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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

#161

Post by cheez »

windexh8er wrote: post #132
fiblye wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Overpaid executives. I worked for a darling in the security space that has not posted a profit ever in it's 7 years post-IPO (they could at this point, but choose not to). Yet the company paid the CEO, multiple years I was there, over $300M annually. The current CEO makes a "base" $128M and has incentives of over $400M dangling in front of him. Yet any time the company misses guidance do you know what they blame? Pay…

That can't be right... according to this https://www.investopedia.com/highest-paid-ceos-2019-4687532

Musk was the highest paid (and that was incorrect, he was not paid that much - that was the max.)

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

#162

Post by dillonmckay »

Spooky23 wrote: post #96
caust1c wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their moat is sticky? They were simply the first company to do hosted chat well enough that it didn't constantly piss people off. I wouldn't call that a sticky moat.

They haven’t fucked up hosted chat yet, which is the benchmark. There is no chat/IM client on the market today that is superior to the pinnacle, which was circa-2000 AOL Instant Messenger. Every platform gets worse every year, except slack.

ICQ was quite impressive in 1997.

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

#163

Post by dillonmckay »

gpm wrote: post #108
khazhou wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My very-large project switched chat apps in one weekend (backed by a few weeks of prep by IT team). We had JIRA integration on day one, and one or two missing things within a week. It wasn't that big a deal. I think Slack aficionados overestimate how much investment most companies have in custom integrations and bots and things that increase switching costs.

Chat history seems like the issue to me. My company has tons of institutional knowledge locked away in slack channels.

They really need to make the search better.

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

#164

Post by jay_kyburz »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #150
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…

I don't even think they need to make a native app; I use plenty of Electron apps day to day, like VSCode, Atom, GitHub Desktop and they're all fine. Slack however is borderline unusable. Ghost processes, background workspaces silently closing and not delivering notifications, processes pinned at 100% CPU, silent crashes, pauses while typing, and even sometimes character drops. I've tried it on three laptops from two…

I'm a Windows user and I never have any of those problems. Our organisation is only about 10 people so I guess we are not pushing it very hard.

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

#165

Post by dstaley »

carlosdp wrote: post #142
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…

I think the pure-web play will end up being a better decision in the long run tbh.

I think from an app developer's perspective, web-based apps are definitely the way to go. That's because it's so incredibly difficult to build a good web, Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android app. I'm hopeful that one day making good native apps will be as easy and accessible as web development.

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

#166

Post by koyote »

nwallin wrote: post #144
ddlutz wrote: post #21

So they are worth $1,600 per user? I don't understand how that is possible at all.

My company is in the middle of switching from Slack to Microsoft teams. The water cooler talk is that we're paying Slack $1000-$2500 per year per user. It sounds like their business model thus far is that of p2w mobile games. Nearly all of your users are minnows, but some are whales. I don't know if any of this is true. It doesn't really sound believable that we're paying that much, tbh.

Both my current company and the one prior to that did the same switch.

We all preferred Slack but the cost was just ridiculous and no one could justify it. Teams came for 'free' with all the other Microsoft stuff we were already paying a licence for.

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

#167

Post by weq »

nwallin wrote: post #144
ddlutz wrote: post #21

So they are worth $1,600 per user? I don't understand how that is possible at all.

My company is in the middle of switching from Slack to Microsoft teams. The water cooler talk is that we're paying Slack $1000-$2500 per year per user. It sounds like their business model thus far is that of p2w mobile games. Nearly all of your users are minnows, but some are whales. I don't know if any of this is true. It doesn't really sound believable that we're paying that much, tbh.

When i moved companies, i went from Slack to Teams also. Dont notice the difference really. Our company did it because of the same reason they use outlook.

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

#168

Post by amykyta »

fiblye wrote: post #123
pm90 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m not talking about their supposed $16b value. I’m wondering where the money they’re actually spending is going. They’ve lost nearly $150 million in a year. How? What does that money even go to? Even paying their devs incredibly generous wages and benefits, server costs, advertising, deals with businesses, etc, I can’t imagine the losses being that big. It’s insane amounts of money to burn through.

That doesn’t seem like that big of a number for a large corporation that Slack is now. Tesla had a net loss of 700mm[1] last quarter. Their business is more capital intensive for sure but still. Just looking at a 150mm net loss and saying it’s a big number doesn’t tell you much.

[1] https://ir.tesla.com/node/19771/html#CONSOLIDATED_STATEMENTS...

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

#169

Post by spbaar »

windexh8er wrote: post #132
fiblye wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Overpaid executives. I worked for a darling in the security space that has not posted a profit ever in it's 7 years post-IPO (they could at this point, but choose not to). Yet the company paid the CEO, multiple years I was there, over $300M annually. The current CEO makes a "base" $128M and has incentives of over $400M dangling in front of him. Yet any time the company misses guidance do you know what they blame? Pay…

>No analyst has the nerve to ask that question point blank on the earnings call.

Ooooh, I need to Google to see if this has happened. Obviously investors and analysts would prefer to have those talks privately to avoid alienating anyone important, but it has to have happened sometime.

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

#170

Post by lone_haxx0r »

> Forrester analyst Michael Facemire says it's hard for people to understand why the platform is more useful than other chat applications without trying it for themselves.

It isn't.

I know Slack probably needs to justify its valuation in front of some people, but Slack is not different from Facebook and Instagram in this regard: They offer nothing unique or technologically superior. The whole point of their business is hoarding users to the point that it's the "default" app in their given context.

I'm not saying it's bad. If they didn't do it, someone else would have done it anyway.

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