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Slack S-1

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Re: Slack S-1

#51

Post by tonyedgecombe »

maxxxxx wrote: post #33
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…

It’s still mind boggling that all these unicorns haven’t found a way to make money even after being in business for years and having a mature product. It’s a strange world.

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.

Re: Slack S-1

#53

Post by LandR »

I'm staggered that there are 575 companies paying slack $100k / year.

I don't even have anything against slack but what is possibly worth $100k a year from a comms software?

Re: Slack S-1

#54

Post by screye »

polote wrote: post #14
CSMastermind wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is going to crash and everyone wants to cash out before it does.

But could also be the thing that will make the market crash nobody knows

I can see that happening.

Loss making unicorns go public -> investor pressure builds to reach profitability -> none of them can deliver on promises in the short term -> public does not want to own these stocks anymore -> causes a frantic selling spree -> market crashes.

Re: Slack S-1

#55

Post by sidcool »

moreira wrote: post #37
douglasfshearer wrote: post #12

Slack has a 5-year, $50M/year minimum commitment with AWS. From the document: > In April 2018, the Company executed an amendment to its existing agreement with Amazon Web Services (“AWS”). The amended agreement was effective as of May 1, 2018 and continues through July 31, 2023. The Company has minimum annual commitments of $50.0 million each year of the agreement term for a total minimum commitment of $250.0 million…

Perhaps I'm just not aware how things work in companies of Slack's size, but... what do you think $4M/mo is spent on, for what essentially amounts to a chat app? I realise there a lot of extras in Slack (attachments cost S3 storage, video calls take bandwidth, webhooks take some processing), but as of January 2019, they had 10M daily active users. $50M/365 gives us $137K per day. $137K per day just to serve 10M activ…

There is a lot of behind the scenes processing for Search, Analytics, Security, Enterprise enablement, internal tooling etc. It may not seem a lot, but the processing/storage needs are Mammoth.

Re: Slack S-1

#56

Post by ralala »

LandR wrote: post #53

I'm staggered that there are 575 companies paying slack $100k / year. I don't even have anything against slack but what is possibly worth $100k a year from a comms software?

Availability

Re: Slack S-1

#57

Post by will_brown »

wbl wrote: post #45
will_brown wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The SEC fundamentally believes it's ok to lose money investing. It's up to you to assess the investments and decide where to put your money.

That’s not the point/issue though. The markets are regulated to protect consumers/investors...private companies can’t just have unregistered public offerings to non accredited investors...so it’s not just “up to you to assess the investments” there are rules and nothing is stopping additional rules to not permit registration of a public offering when the company is operating at a $150,000,000.00 annual loss or more to the point any loss.

Obviously not a popular idea here where everyone is trying to get in early and dump the bag on someone else, but that’s kinda the point of protections, some people won’t like them.

Re: Slack S-1

#58

Post by snazz »

moreira wrote: post #37
douglasfshearer wrote: post #12

Slack has a 5-year, $50M/year minimum commitment with AWS. From the document: > In April 2018, the Company executed an amendment to its existing agreement with Amazon Web Services (“AWS”). The amended agreement was effective as of May 1, 2018 and continues through July 31, 2023. The Company has minimum annual commitments of $50.0 million each year of the agreement term for a total minimum commitment of $250.0 million…

Perhaps I'm just not aware how things work in companies of Slack's size, but... what do you think $4M/mo is spent on, for what essentially amounts to a chat app? I realise there a lot of extras in Slack (attachments cost S3 storage, video calls take bandwidth, webhooks take some processing), but as of January 2019, they had 10M daily active users. $50M/365 gives us $137K per day. $137K per day just to serve 10M activ…

Knowing how famously inefficient the Slack application is with end user resources, I wouldn’t be surprised if their backend has been poorly optimized.

I serve more than 1000 users on a $3.50/mo VPS with a not-particularly-efficient runtime just fine.

Re: Slack S-1

#59

Post by raesene9 »

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…

I was with you on the first part, in other industries such a loss making company might have difficulties going public.

But lost you on the second part. It's not for the SEC (in my opinion) to police who can and can't go private in terms of how their busines is doing.

That's for investors to assess when deciding whether, or not, to buy shares.

The SEC's concerns should (again IMO) focus on whether the company seeking to IPO has been truthful in their prospectus. As long as they're not misleading investors, that's fine.

Re: Slack S-1

#60

Post by raldi »

sinatra wrote: post #43
raldi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also don't give the option of disabling vowels.

That’s an unnecessarily hostile comment. I want to disable threads for myself so I don’t miss important messages. What’s your use case for disabling vowels? And where’s your list of people genuinely asking for disabling vowels for years?

I'm sorry; I've just seen this attitude so many times in my career of, "Why not just create an option for this thing that would completely upend the way the product works?", which doubles the number of possible things you then need to test for, complicates the product, slows down development, adds technical debt, bloats the software, and clutters up the options screen.

I'm on a couple slacks, some where local culture is firmly built on threading, and some where it's not, and the former is at least 10x more productive and enjoyable. If other members of the community had the option to view things threadlessly, they would start replying to threads in the main channel, and ruin the experience for everyone else.

You might say this wouldn't happen much, but think about how hard it is just to get your coworkers to stop using @here frivolously.

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