91–100 of 224 posts
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 explanation is here
For Slack has no moat
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Sales and marketing.
If they need to spend more on sales an marketing than it brings in they are even more doomed than I thought...
Enterprise sales is expensive, but the contracts are very large and long-term.
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I use Skype daily and have never had a problem with it, I've never understood the hate if i'm honest.
The Skype of today is crap compared to the first Skype I used and loved. It is completely unclear what it tries to be now and the interface is horrible. I have an unlimited-Europe plan with it and a phone number attached to it, but I'd rather use something else some day. I haven't found any cheaper alternatives though. Maybe someone here can point one out to me.
But as an aside, “the cheapest one you can find is horrible” is probably appropriate for what “cheapest” usually translates to in products, and expecting to find one cheaper and better when you can’t find one cheaper at all, seems optimistic.
>> 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?
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Slack is different from those companies of yore. Back then, if you created a chat program and went to an investment bank, they'd laugh you out of the office, or advise that you take whatever acquisition offer you can get, because a chat program with tons of competitors isn't enough to build a profitable business on.
Skype got investment from VCs in 2003, 16 years ago. is that "yore" enough for you? https://www.vcgate.com/Bessemer_Venture_Partners.asp
Skype was a P2P phone calling program over TCP/IP.
I.e., a neat trick that might have killed traditional telecoms.
Then Microsoft bought Skype and killed it instead.
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…
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I use Skype daily and have never had a problem with it, I've never understood the hate if i'm honest.
The Skype of today is crap compared to the first Skype I used and loved. It is completely unclear what it tries to be now and the interface is horrible. I have an unlimited-Europe plan with it and a phone number attached to it, but I'd rather use something else some day. I haven't found any cheaper alternatives though. Maybe someone here can point one out to me.
Instant messenger, internet phone and video/presentation conferencing.
Am i missing something here because its literally my primary business communication tool.
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.
As someone that uses both slack and webex teams at work, I cannot emphasize enough how much better slack is. Maybe it's because webex teams is beyond awful, but I've used skype and hipchat before as well, so I feel like I can make a somewhat fair assessment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sales and marketing.
If they need to spend more on sales an marketing than it brings in they are even more doomed than I thought...
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.
For its second fiscal quarter, Slack posted a loss of $364 million