Well done! :aussie_conga_parrot:
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Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation
191–200 of 809 posts
Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation
#192Earlier 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 biased because I like Slack, although I haven't tried Discord so I'm only comparing it with the usual competitors that are terrible, but it does feel very sticky to me. It's replaced email for my JIRA and Google Drive notifications, it's replaced Google Hangouts for most of my team chat and 1:1 video calls. And I'm not even using all the plugins many of my colleagues are using yet. They really seem to have gotten…
Another area it's very sticky is 'SlackOps' - i.e. putting your devops commands and notifications into Slack.
Having done this at my previous startup it's very, very nice (in my opinion), but also, enough setup work that even supposing you were tempted to change to another platform you'd be reluctant to.
Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dropbox took on a problem users have (how can I sync my files between multiple computers?) and provided a great solution to it. Slack takes a problem users have ("my coworkers keep bugging me with stupid questions") and makes the problem worse, because now your coworkers can see that you're online and demand instant answer :)
Slack is also very popular with open source and hobbyist communities. People often seem to assume that it's used only at work, which I guess makes some amount of sense given that the vast majority of paying customers are probably workplaces. Slack would already be making money off me if they offered an attractively priced plan for open source and hobbyist communities and gave workspace owners an easy way to forward t…
And most of those communities don’t pay a dime not really helping the cause.
Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it’s been the future for a decade, and that future isn’t here ... is it really the future of applications?
I would replace "the future" with saying that it's much more profitable for vendors and less convenient for users, so it's being adopted as fast as vendors can overcome users's resistance.
It is actually much more convenient for users. They can switch computers/phone/OSes and have the same experience. The same is not true with native apps.
Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation
#195Earlier 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.
You could always just export all your company's slack data to preserve it and make it queryable https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201658943-Export-yo...
Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation
#196One aspect of many SaaS companies that I am concerned about is their exposure to economic downturns. Slack charges on a per-user basis, so if their average customer reduces their workforce by 10%, Slack's revenue reduces by 10%.
Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does a subscription have to do with native apps though? All of Adobe's apps are native apps even though they require a subscription license.
Sorry I wasn't clear. The underlying problem is piracy. Big players like Adobe can still use the subscription model. For most vendors, the easiest choice is going the web route. Deployment is another PITA that makes App Store model desirable for the vendors. For Apple and Microsoft it's even better because they get a cut, they curate their platforms and have the upper hand over vendors lest they become competition.
I doubt that Slack would ever offer subscriptions through the App Store.
Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that still the case? That there is no way to export message history? I'm trying to find a way to publish messages from my Slack channel to my website in real-time so that I can give visitors a look at what they are signing up for. Similar to how Pieter Levels has nomadlist.com/chat/ set up (if anyone knows how he does that, please let me know).
It was as far as I was able to tell when I checked many months ago. I've seen no indications that anything has changed, but would love to hear otherwise...
"Corporate Export
On the Plus plan, Workspace Owners can apply to access a self-service tool called Corporate Export. This type of export includes content from public and private channels and direct messages. If Corporate Export is enabled for your workspace, Standard Export will not be available."
https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201658943-Export-yo...
Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation
#199Just throwing out there but has Slack genuinely improved the work lives of anybody? I've used it for my past two jobs and have yet to find a way of using it that doesn't destroy my productivity or make me genuinely afraid of receiving a message and being thrown off what I was doing.
Don't forget, it is YOUR choice to have Slack open. Nobody is forcing you to. It might be an unspoken rule to do so, but I value productivity more. In the event someone has something important to say (rarely the case), come up or call me (or PM me on IRC).
Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would replace "the future" with saying that it's much more profitable for vendors and less convenient for users, so it's being adopted as fast as vendors can overcome users's resistance.
It is actually much more convenient for users. They can switch computers/phone/OSes and have the same experience. The same is not true with native apps.
I don’t want the same experience cross platforms. I don’t want the “Mac experience” when I am using Windows (see iTunes) or the “Windows experience” when I am using a Mac (old versions of Office).