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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

#351

Post by warp_factor »

Congratulation to them. I think what they did is absolutely amazing and will be seen retrospectively as one of the biggest fads of history.

- They managed to disturb millions of worker to an attention-driven work culture in which everything needs to always be synchronous and immediate.

- They managed to change chat from a set of open protocols to a single closed app terribly written in JS.

- They managed to make a lot of people absolute convinced advocate of Slack so that a lot of hyped startups have now to use Slack de facto or risk mutiny and have people create Slack channels on behalf of the company without any oversight.

So yeah I don't blame them but I blame every company that falls for this. I'm convinced that we will see Slack retrospectively as something that destroyed productivity. I will agree that Slack can be useful when used correctly but I never saw a place that used it without it becoming that "attention driven" growing monster.

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

#352

Post by jillesvangurp »

dstaley wrote: post #110

It's still crazy to me that a $16B company can't make the financials of a true native app for Windows and macOS work. Microsoft has some real soul searching to do to fix up Windows development and make it easier and more attractive to companies. Thankfully it seems like both Microsoft and Apple are at least trying to make things easier. Apple will probably do the best with Project Catalyst (I mean, they already got T…

The pain of forking development into multiple separate teams with completely different technology stacks, bugs, and coordination overhead is just not worth it for most startups. It slows you down when you need to be able to adapt quickly. A lot of unicorns in the past would have addressed this by simply focusing on one platform initially but for an application like this that is not feasible. Even Linux support is not optional for a company like Slack since a lot of the decision makers on stuff like this tend to be in the IT department which in many companies would include at least a few Linux users. By going all in on Electron, they ensured access to all relevant platforms from day one.

The reality is, that most of their user base is completely fine with performance as is, which I agree is not ideal. But it's good enough. My guess is that they will gradually fix issues by benefitting from Electron improvements, swapping out bits of js for more efficient WASM based stuff, etc.

Mostly native app strategies are an extremely bad idea for small start ups these days. You triple the cost (or worse) of your development and inevitably you are going to do better on some platforms than others. I know people obsess about native on platforms like IOS but I find it interesting that there are quite a few unicorns out there succeeding with glorified electron/react native code bases. Slack is basically shipping a web app packaged up as an electron app on Android, IOS, Mac, Windows, and Linux. You can run the thing in a browser pretty much without loss of functionality.

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

#354

Post by yzmtf2008 »

warp_factor wrote: post #351

Congratulation to them. I think what they did is absolutely amazing and will be seen retrospectively as one of the biggest fads of history. - They managed to disturb millions of worker to an attention-driven work culture in which everything needs to always be synchronous and immediate. - They managed to change chat from a set of open protocols to a single closed app terribly written in JS. - They managed to make a lo…

> So yeah I don't blame them but I blame every company that falls for this.

While I understand where your complaints are coming from, I encourage you to think about the fact that so many companies are "falling" for them.

You and I might care about disturbances, "attention driven" work culture, open protocols, etc., but not everyone is a software engineer. The world is bigger than that. Clearly, some people quite enjoy Slack. I'm not saying it's the most optimal product, but perhaps being optimal is not as important as it seems.

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

#355

Post by randomsearch »

fastball wrote: post #26
zild3d wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

40x still seems like an insane multiple.

It is overvalued, but then so are a lot of tech companies. I think Slack is a good app, one of the tech startups of true value from this boom cycle, but it’s overvalued. When the likely market adjustment happens, it’ll get a haircut, but it will deservedly survive and prosper.

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

#356

Post by ac29 »

windexh8er wrote: post #132
fiblye wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question is where the hell is that money going? That money is all the cash flow in some entire minor industries. It’s the GDP of some minor lower/mid-economy nations’ cities. Their losses are equal to half the entire GDP of Palau. Maybe I’m detached. But I don’t understand the cash flow in chat apps today. It’s absolutely bizarre amounts of money for something that can and will easily be replaced in a few years, a…

Overpaid executives. I worked for a darling in the security space that has not posted a profit ever in it's 7 years post-IPO (they could at this point, but choose not to). Yet the company paid the CEO, multiple years I was there, over $300M annually. The current CEO makes a "base" $128M and has incentives of over $400M dangling in front of him. Yet any time the company misses guidance do you know what they blame? Pay…

Their CEO is paid ~$10M (total comp) [0]. The other listed executives are paid much less. Even if they cut executive compensation to 0, they would still have massive losses.

[0] https://sec.report/Document/0001628280-19-004786/#s5328ABFAF...

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

#357

Post by SomeOldThrow »

dstaley wrote: post #110

It's still crazy to me that a $16B company can't make the financials of a true native app for Windows and macOS work. Microsoft has some real soul searching to do to fix up Windows development and make it easier and more attractive to companies. Thankfully it seems like both Microsoft and Apple are at least trying to make things easier. Apple will probably do the best with Project Catalyst (I mean, they already got T…

Of course they can, they just won’t.

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

#358

Post by jakubp »

warp_factor wrote: post #351

Congratulation to them. I think what they did is absolutely amazing and will be seen retrospectively as one of the biggest fads of history. - They managed to disturb millions of worker to an attention-driven work culture in which everything needs to always be synchronous and immediate. - They managed to change chat from a set of open protocols to a single closed app terribly written in JS. - They managed to make a lo…

It's not just productivity. It can also damage quality of relationships and introduce unnecessary conflict - as any written communications tool does - because people also fall for using Slack to discuss tough issues. It doesn't replace actual in-person conversation, but especially younger workers and managers don't know that and suffer a lot due to lack of emotional fidelity of actually using their bodies to talk.

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

#359

Post by crummy »

dillonmckay wrote: post #162
Spooky23 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They haven’t fucked up hosted chat yet, which is the benchmark. There is no chat/IM client on the market today that is superior to the pinnacle, which was circa-2000 AOL Instant Messenger. Every platform gets worse every year, except slack.

ICQ was quite impressive in 1997.

ICQ offered offline delivery, which was missing from many chat apps for a long time, too.

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

#360

Post by SomeOldThrow »

marcrosoft wrote: post #130
dstaley wrote: post #110

It's still crazy to me that a $16B company can't make the financials of a true native app for Windows and macOS work. Microsoft has some real soul searching to do to fix up Windows development and make it easier and more attractive to companies. Thankfully it seems like both Microsoft and Apple are at least trying to make things easier. Apple will probably do the best with Project Catalyst (I mean, they already got T…

Maybe because the real future is web apps and has been for more than a decade now.

I keep hearing this but where are all the good web apps?
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