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Slack Raises $160M Series E at $2.8B Valuation

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Re: Slack Raises $160M Series E at $2.8B Valuation

#71

Post by AndrewKemendo »

feverishaaron wrote: post #54

For those that are confused about the value of Slack – It's not just about text chat. It's about comprehensive search and combatting organizational forgetfulness and knowledge drain. If we put it on Slack, it's archived "forever" and a team member a few years from now can start with a Slack search before re-inventing the wheel. This is especially evident with the integrations. If just the relevant slice of data is fe…

If we put it on Slack, it's archived "forever" and a team member a few years from now can start with a Slack search before re-inventing the wheel.

Heard that one before. If Slack gets eaten by Google etc...that might not be the case. I am preferential to self hosted solutions.

Re: Slack Raises $160M Series E at $2.8B Valuation

#72

Post by lojack »

727374 wrote: post #66
SandB0x wrote: post #24

Do platforms like Slack really offer a great benefit to a business? Maybe I'm being cynical, but it seems that if you had a dysfunctional organisation then this is not a silver bullet, and if you had a well functioning organisation you would manage just fine with old fashioned tools like email and Dropbox. > Support for private groups and 1:1 direct messaging gives you complete flexibility. Private things stay privat…

> Do platforms like Slack really offer a great benefit to a business? Yes. The main alternative I've seen at a couple largish corporations is Microsoft communicator/lync. Lync has some good video/screensharing stuff, but slack is more reliable and provides a great search history feature, which is the killer feature IMO. Also, the mac client is much less buggy than what MS offers. I know these sound like tiny features…

IRC also doesn't necessarily archive old conversations, which is a requirement for any publicly traded company.

Re: Slack Raises $160M Series E at $2.8B Valuation

#73

Post by fweespeech »

sososoko wrote: post #29
fweespeech wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I agree completely. I really don't see the value compared to the alternatives.

such as?

I've tried FlowDock, HipChat, IRC, Slack, and like 5 others I can't remember the name of.

I always end up going back to IRC.

Re: Slack Raises $160M Series E at $2.8B Valuation

#74

Post by bsbechtel »

jewel wrote: post #67

Can someone with more experience comment on the terms of the investment itself? Why would people invest in this company if they haven't even begun to spend the $120M of their series D money yet? For those of us outside of Silicon Valley who don't have the same funding climate, what's it like?

There's fear of missing out for the investors...every investor in Silicon Valley wants to get in on the next Facebook or Google, and the investing environment there is intensely competitive. For the entrepreneurs though, I am left scratching my head as to why they would accept this money, given the massive amount of risk and responsibility you take on when you accept this money. If you don't need the money, why would you accept it when it has such a high price?

Re: Slack Raises $160M Series E at $2.8B Valuation

#75

Post by fweespeech »

jbhatab wrote: post #21
jayhuang wrote: post #9

This is pretty surreal for me. I tried out Slack briefly when they first allowed the public to request accounts. Made a mental note "cool", and moved on. The next year or so I started to see a lot more teams/companies that were getting on the Slack hype-train, and now this. Huge props to the team on this valuation but I'm still quite confused.

I haven't used a tool like Slack that I have so strongly integrated into my tech ecosystem. It seamlessly fit in with everything I use and is always up on my computer.

Is there anything that you can't use an IRC bot + Pagerduty/OpsGenie/etc for that Slack does integration wise?

Re: Slack Raises $160M Series E at $2.8B Valuation

#76

Post by bratsche »

oskarth wrote: post #48
SandB0x wrote: post #24

Do platforms like Slack really offer a great benefit to a business? Maybe I'm being cynical, but it seems that if you had a dysfunctional organisation then this is not a silver bullet, and if you had a well functioning organisation you would manage just fine with old fashioned tools like email and Dropbox. > Support for private groups and 1:1 direct messaging gives you complete flexibility. Private things stay privat…

Have you ever worked at a remote company? If so, the benefits for group chat solution would be obvious. On the other hand, you could just use IRC (IRCCloud is $5/month and has support for embedded gists etc) and a private chat server. This is what we did at my last company. But I haven't used Slack for real, so don't take my word for it - it's not impossible there are even more benefits compared to IRC.

We used to use irc at my company, mostly because it's what we're all used to using in the past. But maintaining it was kind of a pain in the ass, and as the company grew larger it became more difficult to use and to keep track of who is who. For example, people who have known me for years know my irc name is bratsche, but newer people have trouble finding me on irc.

We're using Slack now and this is not an issue. The search capabilities are nice occasionally, although when I was trying to search yesterday through a private conversation history it only gave me results from public rooms so I finally just had to scroll up a few days to find what I was looking for. Bookmarks/stars are a really nice, simple feature that is incredibly useful though. If someone says something and you think you're going to need to come back to that, just bookmark it right there. I remember years ago having conversations on irc and either copy/pasting into notes files or even taking screenshots of the window so I could come back to it. :)

Re: Slack Raises $160M Series E at $2.8B Valuation

#77

Post by jayhuang »

bsbechtel wrote: post #34
jayhuang wrote: post #9

This is pretty surreal for me. I tried out Slack briefly when they first allowed the public to request accounts. Made a mental note "cool", and moved on. The next year or so I started to see a lot more teams/companies that were getting on the Slack hype-train, and now this. Huge props to the team on this valuation but I'm still quite confused.

Something about this, along with all the other absurdly high private financing rounds currently taking place seems incredibly off. As an entrepreneur, I want access to the cheapest capital I can get, but at the same time in private rounds want partners who can open doors and help break down barriers. Slack is big enough now that the second part shouldn't be an issue (same with Uber, AirBnB, etc). Selling equity at th…

I'd say you can never have too many partners with solid connections. It's been mentioned here a couple times, but the possibility of Slack losing ground in the near future to a new competitor is quite high, especially now that they're on everyone's radar with this kind of valuation.

Partners to help them maintain that position and keep ahead of the competition would be incredibly valuable IMO.

Re: Slack Raises $160M Series E at $2.8B Valuation

#78

Post by richardlblair »

SandB0x wrote: post #24

Do platforms like Slack really offer a great benefit to a business? Maybe I'm being cynical, but it seems that if you had a dysfunctional organisation then this is not a silver bullet, and if you had a well functioning organisation you would manage just fine with old fashioned tools like email and Dropbox. > Support for private groups and 1:1 direct messaging gives you complete flexibility. Private things stay privat…

There are a few problems with your arguments, but it's mostly that you aren't trying to see things from another perspective. You honestly come across as jaded, and only willing to see things from your own perspective.

Email is not a great form of communication. Private chat has a lot of value. Being able to chat in real time is very very valuable.

We use slack where I work, but we have always had a chat program of some sort. Having different chat rooms for different teams means you don't need to scroll through infinite chatter to get an answer, you can just ask it... and ask the right audience. Need to quickly see if you're platform is down? Hop in the OPS channel and see. Want to see what's up with CI? Hop in the Dev channel. Want to see if support is getting hammered? Hop in support...

It's simple, easy to understand, and easy to use. It's searchable, and accessible. The other things you mention seem more like a culture issue than a tooling issue.

Re: Slack Raises $160M Series E at $2.8B Valuation

#79

Post by ghshephard »

bsbechtel wrote: post #74
jewel wrote: post #67

Can someone with more experience comment on the terms of the investment itself? Why would people invest in this company if they haven't even begun to spend the $120M of their series D money yet? For those of us outside of Silicon Valley who don't have the same funding climate, what's it like?

There's fear of missing out for the investors...every investor in Silicon Valley wants to get in on the next Facebook or Google, and the investing environment there is intensely competitive. For the entrepreneurs though, I am left scratching my head as to why they would accept this money, given the massive amount of risk and responsibility you take on when you accept this money. If you don't need the money, why would…

Why do you think there is any more risk/responsibility in raising money in an E-Round versus an IPO?

Re: Slack Raises $160M Series E at $2.8B Valuation

#80

Post by jayhuang »

ebbv wrote: post #63
jayhuang wrote: post #9

This is pretty surreal for me. I tried out Slack briefly when they first allowed the public to request accounts. Made a mental note "cool", and moved on. The next year or so I started to see a lot more teams/companies that were getting on the Slack hype-train, and now this. Huge props to the team on this valuation but I'm still quite confused.

We're in a serious bubble right now, IMHO. This valuation is based purely on the fact that all the other hip companies are using it, along with the fact that it is a good product. Valuations should be based on actual financials, but when it comes to tech right now they rarely are. Which is the definition of a bubble, IMHO.

I feel similarly. Of course there are tons of people saying "no no no, it's not a bubble", but historically, bubbles were never acknowledged until they bursted.
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