Slack’s Shares Plunge After It Predicts a Larger Loss • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by swarnie_ » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #14

bluedino wrote: 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.

I use Skype daily and have never had a problem with it, I've never understood the hate if i'm honest.

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

#52

Post by danenania » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #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.

A business that’s doing great can have numbers that look like this if they’re investing heavily in growth. In that case, they’re losing money deliberately—if they wanted to, they could optimize for profits and be making money, but at the cost of growing slower and presumably sacrificing greater profits in the future. If you’re a shareholder, you probably don’t want that.

I don’t know whether Slack is in this position, but simply looking at revenue and losses doesn’t give you enough information to judge how well they’re doing on its own. You need to look at things like CAC and growth rate.

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

#53

Post by galago » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

w8rbt wrote: post #39

mattmanser wrote: post #10

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…

Slack is nothing at all like email. It's proprietary, non-federated and has built-in data discovery/spying mechanisms to record every click/keystroke made by users.

It is basically a chat program though right? It has some newer features, but they seem just like incremental improvements over proprietary chat applications I've been using for the last 25 years.

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

#54

Post by w8rbt » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

squeaky-clean wrote: post #46

w8rbt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack is nothing at all like email. It's proprietary, non-federated and has built-in data discovery/spying mechanisms to record every click/keystroke made by users.

Doesn't sound that different from Gmail to me.

Gmail was not the first email program (which is what the OP asked about). Gmail came several decades after email was invented and already in widespread use. You may or may not realize this fact (depending on your age).

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

#55

Post by Slimbo » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

DylanDmitri wrote: post #5

chucknelson wrote: post #2

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?

Teams isn't going to directly take market share from Slack, but it forms a hard barrier limiting Slack's future growth. Large established organizations are switching to Teams, and finding it good enough that they'll never want to pay for Slack.

Teams is absolutely taking share from Slack. As chat permeates organisations, it needs policies, single sign on, oversight and standards that are harder to implement in slack than Teams/Office 365. I know of many organisations who've been forced off slack because 'company policy'.

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

#56

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: 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?

Ask Yahoo, Uber and Lyft.

Just because a product is popular doesn’t mean it’s a good business.

It also amazes me that people hand wave compensation as a “real” expense....

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

#57

Post by dboreham » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

tantalor wrote: post #37

mattmanser wrote: post #10

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 had created a new category of software Let's check that timeline of team chat apps... 2006 - Campfire launches (now part of Basecamp) 2010 - Hipchat launches 2013 - Slack launches

1980 - usenet launches

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

#58

Post by slothtrop » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

kaushikt wrote: post #36

collyw wrote: post #31

Slack is overrated and over priced. Its not like messenger platforms are difficult. We have had msn messneger, yahoo messenger, whatsapp, rocketchat, facebook messneger, messenger, gchat, skype. Slack doesn't do anything particularly special.

I disagree. Slack is not just about chat, they are about communication. We moved from Skype to Slack and it was incredibly different for us. Open channels meant - more transparency and anyone can join and contribute. All those hella bots are extremely handy. Overall, i would say we became more transparent, focussed and it made communication across a single company SIMPLE.

I've heard it described as having IRC channels with skype capabilities

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

#59

Post by Slimbo » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #14

bluedino wrote: 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.

The difference between chat and facebook is that with a team in chat, you can move it to anywhere (teams, irc, mattermost, zulip, whatsapp). With facebook, you can't move your friends, so you're stuck.

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

#60

Post by shay_ker » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

It'd be really interesting for Slack to go the Atlassian or Microsoft route - acquire companies that solve adjacent problems, and then bundle the products to enterprise customers. The sales get harder to ignore, and it'd make Slack as a company even stickier.

A couple things come to mind, like file sharing, calendar & room management, project management (around tasks, mainly), VoIP integration for sales calls, and maybe even gasp email.