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

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

#141

Post by techslave » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

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.

You’re wrong and the reason why is in your comment.

> platform

Slack isn’t a messenger app. It’s a platform. People like to “work” in slack for some reason. not that slack is so well suited, but because it reduces the number of context switches you need to do. it’s good to have something as a central hub.

If you produce some kind of app, you’ll want to integrate into a messenger platform and your choice (if only one) will be slack. this gives slack gravity and that is what makes it special.

salesforce the core product is nothing special. it’s salesforce the platform which matters.

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

#142

Post by crdoconnor » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

phlakaton wrote: post #121

anbotero wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I mean it, THANK YOU! We were using HipChat at a previous company (2013, I think), and I never understood the switch to Slack. I was like: Wait, but what's the difference? Everybody knew about Slack, and no one about HipChat. I also don't think they introduced a new category of software, they just spent an absurd amount of additional money in marketing. That's it.

My company switched from HipChat to Slack around 2015. I won't say hype didn't play into the decision, but IIRC there were two other motivations: 1) more reliable performance, 2) better integrations with Google Docs. At the time it was claimed that this was really a whole new way to organize data and work. In practicality, not that much changed from HipChat. Pinned items and the ability to rifle back through conversa…

My company switched around the same time. Hype was primarily why we switched.

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

#143

Post by mnky9800n » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 9:00 PM UTC

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's irc but fancy. So I guess they created the fancy?

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

#144

Post by bhhaskin » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

chimi wrote: post #140

siruncledrew wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a cop-out answer from the CEO to be honest. Slack isn't a confusing novelty the market has never seen; foundations of Slack have existed for quite some time (eg. using AIM with chatbots 15 years ago as a kid). It's not the market's fault Slack's revenue/sales expectations don't match their goals. That's entirely on Slack to either do a better job or be more realistic with their 'ceiling'.

I remember a quote that said basically, "If your product is ahead of its time, your marketing isn't good enough."

It sounds like Slack is drinking their own Kool-Aid.

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

#145

Post by wilg » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 9:07 PM UTC

w8rbt wrote: post #113

nroach wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you supply some references for the keystroke assertion?

https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/360002079527-A-guid...

I'm confused. The question was about the keystroke assertion, which this link does not discuss.

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

#146

Post by ismail » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 9:11 PM UTC

anbotero wrote: post #126

phlakaton wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company switched from HipChat to Slack around 2015. I won't say hype didn't play into the decision, but IIRC there were two other motivations: 1) more reliable performance, 2) better integrations with Google Docs. At the time it was claimed that this was really a whole new way to organize data and work. In practicality, not that much changed from HipChat. Pinned items and the ability to rifle back through conversa…

We were kind of heavily invested in Atlassian stack, which means we used Confluence a lot. We had a good system for creating and looking for documentation in our wiki system, so I hope that was not a selling point for Slack. Unfortunately we (Tech) never really knew why we switched. EDIT: Also, on the performance side, we were there for the beginning of both systems, and both had their good amount of issues initially…

I can tell you my experience of having witnessed some companies move to “slack”, “Jira” etc. There were multiple similar cases.

It went something like this:

“We are now ‘agile’

Ok what are all the cool agile dev ops companies using?

Aha Jira&Slack. Ok let’s use that”

From there it gets even more crazy. The tools get included as a standard question for evaluating vendors on RFP’s. Vendors that use a similar toolset are rated more highly.

When you question why. The response is along the lines of:

“Oh if they are using Jira/slack/other tool, it must be an agile/dev ops/chat ops shop”

Put another way sometimes these tools end up being used as a “signal” to others rather than intrinsic value. The value is in the signalling, driven by social proof.

If one can pull this of when marketing your product you have a win. Effectively you have associated a movement (I.e agile) with your product (I.e Jira). So the buy decision is driven by the need to show they are doing {x}.

There must be some basis Of this and reading on how this is done? The broad topic would be marketing but what specifically?

Notes:

* This is merely an observation. I am not judging the accuracy of the statement that using a specific product = demonstrating some property.

These associations may not be applicable in all markets and I have seen them change over time.

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

#147

Post by SolarNet » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

SeeDave wrote: post #114

jmull wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's over 100000 paid customers, not paid users. E.g., your revenue number is way off... the article says their revenue for the quarter was $145 million. So I guess the average revenue per customer was approaching $1500 (well, unless I dropped a zero or three somewhere, which is possible). For Slack customers are organizations with potentially multiple users. Likewise, I think your 1:130 number is perhaps comparing a…

Thanks for the clarification! I was really scratching my head there based on the apples to oranges comparison of 'customers' to 'users' and you were right... my revenue estimate was indeed way off. Upgrading Slack from 'WTF' to "Let's see how this plays out and if it's priced accurately' because $30m in losses on $145m in revenue for cloud enterprise chat with a long-tail of free-tier users seems pretty promising! Th…

One problem they do have is - compared to discord - a poor strategy for monetizing non-enterprise communities. Discord will allow individuals to upgrade their discord plan (for small benefits everywhere) and then they can give a boost to a server they appreciate. This means discord can monetize any community.

Slack on the other hand has communities with thousands of members in them that have zero monetization. No one is going to shell out 60k for their open source project's slack to be monetized.

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

#148

Post by Spivak » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

techslave wrote: post #139

gamblor956 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company tried slack, Hangouts, and teams. We're standardizing on teams because it's the easiest for non-technical users to understand and use.

que? how can one not understand slack? it couldn’t be simpler.

Never used Teams. This is not a comparison just some things in Slack that are weird.

* Formatting is done with Markdown syntax instead of "word processor" style formatting.

In a word processor if you type Hello, Ctrl+b World Ctrl+b!

it would produce Hello, World!

In Slack it produces Hello World !* * .

* /commands are not discoverable or intuitive to anyone who never used IRC or CLI programs. Non-programmers have no idea what arguments are or that [brackets] means optional.

* Bots and their syntax have the same problem except that their DSLs are far more varied and arcane.

* Very few people know or understand the difference between a channel and a group.

* Threads are super weird compared to email. It's like an inbox but not really. Threads interleaved into actual message timelines are not very discoverable and difficult to follow.

* Attachments and files don't really work like most people expect.

* There are at least 5 different settings panels all with different things and scopes.

* Reminders and a bunch of stuff being implemented as a magic "account" in Slack is super confusing to people.

* Very few people really "get" apps as well in this respect. They're in your message timeline, they look like accounts, and are in some ways but aren't in others.

* The difference between a "bot" and "app" isn't super well defined. Some respond to messages in a channel, some need commands.

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

#149

Post by chrisweekly » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

ismail wrote: post #146

anbotero wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were kind of heavily invested in Atlassian stack, which means we used Confluence a lot. We had a good system for creating and looking for documentation in our wiki system, so I hope that was not a selling point for Slack. Unfortunately we (Tech) never really knew why we switched. EDIT: Also, on the performance side, we were there for the beginning of both systems, and both had their good amount of issues initially…

I can tell you my experience of having witnessed some companies move to “slack”, “Jira” etc. There were multiple similar cases. It went something like this: “We are now ‘agile’ Ok what are all the cool agile dev ops companies using? Aha Jira&Slack. Ok let’s use that” From there it gets even more crazy. The tools get included as a standard question for evaluating vendors on RFP’s. Vendors that use a similar toolset ar…

equal parts sad and funny

cargo cult driven marketing

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

#150

Post by scoopertrooper » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 9:40 PM UTC

anbotero wrote: post #117

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…

Thanks! I mean it, THANK YOU! We were using HipChat at a previous company (2013, I think), and I never understood the switch to Slack. I was like: Wait, but what's the difference? Everybody knew about Slack, and no one about HipChat. I also don't think they introduced a new category of software, they just spent an absurd amount of additional money in marketing. That's it.

At least when I was using hipchat, there was no way to 'tune' down the notifications, so the bloody thing was super annoying. I basically begged my company to make the switch to Slack after a quick trial.