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Slack S-1

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Re: Slack S-1

#271

Post by Andrex »

raldi wrote: post #229
fratlas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 boy who cried wolf did end up being right about the wolf, just not the timing. :(

Re: Slack S-1

#272

Post by [deleted] »

dmoy wrote: post #259
dd36 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thought as well. What on earth about Slack costs hundreds of millions to operate?

This is literally described in the S-1. A large plurality of it is sales & marketing. The next biggest chunk is R&D.

[deleted]

Re: Slack S-1

#273

Post by baccheion »

will_brown wrote: post #35
neom wrote: post #11

"Our revenue was $105.2 million, $220.5 million, and $400.6 million in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively, representing annual growth of 110% and 82%, respectively. Our growth is global with international revenue representing 34%, 34%, and 36% of total revenue in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively. We continue to invest in growing our business to capitalize on our market opportunity. As a re…

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…

IPOs were historically done by unprofitable companies to raise funds. It's like seeking out VCs for another round of funding, but it's instead the public. Now, it's usually done to give insiders an exit.

What future growth would there be for buyers if the company went public already at its peak?

Re: Slack S-1

#274

Post by geodel »

dd36 wrote: post #235
rayiner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They need to pay about ~2000 employees including multiple hundred engineers who regularly yap about another JS/Electron stunt they pulled today.

Re: Slack S-1

#275

Post by javagram »

wbl wrote: post #214
ec109685 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HipChat was utter crap. At some point things are good enough.

IRC was fine. Really. And the clients didn't chew ram.

IRC’s main issue is not working well with phones or multiple devices I think? (Yes, IRCCloud is a thing but if you’re going with a SaaS already, you may very well just go with a proprietary solution).

Re: Slack S-1

#276

Post by Andrex »

techntoke wrote: post #183
aiCeivi9 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is good enough that it got cloned by Mattermost. No one recreates shitty software.

You mean Slack cloned IRC with markup and pictures

If it were that easy, everyone would be IPOing their Slackalikes right now.

Re: Slack S-1

#277

Post by drb91 »

raldi wrote: post #207
drb91 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Catching up quickly is not something I associate with slack—mostly missing things, actually. This is obviously a hard problem to solve without just making it back into email. Muting apps that spam notifications for someone else’s benefit would be a great start. Not allowing bots to spam new threads at you and cleaning up old threads automatically would also be great—having a ton of old threads brings the client to it…

How thready is your slack's culture?

Somewhere in between real-time chat and email. I'm not sure how threads would help keep track of things though—they're unnamed and you have to scroll through them at an absolute glacial speed, and there's no way to bulk unfollow, so with about six hours of normal use a conversation is lost to the sands of time forever.

Slack just sucks for anything you need to find again, IMHO, it should be treated like it's ephemeral. The logs are worth keeping as leverage against employees of course.

Re: Slack S-1

#278

Post by theWheez »

dd36 wrote: post #235
rayiner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Acquiring more users!

Re: Slack S-1

#279

Post by lotsofpulp »

mises wrote: post #129
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more mind boggling that people will continue to invest in them on the basis of a vague promise of profitability in the distant future. Turning a profit is much harder than buying market share.

The market is hot, and people would stuff money in a hole in the ground right now if you promised a possible 5x return. That will change soon enough. I think these unicorns may know this and may have decided their time to raise money publicly is now, before a market crash. Not saying the market is about to crash, but it's certainly volatile.

Software having basically zero marginal cost is a game changer. There's a reason why the big tech companies are the belle of the ball right now, they all print money, and they're still growing. Some things are worth the risk for that kind of payout.

Re: Slack S-1

#280

Post by pcprincipal »

> In September 2018, the Company completed its acquisition of all issued and outstanding shares of Astro Technology Inc. (“Astro”), a pre-revenue start-up company that provides artificial-intelligence (AI) enhanced communications solutions, for a total purchase price of $43.3 million in cash.

Anyone care to explain how a pre-revenue company can be valued at $43mm? I know the argument can be made Google paid much more for Deepmind, but Google's market cap is 51x more than Slack's on the secondary market right now.

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