361–370 of 659 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but that's the aspect of the cost structure that the acquirer is most equipped to tweak.
Indeed. I expect mass layoffs basically immediately.
I'm not a slack power user, but I feel that it's a bit like IRC but with a fancy (and slow) GUI wrapped around it. Certainly I am wrong, but how wrong?
As it turns out, UX matters and Slack delivers far better UX than IRC since one single entity can control the entirety of the communication pipeline (from protocol to how messages are displayed).
Well, Slack, it was nice knowing you. I wonder who Discord will get bought up by when it replaces Slack after a year or two of Salesforce mismanagement? It's so sad that this is the cycle for software now. Start small, get big fast, get sold, get ruined. I realize I am presupposing Salesforce will ruin Slack - but it's hard to see how they won't , unless they take the approach Microsoft took with Github and keep it a…
> Start small, get big fast, get sold, get ruined Why does every business have to be a $100G business? Can we support a model in which we have a lot of $100M businesses that are doing great things and delivering quality instead of quantity? Investors seem to not like that idea, but customers would love that idea. It's unfortunate that our markets are not optimized for customers.
Because too many businesses fail for the model to work without multi-billion-dollar home runs, I think?
> but customers would love that idea
Sounds like an opportunity. :) There are many domains where small-ish scale SaaS is extremely profitable. The typical HN reader is usually not the target market, so we don't hear about them.
The real problem is when VCs think there's a billion-dollar business in your market, but there's not. And you have to spend millions in VC money just to compete with "we'll-make-it-up-on-volume" free services, and poof goes your nice margin. There were app-based delivery services long before DoorDash, GrubHub, etc. -- where are they now?
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| you already use Office, why not Azure? Not sure why using Office would be a reason to prefer Azure over something else. Can you elaborate? Are there some useful integrations one can benefit from? Regarding Amazon buying Slack. My guess would be it's too expensive. If you look at Amazon's acquisitions history, you would see they almost never spend more than $1B. The one exception I recall is Whole Foods which they p…
Fewer vendors, unified billing/support/contract negotiations. These non-technical things are still integrations in a sense, that enterprises can benefit from. It's nice to be able to get your email (Exchange), identity (Active Directory), productivity/office apps (Office), and underlying infrastructure (Azure), and even business intelligence/analytics (Dynamics) all from one place.
Kinda bummed by this news. I know a bunch of people over at Slack and I'm sure none of them are excited about being acquired. I still don't understand how salesforce has gotten so big where they can acquire $25B healthy companies which really don't fit into their eco-system.
Their sales teams have been locking in all major corporations. I have no idea how they cornered a market so fast. They are living like kings right now.
I can't possibly see this going well for salesforce. Buying slack for 70x revenue is insane. Their entire market is going to be eaten by teams and google chat, if it hasn't already. Microsoft has such a gigantic advantage when it comes to enterprise productivity software because everyone is already using office. And those that aren't are on g-suite. Slack's recent guidance was horrible too.
Honest question: what is Google chat? I only know Hangouts, I did not know they had a Slack/Teams app as well? Or is this the very old app that was integrated into Gmail back in the day?
I'm sure it'll die off soon, like everything that Google attempts that doesn't have a stellar launch and rapid growth rate.
I'm somewhat surprised that Amazon didn't end up acquiring Slack, considering that the major thing they are missing compared to Microsoft is productivity tools. If they had purchased Dropbox and Slack they could've gotten a foothold rather quickly and slowed down one of Microsoft's major selling points (you already use Office, why not Azure?). Discord could be another interesting company in the chat space, as I'm sur…
| you already use Office, why not Azure? Not sure why using Office would be a reason to prefer Azure over something else. Can you elaborate? Are there some useful integrations one can benefit from? Regarding Amazon buying Slack. My guess would be it's too expensive. If you look at Amazon's acquisitions history, you would see they almost never spend more than $1B. The one exception I recall is Whole Foods which they p…
Well, Slack, it was nice knowing you. I wonder who Discord will get bought up by when it replaces Slack after a year or two of Salesforce mismanagement? It's so sad that this is the cycle for software now. Start small, get big fast, get sold, get ruined. I realize I am presupposing Salesforce will ruin Slack - but it's hard to see how they won't , unless they take the approach Microsoft took with Github and keep it a…
> Start small, get big fast, get sold, get ruined Why does every business have to be a $100G business? Can we support a model in which we have a lot of $100M businesses that are doing great things and delivering quality instead of quantity? Investors seem to not like that idea, but customers would love that idea. It's unfortunate that our markets are not optimized for customers.
Because the VC model relies on big returns for early investors and founders, both have no reason to change anything about it.
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Low-code/no-code is a very compelling pitch to businesses that see software as cost center.
It's a compelling pitch, but when it comes to actually using low code/no code solutions... well, it's a conversation that we re-visit every few years for a reason. Everyone needs last-mile customization that requires coding and therefore some technical ability.
I’ve fixed 2 year headaches of billion dollar enterprises in a few hours.
Why couldn’t they do that themselves?
1. Because Salesforce is so effortless to keep running, that billion dollar companies can get by with a couple of admins, and never put any investment into building on its functionality.
2. The people who know Salesforce well enough to do that are gobbled up and paid boatloads of money by Salesforce and Consultancies.
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Amazon is a big place and I can't speak for all of it, but while IT announced that slack was "available" a few months ago, I don't personally know anyone that has actually switched to using it. Everyone still uses Chime. That may just be a peculiarity of my department, but saying "Amazon as a company switched to slack" is definitely overstating what happened.
>I don't personally know anyone that has actually switched to using it. Everyone still uses Chime. It must be just your org/team, because a few of my friends working there in entirely different orgs had their teams switched to Slack fully within the week of announcement. Not claiming you are wrong though, because my sample size of 3 people/teams is purely anecdata.