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They raised quarter a billion(!) last summer. What on earth are they doing with that money. Building web-based chat apps should not be that capital intensive

by nikanj 9y ago

They raised quarter a billion(!) last summer. What on earth are they doing with that money. Building web-based chat apps should not be that capital intensive https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/26/slack-is-raising-a-250-million-round-at-5-billion-valuation/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/26/slack-is-raising-a-250-mil...

weberc2 9y ago
Making web-based chat apps isn't an end to itself. If the company can't profit from a FF chat app then they won't make one.
- product50 9y ago
  Contrary to popular expectations not everything is about profits. Better user experience trumps $$ since once users are there, money will come in - it is literally Slack's business model where they charge for each new user. Also, while people may feel frustrated about Firefox, I bet they have data showing that users are willing to switch to Chrome for Slack chat or calls when push comes to shove. Otherwise, you bet they would have prioritized this. Data driven development is all about making these kind of tradeoffs.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    What is the difference is between "profits" and "money coming in"?
    - solarkraft 9y ago
      The money you spend in the process.
      - weberc2 9y ago
        Presumably the OP meant something else or he is contradicting himself.
    - product50 9y ago
      Don't go on a tangent. The main point which I am making is that better user experience trumps everything. As we have seen time and again, once users love your product money will get figured out. This is starkly different from your opinion above where all you care about is money and why ff doesn't fit into that narrative. Strong companies don't operate or think like that.
      - weberc2 9y ago
        The tangent was yours. You set "profit" against "UX" and used "the ability of UX to generate money" as the rationale. From a corporate perspective, "UX" is a tool to generate profit, nothing more. To get things back on track, Slack feels that supporting video chat for FF is not the most profitable thing it could do with its money factoring in the profit derived from the improved UX. This is different than "they have a quarter of a billion of dollars in investment and they think that's not enough to build voice chat for FF", which is the implication of the post to which I originally responded. Slack's purpose is to make money, not to "build as many video chat apps for as many platforms as possible"--modulo corruption or incompetence, it will only build clients for new platforms if the opportunity value is higher than the value of other opportunities. Now, if you think that Slack's assessment is wrong and building a FF video chat app is the most profitable thing they could possibly do with their investment, then that's another conversation. I'm going to assume the people who operate the business, who have troves of information about the company and its opportunities, and who are deeply invested in its success are many times more likely than you or I (random Internet strangers) to know where the best opportunities lie, but that's still a separate conversation.
  - rorykoehler 9y ago
    Video chat doesn't even work in their installed app
hkmurakami 9y ago
Reinvesting into ecosystem startups is one. Salesofrce does this too fwiw.
Afforess 9y ago
I'm curious why more money equals faster or better software engineering. Didn't we collectively learn from the Mythical Man Month and others that throwing people at a software problem doesn't scale? More engineers on a project increases communication and administrative overhead; the additional overhead and context costs quickly exceeds any productivity gained. Given this: Why would more money scale, when people - presumably the thing the money would pay for - has already been shown not to scale?
- BoorishBears 9y ago
  That applies to a single project and a single team. With much less than a quarter billion dollars you could spin off new companies, "Slack Calls For Firefox Inc." and "Slack Calls For Edge Inc." each with it's own development team dedicated to supporting a given browser, and still not break the bank. It's just a business choice. It's not they can't, do just don't feel it's worth it.
- godzillabrennus 9y ago
  It shouldn’t be hard to document their API’s and then build a unique team to develop a front end for each browser. With $250M in funding and three major browsers I think it’s reasonable they could support them all that way.
- solarkraft 9y ago
  Apparently they have a really good communications tool.
- convolvatron 9y ago
  one would hope that if you had skilled upper management sitting on 1B they would be able to invest that in both good engineers, and good builders of teams. and if those people weren't able to be effective to be able to track that and take appropriate action (again, with that giant financial lever). the screwy part is that effective upper manager needs to have a deep and intuitive notion about software development organizations in order to be able to evaluate statements coming out of software effectively. but thats alot to ask, so they hire a vp eng with a nice sounding resume. that person turns out to not be very effective, and they translate their lack of discernment into a tier of equally useless middle managers. and if by accident a effective engineer gets hired they are completely unable to change things for the better because all the useless padding drowns out their voice. everyone big company says that they have the resources of a big company but the tactical flexibility and empowerment of a small one. imagine what would you could accomplish were that to be true.
mping 9y ago
I bet they are using the money to strengthen their position, with marketing and enterprise penetration through integrations, etc. screenhero acquisition is an example.
- ch4s3 9y ago
  If their screenhero acquisition and subsequent integration is any indication of how they're spending their money, color me unimpressed. edit What I mean is Slack ruined screenhero, which was amazing before they bought it. Slack's screen sharing is among the worst screen sharing tools I've ever used. It is beyond broken. It uses a massive amount of memory and cpu cycles while being too laggy to use for basic text editing. I actively hate it.
  - t0mbstone 9y ago
    Yep. It is literally the worst screen sharing tool I've ever used. Screenhero used to be amazing. My whole team would use it for pair programming. Now, we've literally had to resort to using Teamviewer, because Slack is so bad.
    - jamie_ca 9y ago
      Yeah, we pay for Slack for chat and 1:1 voice/video, but all our group meetings at work are using Zoom. Far better experience, and the video quality has been great. Have had a few instances recently where people couldn't join the call and had to re-create the meeting, though.
  - mping 9y ago
    I concur, SH used to be so much better; I think they acquired them to get a foot on the screenshare thing. Took them long enough, by the way.
    - ch4s3 9y ago
      Yeah, over a year and they really fumble the opportunity. I'm still looking for a good SH replacement.
tejasmanohar 9y ago
Building an ecosystem. Slack's a business-- not some initiative to build cross-browser web apps. There's a lot to prioritize. When is the last time you've heard a company avoid Slack due to poor browser support?

by nikanj 9y ago

weberc2 9y ago

Making web-based chat apps isn't an end to itself. If the company can't profit from a FF chat app then they won't make one.

product50 9y ago
Contrary to popular expectations not everything is about profits. Better user experience trumps $$ since once users are there, money will come in - it is literally Slack's business model where they charge for each new user. Also, while people may feel frustrated about Firefox, I bet they have data showing that users are willing to switch to Chrome for Slack chat or calls when push comes to shove. Otherwise, you bet they would have prioritized this. Data driven development is all about making these kind of tradeoffs.
- weberc2 9y ago
  What is the difference is between "profits" and "money coming in"?
  - solarkraft 9y ago
    The money you spend in the process.
    - weberc2 9y ago
      Presumably the OP meant something else or he is contradicting himself.
  - product50 9y ago
    Don't go on a tangent. The main point which I am making is that better user experience trumps everything. As we have seen time and again, once users love your product money will get figured out. This is starkly different from your opinion above where all you care about is money and why ff doesn't fit into that narrative. Strong companies don't operate or think like that.
    - weberc2 9y ago
      The tangent was yours. You set "profit" against "UX" and used "the ability of UX to generate money" as the rationale. From a corporate perspective, "UX" is a tool to generate profit, nothing more. To get things back on track, Slack feels that supporting video chat for FF is not the most profitable thing it could do with its money factoring in the profit derived from the improved UX. This is different than "they have a quarter of a billion of dollars in investment and they think that's not enough to build voice chat for FF", which is the implication of the post to which I originally responded. Slack's purpose is to make money, not to "build as many video chat apps for as many platforms as possible"--modulo corruption or incompetence, it will only build clients for new platforms if the opportunity value is higher than the value of other opportunities. Now, if you think that Slack's assessment is wrong and building a FF video chat app is the most profitable thing they could possibly do with their investment, then that's another conversation. I'm going to assume the people who operate the business, who have troves of information about the company and its opportunities, and who are deeply invested in its success are many times more likely than you or I (random Internet strangers) to know where the best opportunities lie, but that's still a separate conversation.
- rorykoehler 9y ago
  Video chat doesn't even work in their installed app

hkmurakami 9y ago

Reinvesting into ecosystem startups is one. Salesofrce does this too fwiw.

Afforess 9y ago

I'm curious why more money equals faster or better software engineering. Didn't we collectively learn from the Mythical Man Month and others that throwing people at a software problem doesn't scale? More engineers on a project increases communication and administrative overhead; the additional overhead and context costs quickly exceeds any productivity gained. Given this: Why would more money scale, when people - presumably the thing the money would pay for - has already been shown not to scale?

BoorishBears 9y ago
That applies to a single project and a single team. With much less than a quarter billion dollars you could spin off new companies, "Slack Calls For Firefox Inc." and "Slack Calls For Edge Inc." each with it's own development team dedicated to supporting a given browser, and still not break the bank. It's just a business choice. It's not they can't, do just don't feel it's worth it.
godzillabrennus 9y ago
It shouldn’t be hard to document their API’s and then build a unique team to develop a front end for each browser. With $250M in funding and three major browsers I think it’s reasonable they could support them all that way.
solarkraft 9y ago
Apparently they have a really good communications tool.
convolvatron 9y ago
one would hope that if you had skilled upper management sitting on 1B they would be able to invest that in both good engineers, and good builders of teams. and if those people weren't able to be effective to be able to track that and take appropriate action (again, with that giant financial lever). the screwy part is that effective upper manager needs to have a deep and intuitive notion about software development organizations in order to be able to evaluate statements coming out of software effectively. but thats alot to ask, so they hire a vp eng with a nice sounding resume. that person turns out to not be very effective, and they translate their lack of discernment into a tier of equally useless middle managers. and if by accident a effective engineer gets hired they are completely unable to change things for the better because all the useless padding drowns out their voice. everyone big company says that they have the resources of a big company but the tactical flexibility and empowerment of a small one. imagine what would you could accomplish were that to be true.

mping 9y ago

I bet they are using the money to strengthen their position, with marketing and enterprise penetration through integrations, etc. screenhero acquisition is an example.

ch4s3 9y ago
If their screenhero acquisition and subsequent integration is any indication of how they're spending their money, color me unimpressed. edit What I mean is Slack ruined screenhero, which was amazing before they bought it. Slack's screen sharing is among the worst screen sharing tools I've ever used. It is beyond broken. It uses a massive amount of memory and cpu cycles while being too laggy to use for basic text editing. I actively hate it.
- t0mbstone 9y ago
  Yep. It is literally the worst screen sharing tool I've ever used. Screenhero used to be amazing. My whole team would use it for pair programming. Now, we've literally had to resort to using Teamviewer, because Slack is so bad.
  - jamie_ca 9y ago
    Yeah, we pay for Slack for chat and 1:1 voice/video, but all our group meetings at work are using Zoom. Far better experience, and the video quality has been great. Have had a few instances recently where people couldn't join the call and had to re-create the meeting, though.
- mping 9y ago
  I concur, SH used to be so much better; I think they acquired them to get a foot on the screenshare thing. Took them long enough, by the way.
  - ch4s3 9y ago
    Yeah, over a year and they really fumble the opportunity. I'm still looking for a good SH replacement.

tejasmanohar 9y ago

Building an ecosystem. Slack's a business-- not some initiative to build cross-browser web apps. There's a lot to prioritize. When is the last time you've heard a company avoid Slack due to poor browser support?