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Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

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261–270 of 809 posts

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

#261

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.

Plus the rev to valuation makes no sense 40x ratio of Valuation to Rev. Compare this to Alphabet with a 8x, Amazon with a 13x...etc.

These valuations just seem nuts.

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

#262
post #72
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

obligatory "Dropbox is just a trivial ftp server plus SVN" [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

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 :)

Then just leave yourself marked as offline all the time. I see many people that do that and face no kind of backlash for it.

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

#263

> 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…

Eh, maybe I'm in the minority here, but I've been forced to work on MS teams for a project and it's atrocious compared to Slack. Not to mention the lack of a client for linux, their web app doesn't work in chromium for no reason (it does in chrome), and the UX is just shit.

Slack just works and their UI/UX is on point, everything is intuitive. Their client is slow and eats RAM, but I totally see that it's more useful than other chat applications.

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

#265
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because when you disable notifications you still get the god damned red dot/badge thing. They make it very hard to find out where to disable that.

Disabling that is a feature built into your OS (well, at least on iOS and macOS)

The web app changes favicon even when in DnD - a terrible behavior.

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

#266
post #189

Just 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.

I really like IRC, I can customize it exactly the way I want. Slack is garbage.

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

#267
post #189

Just 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.

Having broken things sent a webhook to an #alerts channel is so very excellent. Various channels for home and work and they have been great. I’m sure there are better tools out there, but this has really changed things for the better for me.

Travis builds posting to Slack is particularly nice for my team.

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

#269
post #77

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 far superior voice chat with groups. Discord has better options for channel control. Slack has better integrations with software development tools

For my purposes, voice chat is not a useful feature. I want our team's communications to be in text form so that we can communicate asynchronously, people don't have to be online at the same time and it's easy to read back through what has been said previously. I'm communicating with people all around the world, a very different use case to a team all working in the same office or time zone.

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

#270

I think you missed this line in your post. >Disclosure: I work/am a shill @ Slack.

Downvoters, how is this not relevant? I value knowing who has a vested interest when talking about efficacy.

I haven’t voted either way, but do you have a reference for this claim?
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