Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 809 posts

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

#61

Post by fpvracing »

tetrisgm wrote: post #44

Congrats to them. I used to be an avid user (loved the way some integrations could help productivity), but since then moved on to Discord, which feels superior in every aspect, especially since it's free. I'm not sure how I feel about the valuation. I'd like to see how the user base, especially the ratio of paying users, has been growing. It feels likely that most of the companies that would have been easy to convert…

How is Discord superior? I haven't really used it but my first impressions are that it seems very tailored to the gaming community. I have used Slack extensively and it appears more professional. And if Discord is free, how do they make money / keep the lights on?

I do worry about Slack's pricing since there is a vast chasm between their free plan and their paid plans. I use Slack to run some open source and hobbyist communities with thousands of members and if for any reason we were forced to switch to a paid plan (at $x per user) we'd be forced to go elsewhere immediately.

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

#62

Post by kortilla »

6cd6beb wrote: post #53

Is this another one of those companies whose S1 says "We're not profitable and may never be"? Why is that the right time to go public? Once the company has an obligation to move towards profitability, doesn't that expose its investors to the risk of another startup subsidizing the same product or service with VC money, undercutting the new established brand? Like if slack wants to become profitable they probably need…

Has it occurred to you that some companies do become profitable?

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

#63

Post by Spivak »

kemiller wrote: post #28
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…

They are stickier than you think. Especially with shared channels.

Slacks biggest paying customers are enterprises using it for internal chat. Not very sticky overall since enterprise customers are used to vendors constantly raising prices.

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

#64

Post by flukus »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #57
ddlutz wrote: post #21

So they are worth $1,600 per user? I don't understand how that is possible at all.

It's not about current user, but potential user growth.

Assuming they grow their user base to be 100 times larger than the current 10 million, are they worth $16 per user?

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

#65

Post by Spivak »

shereadsthenews wrote: post #34
geodel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The site also is a heavy resource hog but you're right that it's overall less.

There are plenty of lightweight clients that use the Slack API. I don't see why people complain so hard that the official client is heavy.

Weechat with Slack is a dream feels like the good-ole IRC days.

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

#67

Post by zknz »

6cd6beb wrote: post #53

Is this another one of those companies whose S1 says "We're not profitable and may never be"? Why is that the right time to go public? Once the company has an obligation to move towards profitability, doesn't that expose its investors to the risk of another startup subsidizing the same product or service with VC money, undercutting the new established brand? Like if slack wants to become profitable they probably need…

Teams bundling will hold back wider adoption by the large co's who use office365. How will the userbase continue to grow?

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

#68

Post by kortilla »

pgm8705 wrote: post #54
geodel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I've never experienced this very common criticism of slack on here. When I occasionally check, Slack is using around 500mb or RAM. A lot for a chat app? Sure. But it has little to no affect on either my 16gb or 8gb machines.

RAM alone isn’t the problem. The issue is that is so laggy and slow. Poor algorithms on 500mb of bad data structures can bring any modern machine to its knees.

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

#69

Post by colechristensen »

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…

Companies switched to slack because hipchat didn't work very well. Slack works pretty well. It would be much harder for there to be internal political motivation to change unless someone does something significantly better which I cannot imagine.

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

#70

Post by khazhou »

Roritharr wrote: post #23
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…

Their moat is sticky enough and they know it. They can decide what verticals they want to compete it, but their company mission to make business-communication more effective is still as open a field as it was when they were founded. They may have to acquire their Instagram equivalent some time in the future, but I can easily imagine that their Enterprise Customers are here to stay.

My very-large project switched chat apps in one weekend (backed by a few weeks of prep by IT team). We had JIRA integration on day one, and one or two missing things within a week. It wasn't that big a deal.

I think Slack aficionados overestimate how much investment most companies have in custom integrations and bots and things that increase switching costs.

Post reply on HN