#13
I get that they are the most obvious comparisons for recent IPOs, but it's disappointing to see Slack being conflated with Uber, Lyft, and We, none of which have a remote chance of ever making more than a razor-thin profit in their respective industries. Whereas Slack is a SaaS company, with the real potential (whether it's likely or not) to become highly profitable down the road.

Re: Slack’s Shares Plunge After It Predicts a Larger Loss

#14
post #8

>> Revenue rose to $145 million from $92 million a year earlier. Slack said it had more than 100,000 paying customers, a 37 percent increase over last year. They should be fine. $307m of the loss was stock-related compensation. How could you screw up a business who has a product as popular as Slack?

Might say the same about ICQ, Skype, Messenger, etc.

All communications platforms so far have come and gone in vogue.

I remember in 2005 when everyone in our office communicated over MS Messenger.

Maybe Slack is to instant messaging as Facebook was to social networking and will get some longevity. But it's too early to tell yet.

Re: Slack’s Shares Plunge After It Predicts a Larger Loss

#15
Leaving aside the costs of their listing and related compensation (which are crazy high!) they made a $57m loss on $145m in revenue.

Considering that they are a pure software company this is quite shocking and, to me, a sign not to touch them with a barge pole.

Re: Slack’s Shares Plunge After It Predicts a Larger Loss

#16

I'm surprised investors aren't more scared of the competition, particularly Microsoft and its Teams product that is part of Office 365. Maybe it's not a huge deal because the overlap of Slack customers and Office 365 customers isn't that big?

The divide between customer bases actually resonates throughout the industry. It's Conoco Philips and the Department of Justice vs Gitlab and Sysdig. Old econ vs new roughly. And is sort of playing out across AWS vs Azure, etc. I wonder how Slack addresses this divide. Perhaps in keeping more of a startup ethos and attracting international players such as Grab.

Re: Slack’s Shares Plunge After It Predicts a Larger Loss

#17

Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s chief executive, said in an interview that it would take time for the market to understand his company since it had created a new category of software, unlike soda or cars We've had public business software companies for decades, they all created a new "category" of software, why does he think his is something new? Fundamentally speaking, how is Slack any different to the first email prog…

It loses money. A lot of it.

Re: Slack’s Shares Plunge After It Predicts a Larger Loss

#18
post #9

I'm surprised investors aren't more scared of the competition, particularly Microsoft and its Teams product that is part of Office 365. Maybe it's not a huge deal because the overlap of Slack customers and Office 365 customers isn't that big?

It would literally be impossible for my company to switch from Slack. It's so tightly integrated.

Consider replacing "literally" with "practically" or something similar in phrases like these.

I have seen first-hand how much of the business can run on Slack. Yet, if it's gone one day, companies would survive.

Re: Slack’s Shares Plunge After It Predicts a Larger Loss

#20
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they can fix teams so everybody who uses it doesn't hate it, I'm sure they'll absolutely dominate.

There is also the possibility of Microsoft buying Slack to fix Teams.

It's very unlikely considering they thought about doing that a few years ago.[0] I don't think they'll rapidly push forward with adding features characteristic for Slack as well. Teams is just yet another corporate tool that is easy to sell to existing customers of Office 365.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-canceled-8-billion...

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