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Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

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Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#111

Post by davnicwil »

enjo wrote: post #90
davnicwil wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gut feeling, without doing much proper analysis, is that further growth will come not so much from adding more paying users as selling more services to the existing, extremely locked in, userbase. It's a platform - I can see a world where almost everything in the workplace is embedded into Slack or integrated with it. They can take their cut of all of that.

I’m starting to see Slack show up in all sorts of places far beyond software development teams. Accounting firms, non profits, and even a home inspector I worked with... I can’t imagine they’re even close full market penetration.

No me neither, totally agree. Both are channels for growth. I just mean I see the expanding existing users channel dwarfing the acquiring new customers channel in terms of speed of growth. At this point I see it being significantly easier for them to 2x an average user's subscription through more services than 2x their entire userbase.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#112

Post by philwelch »

iMuzz wrote: post #93
philwelch wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atlassian products are more mission-critical. Most companies actually need some tool that does what Jira or Bitbucket does. They don't really need Slack.

Do you use Slack? You don't think it's Mission Critical?

I've worked at companies both with and without Slack. Something like Slack might be mission critical for a remote-first company, but comparing the two situations, I've actually noticed better communication without Slack than with it.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#113

Post by fiblye »

not_a_moth wrote: post #52

The obligatory "but they have massive losses", > For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2019, the company reported losses of $138.9 million on revenue of $400.6 million. That’s compared to a loss of $140.1 million on revenue of $220.5 million the year prior. [1] [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/31/slack-first-quarter-financ... I don't understand valuations.

My question is where the hell is that money going?

That money is all the cash flow in some entire minor industries. It’s the GDP of some minor lower/mid-economy nations’ cities. Their losses are equal to half the entire GDP of Palau.

Maybe I’m detached. But I don’t understand the cash flow in chat apps today. It’s absolutely bizarre amounts of money for something that can and will easily be replaced in a few years, as always happens.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#114

Post by fpvracing »

lewisl9029 wrote: post #107
fpvracing wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Discord superior? I haven't really used it but my first impressions are that it seems very tailored to the gaming community. I have used Slack extensively and it appears more professional. And if Discord is free, how do they make money / keep the lights on? I do worry about Slack's pricing since there is a vast chasm between their free plan and their paid plans. I use Slack to run some open source and hobbyist…

Discord has much better performance for large communities, and I've found it to be perfect for remote collaboration with its intuitive and super low friction voice channels. But the issue around professionalism that you bring up is certainly valid. I don't want to have to maintain separate accounts for work vs play (unless there's a seamless way to switch between them, like for Google, but currently there isn't), but…

For me, the voice channels are actually off-putting. I've never been a gamer and don't like the idea of feeling like I'm chatting on the phone with strangers. Text feels much more comfortable.

Thanks for your response. It is good to get feedback from somebody who has used Discord as I am just about to launch a new community on Slack. I will stick with Slack for now.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#115

Post by kareemm »

dstaley wrote: post #110

It's still crazy to me that a $16B company can't make the financials of a true native app for Windows and macOS work. Microsoft has some real soul searching to do to fix up Windows development and make it easier and more attractive to companies. Thankfully it seems like both Microsoft and Apple are at least trying to make things easier. Apple will probably do the best with Project Catalyst (I mean, they already got T…

Maybe the lesson is that a decent solution to a painful problem and great sales and marketing are a good recipe for success.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#116

Post by fpvracing »

jMyles wrote: post #88
fpvracing wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Discord superior? I haven't really used it but my first impressions are that it seems very tailored to the gaming community. I have used Slack extensively and it appears more professional. And if Discord is free, how do they make money / keep the lights on? I do worry about Slack's pricing since there is a vast chasm between their free plan and their paid plans. I use Slack to run some open source and hobbyist…

> How is Discord superior? I haven't really used it but my first impressions are that it seems very tailored to the gaming community. At NuCypher switched to Discord from Slack. It's not particularly tailored , but certainly cultural influenced. There are maybe a feature or two that make more sense for gaming, but it's very useful for business. The Discord voice features are particularly useful and are in use every d…

> Slack also has a disastrous "feature" wherein any user can cause the SlackBot to send a message to another user. In an open instance (which Slack seems wont to discourage), this means that a user can easily impersonate another user and purport to be sending messages in an official capacity.

Could you tell me more about that? How is that done and is there a way for workspace owners to prevent it?

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#117

Post by [deleted] »

kareemm wrote: post #115
dstaley wrote: post #110

It's still crazy to me that a $16B company can't make the financials of a true native app for Windows and macOS work. Microsoft has some real soul searching to do to fix up Windows development and make it easier and more attractive to companies. Thankfully it seems like both Microsoft and Apple are at least trying to make things easier. Apple will probably do the best with Project Catalyst (I mean, they already got T…

Maybe the lesson is that a decent solution to a painful problem and great sales and marketing are a good recipe for success.

[deleted]

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#118

Post by pm90 »

fiblye wrote: post #113
not_a_moth wrote: post #52

The obligatory "but they have massive losses", > For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2019, the company reported losses of $138.9 million on revenue of $400.6 million. That’s compared to a loss of $140.1 million on revenue of $220.5 million the year prior. [1] [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/31/slack-first-quarter-financ... I don't understand valuations.

My question is where the hell is that money going? That money is all the cash flow in some entire minor industries. It’s the GDP of some minor lower/mid-economy nations’ cities. Their losses are equal to half the entire GDP of Palau. Maybe I’m detached. But I don’t understand the cash flow in chat apps today. It’s absolutely bizarre amounts of money for something that can and will easily be replaced in a few years, a…

Why is it so bizzare? Do you think that Palau has enough people engaged in producing goods or services that deserve more than their current GDP?

I think comparing the valuations of a US company HQ'd in one of the most expensive cities in the world, that has created a tool that is used by nearly all organizations around the world for communication is well worth the crazy valuation.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#119

Post by lewisl9029 »

fpvracing wrote: post #114
lewisl9029 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord has much better performance for large communities, and I've found it to be perfect for remote collaboration with its intuitive and super low friction voice channels. But the issue around professionalism that you bring up is certainly valid. I don't want to have to maintain separate accounts for work vs play (unless there's a seamless way to switch between them, like for Google, but currently there isn't), but…

For me, the voice channels are actually off-putting. I've never been a gamer and don't like the idea of feeling like I'm chatting on the phone with strangers. Text feels much more comfortable. Thanks for your response. It is good to get feedback from somebody who has used Discord as I am just about to launch a new community on Slack. I will stick with Slack for now.

It's definitely not for everyone (or every kind of community), but I've had reasonable success with it in a mostly-remote workplace where voice channels can help emulate desk-to-desk interactions with your immediate team, but as a purely opt-in process compared to a real open-office where you open yourself up to disruptions by anyone at any given moment all the time, and have no opt-out mechanism outside of leaving your desk and camping in a conference room.

Not sure what sort of community you're launching, but if it's for coding definitely check out Spectrum. The Apollo team made a great post about their search for a new community platform and landed on Spectrum due to a couple of reasons that might apply to you as well: https://blog.apollographql.com/goodbye-slack-hello-spectrum-...

TL;DR: The product itself is open source, it has a mechanism for longer-form discourse like traditional forums as well as real-time chat, and is fully index-able by search engines.

Wish you the best on your launch!

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#120

Post by bilbo0s »

seizethecheese wrote: post #71
flukus wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming they grow their user base to be 100 times larger than the current 10 million, are they worth $16 per user?

Way more than that. They charge $7-12 per month.

And they lose money on that.
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