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The point is that it's meaningless to compare the valuation (or weight) of two companies (or organs) that serve very important but completely different function

The point is that it's meaningless to compare the valuation (or weight) of two companies (or organs) that serve very important but completely different functions. And as others have pointed out, there are most likely teams working on putting stuff in space who use Slack, and Slack or its employees couldn't function without the services like communications and weather data that satellites provide. So just like vital organs in a human body, one can't really function without the other. But their relative valuation or weight is unrelated to how important one is to the other or to the rest of the world or body. Each company or organ's valuation or weight is entirely determined by what it needs to be to carry out its function. > If you had literally dozens of dozens of paid-for, or hundreds of free, brains at your disposal, any of which could be dropped into place and be fit for the purpose of letting your body bits talk to each other It's a common trope to argue that Slack is easily replaceable by a competitive product or open-source protocol like IRC. When people say things like "any of which could be dropped into place" or "Slack could be meaningfully replaced at a company with a git repo checkout and some local hardware" [1], we're entitled to ask "so why don't they"? The reasons are to do with network effects, cost-of-ownership, security, scalability, easy-of-use, and countless other factors - but all those factors add up to the reason why Slack is valued at its current valuation. But a nature metaphor applies here too: the evolutionary forces of creation and destruction have meant that a player that may only have been slightly fitter than what was there before has become completely dominant, and made it extremely difficult for another player to challenge it. We can all sit back in our chairs and scoff at how easily another player could replace Slack's function in any individual context, but that tells us nothing about just how the alternatives will usurp Slack's present market dominance in reality. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19082841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19082841

tomhoward 8y ago
By the way, in case you're wondering why I'd be so disparaging of a harmless-seeming comment like yours, it's because comment threads like this literally make HN a laughing stock: https://twitter.com/johnbarton/status/1092641187482095616 https://twitter.com/johnbarton/status/1092641187482095616 Many HN users go to great effort to contribute deeply-considered, carefully crafted, highly insightful comments based on a wealth of experience and expertise. Those are the comments that make HN great. It's a shame when middlebrow dismissals get all the attention.
Jedd 8y ago
Thank you for a more thoughtful response. My original comment was intended to be a succinct yet expletive-free reflection of the despair engendered by this story. I disagree with a few of your claims - mostly some assumptions that I do not share. > .. it's meaningless to compare ... two companies that serve very important but completely different functions. This is the fundamental one. You think Slack serves a very important function, whereas I do not. I also have a different stand on 'cultural relativism'. I believe you can, and probably should, compare individuals and organisations doing wildly different things. > When people say things like "any of which could be dropped into place" or "Slack could be meaningfully replaced at a company with a git repo checkout and some local hardware" [1], we're entitled to ask "so why don't they"? This assumes two things: 1) That people don't replace Slack with better alternatives. This is clearly not true - there are myriad cases where people eschew it outright, or abandon it after some time, with regular posts on HN describing same. 2) That people not actively replacing Slack is proof positive that it's qualitatively a good thing. It should be obvious why this isn't compelling. > The reasons are to do with network effects, cost-of-ownership, security, scalability, easy-of-use, and countless other factors ... Perhaps. Though Network effect in a communication context makes me think a) vendor lock-in, b) proprietary protocols, c) designed difficulty in integrating with existing messaging systems, and d) middle-management FOMO. The rest are obviously contentious -- otherwise there'd only be one player in the market. Fitness in an evolutionary sense may not mean what you think it means. A Cronus related metaphor may be appropriate to locking your customers into a walled garden to discourage potential future competition.
- tomhoward 8y ago
  I just don't get what there is to despair about :) It's just a company that investors have judged is valuable based on the data they've seen. It's no big deal. To some of your points: - Communication is about as important a function as there is. Nothing else happens without it. Indeed it's one of the main reasons satellites exist. - We can argue about whether Slack's communication service is important/good/valuable, but at the end of the day it's a waste of both our time; the market doesn't care what you or I think or say, it only cares what consumers/companies use/buy, and revealed preferences indicate that many people/companies use it and pay for it, and that's the whole reason it has a high valuation. - A few posts on HN about people stopping using Slack tells us little; HN is a narrow audience, and people who write posts about stopping using popular products is orders of magnitude narrower again. - I expressed no value judgements about whether or not Slack is good thing and investors don't either; they just care that it's a successful business that will likely keep getting more successful. - That said, I understand why they make that assessment; I'm in around 10 different Slack instances across all the different projects and networking groups I'm in. I neither love it nor hate it. I don't spend much time in it most of the time. I use it when I need to and don't use it when I don't, and it's no big deal. - But it's now always the go-to product people fire up when a new project or collaboration group comes together. It is now the default product for that type of communication. I couldn't name a viable competitor these days, and I've been online and working in tech for 20+ years, and have used IRC, Campfire and HipChat in the past, as well as others I don't remember. So, none of this should be surprising. It's just a popular product that investors want to invest in. The valuation of other, different kinds of companies is totally irrelevant!

tomhoward 8y ago

By the way, in case you're wondering why I'd be so disparaging of a harmless-seeming comment like yours, it's because comment threads like this literally make HN a laughing stock: https://twitter.com/johnbarton/status/1092641187482095616 https://twitter.com/johnbarton/status/1092641187482095616 Many HN users go to great effort to contribute deeply-considered, carefully crafted, highly insightful comments based on a wealth of experience and expertise. Those are the comments that make HN great. It's a shame when middlebrow dismissals get all the attention.

Jedd 8y ago

Thank you for a more thoughtful response. My original comment was intended to be a succinct yet expletive-free reflection of the despair engendered by this story. I disagree with a few of your claims - mostly some assumptions that I do not share. > .. it's meaningless to compare ... two companies that serve very important but completely different functions. This is the fundamental one. You think Slack serves a very important function, whereas I do not. I also have a different stand on 'cultural relativism'. I believe you can, and probably should, compare individuals and organisations doing wildly different things. > When people say things like "any of which could be dropped into place" or "Slack could be meaningfully replaced at a company with a git repo checkout and some local hardware" [1], we're entitled to ask "so why don't they"? This assumes two things: 1) That people don't replace Slack with better alternatives. This is clearly not true - there are myriad cases where people eschew it outright, or abandon it after some time, with regular posts on HN describing same. 2) That people not actively replacing Slack is proof positive that it's qualitatively a good thing. It should be obvious why this isn't compelling. > The reasons are to do with network effects, cost-of-ownership, security, scalability, easy-of-use, and countless other factors ... Perhaps. Though Network effect in a communication context makes me think a) vendor lock-in, b) proprietary protocols, c) designed difficulty in integrating with existing messaging systems, and d) middle-management FOMO. The rest are obviously contentious -- otherwise there'd only be one player in the market. Fitness in an evolutionary sense may not mean what you think it means. A Cronus related metaphor may be appropriate to locking your customers into a walled garden to discourage potential future competition.

tomhoward 8y ago
I just don't get what there is to despair about :) It's just a company that investors have judged is valuable based on the data they've seen. It's no big deal. To some of your points: - Communication is about as important a function as there is. Nothing else happens without it. Indeed it's one of the main reasons satellites exist. - We can argue about whether Slack's communication service is important/good/valuable, but at the end of the day it's a waste of both our time; the market doesn't care what you or I think or say, it only cares what consumers/companies use/buy, and revealed preferences indicate that many people/companies use it and pay for it, and that's the whole reason it has a high valuation. - A few posts on HN about people stopping using Slack tells us little; HN is a narrow audience, and people who write posts about stopping using popular products is orders of magnitude narrower again. - I expressed no value judgements about whether or not Slack is good thing and investors don't either; they just care that it's a successful business that will likely keep getting more successful. - That said, I understand why they make that assessment; I'm in around 10 different Slack instances across all the different projects and networking groups I'm in. I neither love it nor hate it. I don't spend much time in it most of the time. I use it when I need to and don't use it when I don't, and it's no big deal. - But it's now always the go-to product people fire up when a new project or collaboration group comes together. It is now the default product for that type of communication. I couldn't name a viable competitor these days, and I've been online and working in tech for 20+ years, and have used IRC, Campfire and HipChat in the past, as well as others I don't remember. So, none of this should be surprising. It's just a popular product that investors want to invest in. The valuation of other, different kinds of companies is totally irrelevant!