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Slack S-1

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Re: Slack S-1

#111

Post by simplyluke »

fratlas wrote: post #13
amrrs wrote: post #2

Lyft, Uber, Zoom, Beyond Meat and now, Slack Is there any benefit of Public at this point of time? or Just a trend to grab as much as Wallet share from the average investor?

I've been seeing a lot of calls about this incoming downturn (especially HN), does anyone have any articles/analysis they can point me to? Would love to read up on the state of it.

We've been in a bull run for a long time. The market will eventually have a downturn. No one knows when that will be, how big it will be, or how long it will run for.

HN comments can be excellent on certain topics, finance is certainly not one of them.

Re: Slack S-1

#112

Post by xfitm3 »

aiCeivi9 wrote: post #77
xfitm3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack is a junk product.

It is good enough that it got cloned by Mattermost. No one recreates shitty software.

Chat is nothing new - there are tons of versions. Chat needs to be customizable. People can be annoying.

Re: Slack S-1

#113

Post by chmod775 »

will_brown wrote: post #35
neom wrote: post #11

"Our revenue was $105.2 million, $220.5 million, and $400.6 million in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively, representing annual growth of 110% and 82%, respectively. Our growth is global with international revenue representing 34%, 34%, and 36% of total revenue in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively. We continue to invest in growing our business to capitalize on our market opportunity. As a re…

Is there any other industry where a company can go public having lost $500,000,000 over the last 3 years? I get it their “market share” is increasing every year and the loses are staying the same...and even that is not the full picture of a path to profit. But if the company could turn a profit, then why not do it privately, show that and then go public? My guess like Uber and Lyft...they can’t turn a profit, and for…

Look closely at their revenue vs. their losses.

They could have been profitable in most years just by not increasing spending - which is entirely possible in their industry. Their expenses aren't really a function of the amount of customers they have.

So they consciously chose to not be profitable to grow their business instead (as they stated).

It's not like they couldn't be profitable if they wanted to.

Their business actually looks to be in an amazing shape.

Re: Slack S-1

#114

Post by xfitm3 »

noxToken wrote: post #73
xfitm3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack is hostile towards users. They aggressively push a narrative that if Slack is annoying - its a management problem.

How is Slack any different than any other instant messaging application? Hangouts, Jabber, Discord, Rocket Chat, and even WebEx or GoToMeeting - you can disable notifications, completely ignore, or even sign out of all of these applications. I'm not saying that Slack are the good guys, but if your managers are forcing you to have all notifications on at all times and using @channel for every message, then it really i…

Slack is not flexible or customizable - when basic features like muting someone are requested you're told that you are using Slack wrong. The notion of a one size fits all solution is flawed.

Re: Slack S-1

#115

Post by jscheel »

• We have a limited operating history, which makes it difficult to forecast our revenue and evaluate our business and future prospects.

• We have a history of net losses, we anticipate increasing operating expenses in the future, and we may not be able to achieve and, if achieved, maintain profitability.

• We have experienced rapid growth in recent periods and our recent growth rates may not be indicative of our future growth.

---

Feel like this is essentially copypasta for tech IPOs now. Still, congrats to them, their revenue growth is pretty dang impressive.

Re: Slack S-1

#116

Post by freewilly1040 »

tw04 wrote: post #104
cupofjoakim wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, these guys do have a good way to make money. Enterprise contracts are worth their weight in gold. As you could see from the quote, their revenue has increased more than their losses - which mean that they are on their way to become profitable. Arguably they could be now, if they didn't invest in growth as much.

I'd be curious if it's remotely sustainable. We started on Slack ~3 years ago. We're now moving (albeit slowly) to Teams. 18 months from now Slack will be gone entirely. I can't believe we're the only ones. And unlike Dropbox vs. Ondrive, Slack isn't markedly better in any area than Teams from my testing.

The cost of migrating away from something like slack for an enterprise org is enormous compared to what it costs.

Teams might have parity in a vacuum, but everyone already knows what slack is and how to use it, including people you might hire in the future.

Re: Slack S-1

#117

Post by maxxxxx »

mooreds wrote: post #98
maxxxxx wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also don’t have very high barriers to entry for competitors. Replacing SAP is really hard after it has been established in a company. On the other hand replacing Slack is really easy. Same for Uber. Customers and drivers can jump ship anytime.

It depends on how you use slack. (I agree that Uber is pretty easy.) If slack becomes an email replacement (instead of an ephemeral IM client), and a repository for historical knowledge, then it becomes very difficult to replace. In the workplaces where I have used slack, it definitely starts to take on that role (links to discussions are placed in tickets and documents, for example).

From what I have seen Slack may have a strong a foothold in some teams but overall it’s not hard to use something else when new teams are formed. I’m my company everybody is slowly moving to Teams. This can be done gradually. Definitely much easier to replace than SAP.

Re: Slack S-1

#118

Post by stone-monkey »

tw04 wrote: post #104
cupofjoakim wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, these guys do have a good way to make money. Enterprise contracts are worth their weight in gold. As you could see from the quote, their revenue has increased more than their losses - which mean that they are on their way to become profitable. Arguably they could be now, if they didn't invest in growth as much.

I'd be curious if it's remotely sustainable. We started on Slack ~3 years ago. We're now moving (albeit slowly) to Teams. 18 months from now Slack will be gone entirely. I can't believe we're the only ones. And unlike Dropbox vs. Ondrive, Slack isn't markedly better in any area than Teams from my testing.

> Slack isn't markedly better in any area than Teams from my testing.

Is it markedly worse in any area? Seems like for any business that's already entrenched in slack there isn't much incentive to move off. I'm assuming in your case there must have been some large benefits in order to spend a multi-month effort forcing a migration.

Re: Slack S-1

#119

Post by maxxxxx »

pmohun wrote: post #108
maxxxxx wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also don’t have very high barriers to entry for competitors. Replacing SAP is really hard after it has been established in a company. On the other hand replacing Slack is really easy. Same for Uber. Customers and drivers can jump ship anytime.

I'm not sure replacing Slack is as easy as you may think. If you have used their product, then you understand the amount of integrations and dependencies that become built into a team's workflow. When your entire history of communications, way of tracking tickets, and document repository is stored in a desktop application, replacing Slack may not be as simple as switching to another messaging program. Could you "repl…

“Could you "replace Outlook" -- it's just an email client after all.”

Absolutely. There is always pain in transitions but some are easier than others.

Re: Slack S-1

#120

Post by moorhosj »

will_brown wrote: post #35
neom wrote: post #11

"Our revenue was $105.2 million, $220.5 million, and $400.6 million in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively, representing annual growth of 110% and 82%, respectively. Our growth is global with international revenue representing 34%, 34%, and 36% of total revenue in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively. We continue to invest in growing our business to capitalize on our market opportunity. As a re…

Is there any other industry where a company can go public having lost $500,000,000 over the last 3 years? I get it their “market share” is increasing every year and the loses are staying the same...and even that is not the full picture of a path to profit. But if the company could turn a profit, then why not do it privately, show that and then go public? My guess like Uber and Lyft...they can’t turn a profit, and for…

This depends on what you mean by “industry”. If Uber and Lyft are transportation companies, Snapchat is a media company and Tesla is a car company, than there are multiple industries. If you think of all those companies as “tech” than, no.
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