261–270 of 469 posts
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Is there any other industry where developing an instant messaging system can result in $500 million in losses despite $700 million in revenue?
My thought as well. What on earth about Slack costs hundreds of millions to operate?
• 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 futu…
It literally is; the SEC requires companies to state that unless they have an established track record of profitability (which most tech IPOs do not).
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There are many industries where this happens. Biotech and drug development is particularly prolific in this regard. Often drug development companies spend tens to hundreds of millions creating a drug, only to have the whole company bought out by a large pharma company once it passes a certain testing/approval milestone. No profits for the company at all. [1] Just because a business doesn't turn a GAAP profit doesn't…
Indeed, I was at a biotech drug conference in Berlin last year and was astonished at how little direct research large pharma are engaged in. They've completely offloaded primary research to drug development companies. Maybe it has always been like that, but for me it was an eye-opener.
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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.
"The Single Greatest Predictor of Future Stock Market Returns": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14948078 And here's the live (well, lagging a few months, but this is a very slow signal anyhow) version: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14950203
As you said, it's a very slow signal. The model predicts what will happen over 10 years. It doesn't say whether there will be steady X% YOY growth, or a massive plunge and then a compensating rebound.
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It’s still mind boggling that all these unicorns haven’t found a way to make money even after being in business for years and having a mature product. It’s a strange world.
Let me let you in on a little secret. Slack makes TONS of money. Take that as a truth and then think about why they're still reporting they're losing money..
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It’s still mind boggling that all these unicorns haven’t found a way to make money even after being in business for years and having a mature product. It’s a strange world.
Let me let you in on a little secret. Slack makes TONS of money. Take that as a truth and then think about why they're still reporting they're losing money..
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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.
Sure, here's a 2009 HN thread all about the impending market crash: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=712198 And one from 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2868728 And here's one from 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3947923 Here's one from 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8338411 And here's one from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12218583
The truth is that no one really knows when the crash will come. But it will come eventually.
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Two years ago a company we were at had Slack and it was used vigorously. They hit a user limit and couldn't get the CEO to pony up whatever it cost to extend Slack. (This company was the kind of company that had unlimited budgets for conferences and sales calls, but could hardly ever get a CC# for a dev team need...) They switched to MS Teams, but at least two years ago, it felt unusable. Or, the team's Slackness cou…
Anecdotally did your team's productivity or quality of work suffer to a large extent after moving to Teams?
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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…
> they can’t turn a profit, and for any hope to turn profit they need this continual growth at a loss, and at some point the investors dump the bag on the public getting a return in a bubble they created and let the public fund the losses. Could you provide some data to show that companies which, at IPO, have any cumulative loss or a very large cumulative loss (as a percentage of valuation or offering size), perform…
It’s clear not many here care to understand the problem, tech generally loves a good pump and dump...look at all the recent tech IPOs... how many of those were boot strapped vs VC backed? And VC backed tech IPOs were in the black?
It’s not about investor risk...its About leveling the playing field.
Again everyone here is screaming investor risk/their choice/don’t have to buy...I don’t see anyone advocating allowing small investors to get in on unicorn tech cos pre IPO. I’m not sure why everyone is pretending it’s about giving opportunity to the little guy...it’s about the need for VC to liquidate.
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Well there people who disagree and would like to invest in them. Why should your opinion be forced on them?
There are people who want to invest in ICOs, Ponzi schemes...others want to rape, murder...why should anyone’s opinions be forced on these people?
> There are people who want to invest in ICOs, Ponzi schemes
Ponzi schemes are fraudulent operations intrinsically designed to extract money from investors by misleading them. Slack is a software company with a cogent, well-defined plan to leverage unprofitability now into significantly greater profitability later. Not only are these things meaningfully different, they're categorically incomparable.
Even if Slack ultimately fails it has a reasonable plan of action that distinguishes it from fraud. The SEC does not exist to eliminate all risk from investor portfolios, that's impossible (and suboptimal!). It exists to (among other things) ensure the risk to investor capital occurs through the normal procedure of markets instead of outright fraud. For similar reasons most ICOs (and particularly fraudulent ones) are categorically dissimilar from a tech company going public at a net loss.
> others want to rape, murder...why should anyone’s opinions be forced on these people?
I can't believe I have to say this, but the two things you described are violent acts with directly violate the rights of other human beings. I'm not sure how much else needs to be said here. We started off at people being allowed to engage in risky but fundamentally legal and mundane investments, and ended up at fraud, rape and murder. Somewhere along the way we've gotten quite lost.