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Anybody who thinks they know for sure that slack can't possibly be worth $16B should go back and read some threads from around the Facebook IPO (like this one h
by emtel 7y ago
Anybody who thinks they know for sure that slack can't possibly be worth $16B should go back and read some threads from around the Facebook IPO (like this one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4320585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4320585). It's very easy to write reasonable sounding things - making accurate predictions about the future is much harder.
- ngold 7y agoSo slack sells ads that you can target down to what toothpaste you use and how racist you are? Since that was the last major innovation in stealing user behaviour since google. Also what is their russian state mafia stake in slack? That was a big win for fascists investing.
- raldi 7y agoYeah, I'm going to go out on a limb here and venture a guess that Slack is going to do very well for itself, though it may dip and swoon over the next couple years before it reaches that point. An even more applicable comparison is the HN thread about the Dropbox announcement. "What? This is just [IRC|rsync] with gimmicky bells and whistles."
- drawnwren 7y agoI think it's telling that I've seen that Dropbox comment mentioned (and here distorted to the whole thread) probably >100 times yet can't remember the threads it was mentioned in.
- Falkon1313 7y agoYeah. Twitter is 'just' a one-line text field and a page where you can read what other people have entered in that text field. But there's something more to its success than just that bit that any newbie web developer could clone in an afternoon. And even though blogging, threaded forums for discussion, chat rooms, email, etc. all already existed, it still has been enormously successful despite seemingly being drastically inferior to any of them in every way. Things don't have to be better or even good to succeed, they don't even have to be difficult to clone. A bit of luck at the right time followed by a snowball effect and they can be huge. $28 billion for a textfield? Sure, why not?
- golergka 7y agoIn 2010, when I heard that Milner's DST is investing in Facebook at $10B valuation, I thought, with a complete certainty, that incompetent russian investors were getting defrauded. Since then, when I think that some startup has a blown-up valuation, I recall that moment.
- air7 7y agoI really love reading threads like that (or dropbox launch etc). It's really humbling.
- Dirlewanger 7y agoNot really comparable. Facebook has been a full-blown ecosystem for end users even before their IPO. Slack is a productivity tool that your tech job forces you to use. I envisioned Slack's exit being a Microsoft/Amazon acquisition.
- Grue3 7y agoWell, I've been saying Snapchat can't possibly be worth $29bn when it did IPO. And surprise, it lost most of this value. Snapchat is a lot like Slack - it's a feature, not a product. Once Facebook copied the feature, Snapchat was doomed. Same will happen with Slack (in this case I think MSFT will be its undoer).
- tomp 7y agoIndeed... Same (possible) holds for PayPal. I really don't understand why companies like Snapchat and PayPal don't do the reverse - add Facebook-feature to their product! Surely Snapchat would be more useable if it had profiles, friends, etc. (i.e. if it became Facebook-lite, in other words, Instagram clone). Sure, (some) users will revolt, but you don't need to force it down their throat... make it opt-in, or privacy-preserving, or something, and make sure that it's genuinely useful!