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Slack’s Shares Plunge After It Predicts a Larger Loss

nytimes.com

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

#161

Post by viraptor »

siruncledrew wrote: post #86
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…

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'.

Foundations existed for years, not even the same product existed before them: hipchat. It was pretty much equivalent. Slack had a nicer mobile app and some other improvements, but otherwise they're almost the same thing.

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

#162

Post by [deleted] »

chrisseaton wrote: post #156
SeeDave wrote: post #104

I don't know enough about the Slack product or business model to comment authoritatively, but I'm really confused how they're losing money (and so much of it) and I sense a bit of "weirdness" around unit economics/user conversion/pricing. I've long thought that they've essentially built beautiful native/mobile/web clients for IRC-type chats and provide hosting/IRCOp services. Charging per-seat to enterprise seems lik…

> 100,000 paid users It can't possibly be just 100,000 paid users. That's clearly nonsense. Oracle uses it and they have 80,000 employees alone!

[deleted]

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

#163

Post by paulddraper »

siruncledrew wrote: post #86
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…

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'.

In fact, Slack's success was precisely because it was a very well understood type of product (group chat).

Everyone shrugged and said "Yeah I need that" and it looked/felt better than Hipchat.

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

#165

Post by merpnderp »

gamegod wrote: post #135
merpnderp wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the alternatives any better? For instance is discord protecting your chats?

Mattermost, IRC, etc.

IRC is great, but I've never thought of it as protecting my privacy. It's definitely public and almost always logged by a myriad of bots if not the server.

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

#166

Post by jsherwani »

Mindstormy wrote: post #11

I just wish they had not acquired Screen Hero. That was a beautiful standalone product that I wish I could still use.

Screenhero cofounder here. I’m working on a successor to Screenhero. It’s currently in private beta: https://screen.so

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

#167

Post by paxys »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #159

I'm sorry but comparing it to Uber is highly misrepresentative. Uber has serious Cost structure that can not be removed: the cost of the driver is essential to the operation of it's busienss. Slack on the other hand is just a SaaS. Why are their costs so high? They said stock based compensation, but that doesn't begin to tell what it's for. Their user acquisition costs don't need to be really high, as far I know they…

The stock has also bounced back already, so the headline is no longer accurate.

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

#168

Post by imglorp »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #159

I'm sorry but comparing it to Uber is highly misrepresentative. Uber has serious Cost structure that can not be removed: the cost of the driver is essential to the operation of it's busienss. Slack on the other hand is just a SaaS. Why are their costs so high? They said stock based compensation, but that doesn't begin to tell what it's for. Their user acquisition costs don't need to be really high, as far I know they…

They have a billboard in Times Square right now, with some partner.

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

#169

Post by burpsnard »

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.

ermogourd kids it's IRC, ferchrissakes. with oh yeah bots and file transfer and groups.

i heard they were throwing money at integrations with everything, had a bumpy ride scaling (mysql master-master ffs) and had vague plans for AI that'd help automate your org, not sure where that went. But the VC wants exponential or bust, so there you go.

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

#170

Post by GordonS »

chrisseaton wrote: post #156
SeeDave wrote: post #104

I don't know enough about the Slack product or business model to comment authoritatively, but I'm really confused how they're losing money (and so much of it) and I sense a bit of "weirdness" around unit economics/user conversion/pricing. I've long thought that they've essentially built beautiful native/mobile/web clients for IRC-type chats and provide hosting/IRCOp services. Charging per-seat to enterprise seems lik…

> 100,000 paid users It can't possibly be just 100,000 paid users. That's clearly nonsense. Oracle uses it and they have 80,000 employees alone!

Thing is, Slack makes it far too easy for orgs to use it for free.

I work at a megacorp, and we use Slack without paying a single penny.

We have a Slack account setup per project, which typically have 5-50 members. We don't care too much about search or history, we just want a simple chat and audio call solution that isn't horrible to use. Slack fits that bill.

To be clear, this doesn't sit well with me; we should be paying for a service we make good use of - but Slack makes it so damn easy for us to get away with it!

Maybe this is part of some long-term strategy, to basically give it away until it becomes ubiquitous, and then scale back the free tier?

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