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Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

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

#31

Post by sjg007 »

wayoutthere wrote: post #12

I agree they’re a great product org, but not sure I agree they’re a $16B company — messaging apps tend to be cyclical, so I’m not sold on their long term viability. It’s just too easy for new IM platforms to take root inside a company once the old one gets too noisy. Given the growing grassroots backlash against the entire Slack Way, I’m not convinced they have a long enough runway to pivot to a stickier product befo…

Messaging apps are cyclical. I remember icq! Slack should become part of Google.. that would help Google widen its user base and perhaps a robust video conferencing system can piggy back on top of it.

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

#32

Post by geodel »

Roritharr wrote: post #5

Well deserved. Their product-vision was clear, their execution focused on what mattered... and they didn't need to bend or break laws to succeed. It's easily my favorite unicorn of the past decade.

> and they didn't need to bend or break laws to succeed.

I agree. There is no law against half-assed, bloated Electron based desktop software that can bring even recent hardware to its knees.

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

#33

Post by tdhoot »

theturtletalks wrote: post #18
AznHisoka wrote: post #8

Is 16B really too high of a valuation when Atlassian is double the market cap at 32B? Both have similar products (collaboration/productivity) and are extremely sticky.

Atlassian has a wider suite of products. I would say HipChat is the Slack alternative. Slack has nothing like Jira, BitBucket, or Trello. And Atlassian is more developer centric whereas Slack is monetizing enterprise users.

HipChat is dead. Atlassian threw in the towel and partnered with Slack for messaging.

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

#34

Post by shereadsthenews »

geodel wrote: post #32
Roritharr wrote: post #5

Well deserved. Their product-vision was clear, their execution focused on what mattered... and they didn't need to bend or break laws to succeed. It's easily my favorite unicorn of the past decade.

> and they didn't need to bend or break laws to succeed. I agree. There is no law against half-assed, bloated Electron based desktop software that can bring even recent hardware to its knees.

Why does anyone use the app instead of the site?

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

#35

Post by axaxs »

baybal2 wrote: post #16

It makes no sense for me. It's just a web frontend on top of an irc chat. $16B for that is a complete insanity. This is an insubstantial business, doing an even more insubstantial product, with a sole criteria of it being a "big thing" being some smart banker analyst saying so — that's a hello from dotcom bubble era At such valuation, it will take them ~100 years just to earn its price from ads sales

I agree, but in a less disparaging manner. I'd say rather, the barrier to entry is super low, many competitors exist, and some arguably better. I don't feel they have runaway velocity like say, FB achieved early on when in a similar boat.

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

#36

Post by tty2300 »

jensvdh wrote: post #19
baybal2 wrote: post #16

It makes no sense for me. It's just a web frontend on top of an irc chat. $16B for that is a complete insanity. This is an insubstantial business, doing an even more insubstantial product, with a sole criteria of it being a "big thing" being some smart banker analyst saying so — that's a hello from dotcom bubble era At such valuation, it will take them ~100 years just to earn its price from ads sales

What a complete nonsensical comment. Is Facebook just a frontend on top of a user DB?

Anyone could build Facebook, the value is the existing userbase. I would think that slack would be one of the easiest tools to replace because its only used within organisations so you can get everyone to switch at once.

The entire slack userbase could vaporise within weeks if slack made a wrong move. Slack doesn't really bring anything special to the table.

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

#37

Post by rayiner »

geodel wrote: post #32
Roritharr wrote: post #5

Well deserved. Their product-vision was clear, their execution focused on what mattered... and they didn't need to bend or break laws to succeed. It's easily my favorite unicorn of the past decade.

> and they didn't need to bend or break laws to succeed. I agree. There is no law against half-assed, bloated Electron based desktop software that can bring even recent hardware to its knees.

A chat client that takes multiple hundreds of MBs of RAM and sucks battery life prodigiously should be, if not illegal, at the very least a violation of unwritten international norms.

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

#39

Post by tantalor »

patio11 wrote: post #17
durdleturtle wrote: post #4

I love the software, though this kind of feels like the Dot Com bubble all over again.

I would encourage people to read the Pets.com 10-Q to understand what the dot com bubble was like from a corporate finance perspective, because there are deeper lessons than "Some companies with substantial Internet operations IPOed." https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1100683/000089161800... Pets.com paid $10.5M for pet food then sold it for $8.7M, while needing $23M to keep the lights on that quarter. Compare…

> a price at which a rational person...

This price is not that.

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

#40

Post by theturtletalks »

zild3d wrote: post #20
theturtletalks wrote: post #13

Their valuation stems from MAUs and majority are on the generous free tier. Do investors really think they can monetize the free users?

2018 revenue was $400 million, ~doubled the previous year - Slack isn't a company with just a ton of free users and no monetization

Solid revenue and solid growth. I was not saying Slack has no monetization, but getting from 400M to 16B is 40X growth. To expand that quickly would require monetizing your existing users most of whom use the free tier. How does Slack really plan to do that?
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