Slack’s Shares Plunge After It Predicts a Larger Loss • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by novok » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 3:36 AM UTC

anbotero wrote: post #117

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…

Thanks! I mean it, THANK YOU! We were using HipChat at a previous company (2013, I think), and I never understood the switch to Slack. I was like: Wait, but what's the difference? Everybody knew about Slack, and no one about HipChat. I also don't think they introduced a new category of software, they just spent an absurd amount of additional money in marketing. That's it.

Hipchat performed horribly at my last company and had a bunch of bugs and issues. Hipchat handed the market to slack basically.

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

#192

Post by tomc1985 » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 4:00 AM UTC

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…

> why does he think his is something new?

Artifice. Just like WeWork trademarking the word We and coming up with a bunch of frothy "created with the power of We" bullshit

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

#193

Post by jdlyga » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 4:08 AM UTC

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 just a message board, or chat room, or IRC with modern design.

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

#194

Post by mikekchar » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 4:21 AM UTC

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…

> 4.) They lost $300m Q4 '19 due to 'stock based compensation' (which from my perspective should have been accrued Q4 '15 onwards)

I haven't looked at this, but if this is a large part of their loss, then you can possible find the answer to why it was declared in one chunk by looking at the timing of option grants. The schedule should be available. Normally when I see "Our company is losing money" and the money it is losing is a one time loss that would normally be spread out over a long period of time, it's because they timed the announcement to coincide with the granting of options. It causes the price to drop precipitously, they grant the options -- "No funny business here! We scheduled the option grant 6 months ago!". Then the price rebounds. It has happened in every large company I've ever worked for. I always wonder how they get away with it...

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

#195

Post by dalyons » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 4:27 AM UTC

anbotero wrote: post #117

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…

Thanks! I mean it, THANK YOU! We were using HipChat at a previous company (2013, I think), and I never understood the switch to Slack. I was like: Wait, but what's the difference? Everybody knew about Slack, and no one about HipChat. I also don't think they introduced a new category of software, they just spent an absurd amount of additional money in marketing. That's it.

you have a different memory to me. I remember switching from hipchat to slack, and it was night and day, obviously better. Slack had more features, a better UX, and wasnt buggy as hell like hipchat

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

#196

Post by kbar13 » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 4:40 AM UTC

SolarNet wrote: post #147

SeeDave wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the clarification! I was really scratching my head there based on the apples to oranges comparison of 'customers' to 'users' and you were right... my revenue estimate was indeed way off. Upgrading Slack from 'WTF' to "Let's see how this plays out and if it's priced accurately' because $30m in losses on $145m in revenue for cloud enterprise chat with a long-tail of free-tier users seems pretty promising! Th…

One problem they do have is - compared to discord - a poor strategy for monetizing non-enterprise communities. Discord will allow individuals to upgrade their discord plan (for small benefits everywhere) and then they can give a boost to a server they appreciate. This means discord can monetize any community. Slack on the other hand has communities with thousands of members in them that have zero monetization. No one…

Do you think slack with its b2b model where companies pay per user or discord where users pay only if they want to makes more money?

I would bet that the free plan for slack is basically free advertising for them to on board people to their paid plans

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

#197

Post by journalctl » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 4:52 AM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #181

8ytecoder wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sense I get is that he's trying to differentiate Slack from the general category of enterprise chat and want to communicate it's more than that. I do know small teams that use Slack to automate their business process workflow that require some manual steps. There's a valid argument that it's yet to realize its full potential in that regard. However, I agree with the general sentiment that Slack must be profitable…

Why anyone would willingly plug an opaque, overly complicated, poorly optimized, externally controlled failure point into their tech stack is beyond me.

When I go to work every day, I don’t want to have to worry about whether or not our chat server is up. My job isn’t to manage chat servers, it’s to manage all the servers we actually need to get our shit done. I don’t want to get paged at 2 AM because some XMPP server is down, which will, the next morning, prevent everyone from communicating. Sure, Slack goes down too, but I can make some coffee and let an entire team of dedicated people fix it; it’s their emergency, not mine.

Only host things if you really need to, and only if you have the resources to support them. Unless you want to add “manage chat servers” to your list of core competencies, just buy something and move on. Our business isn’t managing chat servers. All we need is an IM service so we can communicate and get our stuff done. Slack, for all its faults, works for us, and frees up our time to focus on the problems we actually want to solve.

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

#198

Post by journalctl » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 4:54 AM UTC

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…

What’s the new category? “Basic applications that somehow consume multiple gigabytes of RAM”? To be fair, I don’t think Slack pioneered that, but they certainly popularized it.

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

#199

Post by josteink » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 4:58 AM UTC

mav3rick wrote: post #188

swarnie_ wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the majority of modern tech companies? Take something which is marginally profitable, scale it beyond all comprehension and make it unprofitable. I didn't see the need for a global digitised cab company but it didn't stop two companies burning $30 billion to try and make it happen.

Your view is parochial. A lot of people can't live without Uber and Lyft now. It seems arcane calling a cab company or waiting till one magically appears near you.

It doesn’t cost $30 billion for a cab company to build an app though.

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

#200

Post by mav3rick » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 5:55 AM UTC

josteink wrote: post #199

mav3rick wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your view is parochial. A lot of people can't live without Uber and Lyft now. It seems arcane calling a cab company or waiting till one magically appears near you.

It doesn’t cost $30 billion for a cab company to build an app though.

Everything seems easy behind a computer..