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Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s chief executive, said in an interview that it would take time for the market to understand his company since it had created a new c
by mattmanser 7y ago
Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s chief executive, said in an interview that it would take time for the market to understand his company since it had created a new category of software, unlike soda or cars
We've had public business software companies for decades, they all created a new "category" of software, why does he think his is something new?
Fundamentally speaking, how is Slack any different to the first email program? The first operating system? The first chat system?
We've had this sort of software, and companies that sell it, for a very long time now.
- anbotero 7y agoThanks! I mean it, THANK YOU! We were using HipChat at a previous company (2013, I think), and I never understood the switch to Slack. I was like: Wait, but what's the difference? Everybody knew about Slack, and no one about HipChat. I also don't think they introduced a new category of software, they just spent an absurd amount of additional money in marketing. That's it.
- phlakaton 7y agoMy company switched from HipChat to Slack around 2015. I won't say hype didn't play into the decision, but IIRC there were two other motivations: 1) more reliable performance, 2) better integrations with Google Docs. At the time it was claimed that this was really a whole new way to organize data and work. In practicality, not that much changed from HipChat. Pinned items and the ability to rifle back through conversations saved my bacon a few times, but looking back on it, I don't think they outmatch properly-organized documentation and wikis.
- anbotero 7y agoWe were kind of heavily invested in Atlassian stack, which means we used Confluence a lot. We had a good system for creating and looking for documentation in our wiki system, so I hope that was not a selling point for Slack. Unfortunately we (Tech) never really knew why we switched. EDIT: Also, on the performance side, we were there for the beginning of both systems, and both had their good amount of issues initially. By the time we switched, I don't remember that many HipChat outages. I remember a lot of Slack outages starting up as well, and these days I have issues with Web interface connectivity at least once a week (native works).
- ismail 7y agoI can tell you my experience of having witnessed some companies move to “slack”, “Jira” etc. There were multiple similar cases. It went something like this: “We are now ‘agile’ Ok what are all the cool agile dev ops companies using? Aha Jira&Slack. Ok let’s use that” From there it gets even more crazy. The tools get included as a standard question for evaluating vendors on RFP’s. Vendors that use a similar toolset are rated more highly. When you question why. The response is along the lines of: “Oh if they are using Jira/slack/other tool, it must be an agile/dev ops/chat ops shop” Put another way sometimes these tools end up being used as a “signal” to others rather than intrinsic value. The value is in the signalling, driven by social proof. If one can pull this of when marketing your product you have a win. Effectively you have associated a movement (I.e agile) with your product (I.e Jira). So the buy decision is driven by the need to show they are doing {x}. There must be some basis Of this and reading on how this is done? The broad topic would be marketing but what specifically? Notes: * This is merely an observation. I am not judging the accuracy of the statement that using a specific product = demonstrating some property. These associations may not be applicable in all markets and I have seen them change over time.
- chrisweekly 7y agoequal parts sad and funny cargo cult driven marketing
- crdoconnor 7y agoMy company switched around the same time. Hype was primarily why we switched.
- scoopertrooper 7y agoAt least when I was using hipchat, there was no way to 'tune' down the notifications, so the bloody thing was super annoying. I basically begged my company to make the switch to Slack after a quick trial.
- astrodust 7y agoMy experience with group messaging was MSN Messenger -> Basecamp -> Campfire -> HipChat -> Slack. Slack's "good enough" for most communication and has better integration with most products, so it stuck. Others always failed in some way. It's not that Slack is irreplaceable, if anything it's more vulnerable than ever, but that it has momentum. Other platforms like Campfire or HipChat always fell short of expectations.
- novok 7y agoHipchat performed horribly at my last company and had a bunch of bugs and issues. Hipchat handed the market to slack basically.
- dalyons 7y agoyou have a different memory to me. I remember switching from hipchat to slack, and it was night and day, obviously better. Slack had more features, a better UX, and wasnt buggy as hell like hipchat
- conception 7y agoIt loses money. A lot of it.
- swarnie_ 7y agoIsn't that the majority of modern tech companies? Take something which is marginally profitable, scale it beyond all comprehension and make it unprofitable. I didn't see the need for a global digitised cab company but it didn't stop two companies burning $30 billion to try and make it happen.
- tantalor 7y ago> it had created a new category of software Let's check that timeline of team chat apps... 2006 - Campfire launches (now part of Basecamp) 2010 - Hipchat launches 2013 - Slack launches
- dboreham 7y ago1980 - usenet launches
- teddyuk 7y agoa few million years bc - one dinosaur grunts to another
- throwaway_law 7y agoJust goes to show the market can stay irrational longer than your species can continue to exist. At the end of the day Slack is a SV unicorn that went public without turning any profit. I believe they marketed this in their S-1 as a "loss-making" company...who does the market think it is anyway trying to act rational.
- w8rbt 7y agoSlack is nothing at all like email. It's proprietary, non-federated and has built-in data discovery/spying mechanisms to record every click/keystroke made by users.
- squeaky-clean 7y agoDoesn't sound that different from Gmail to me.
- w8rbt 7y agoGmail was not the first email program (which is what the OP asked about). Gmail came several decades after email was invented and already in widespread use. You may or may not realize this fact (depending on your age).
- bdcravens 7y agoSlack wasn't the first chat application either. The fact that it's a value add atop IRC is irrelevant, as Gmail is a value add atop IMAP.
- mattmanser 7y agoI'm the OP, it doesn't really matter which was the first, my point was that we've had plenty of new "categories" of software. And in reality many that are just like Slack. In some ways Google Apps for Business is a really good example of a sort of "new category" of communication software. You could plugin apps online, rather than have to host it your self. A bit of googling shows he's called Slack a "brand new category of software" many times before, but I'm not clear what he thinks it is.
- squeaky-clean 7y agoYes and slack is not the first instant messaging program. /snarky quip about your age and IRC/ How many corporations use G suite for their email? How many roll their own email systems and use thunderbird? To the average user, email is a proprietary non-federated system filled with tracking.
- ginko 7y agoWhy do people keep comparing slack to email? It's nothing like email. It's just an instant messenger.
- flixic 7y agoWhat an arrogant take on the impact of Slack from Butterfield. Even if he says that Slack is "not about tech but about making work happen", there has been countless of other programs that, while being "tech", made work happen. I just can't see this "category innovation" at all.
- d--b 7y ago> it would take time for the market to understand his company Perhaps, and also perhaps when they do, it won't be so valuable anymore...
- rchaud 7y agoSlack is different from those companies of yore. Back then, if you created a chat program and went to an investment bank, they'd laugh you out of the office, or advise that you take whatever acquisition offer you can get, because a chat program with tons of competitors isn't enough to build a profitable business on.
- mattmanser 7y agoSkype got investment from VCs in 2003, 16 years ago. is that "yore" enough for you? https://www.vcgate.com/Bessemer_Venture_Partners.asp https://www.vcgate.com/Bessemer_Venture_Partners.asp
- otabdeveloper4 7y agoSkype wasn't a chat program. Skype was a P2P phone calling program over TCP/IP. I.e., a neat trick that might have killed traditional telecoms. Then Microsoft bought Skype and killed it instead.
- DangitBobby 7y agoThank you for reminding me that Skype was a good product at one point.
- rchaud 7y agoSkype never went public though. Investment from VCs happens well before going to an I-bank with the intention of going public. VCs can invest in anything, investment banks are the ones who create the initial public offering. Even so, Skype was a household name for video chat for years (despite it's sometime shoddy quality) until FaceTime, Gchat and others implemented video towards 2010. What's Slack done that's different from other chat platforms available today? Stuff like Jira integration is of interest only to a small portion of its target market, and it's that exact market that will complain about the pricing, that it's non-federated, heavy on resources, intrusive in its tracking, etc.
- phlakaton 7y ago
- siruncledrew 7y agoThat sounds like a cop-out answer from the CEO to be honest. Slack isn't a confusing novelty the market has never seen; foundations of Slack have existed for quite some time (eg. using AIM with chatbots 15 years ago as a kid). It's not the market's fault Slack's revenue/sales expectations don't match their goals. That's entirely on Slack to either do a better job or be more realistic with their 'ceiling'.
- chimi 7y agoI remember a quote that said basically, "If your product is ahead of its time, your marketing isn't good enough."
- bhhaskin 7y agoIt sounds like Slack is drinking their own Kool-Aid.
- viraptor 7y agoFoundations existed for years, not even the same product existed before them: hipchat. It was pretty much equivalent. Slack had a nicer mobile app and some other improvements, but otherwise they're almost the same thing.
- hajile 7y agoSlack bought hipchat from Atlassian and shut it down. https://slackhq.com/atlassian-and-slack-partnership https://slackhq.com/atlassian-and-slack-partnership
- paulddraper 7y agoIn fact, Slack's success was precisely because it was a very well understood type of product (group chat). Everyone shrugged and said "Yeah I need that" and it looked/felt better than Hipchat.
- corobo 7y ago
- __m 7y agoIt’s the usual marketing wank
- bedhead 7y agoHe says this because the kool-aid is flowing and he is financially/emotionally/reputationally incentivized to believe it.
- mping 7y agoPeople always forget about UI/UX and ecosystem. You could argue that we had cellphones for ages, why would someone need an iPhone? You could also argue that an android has the same functionality as an iPhone, again why would someone need an iPhone? The new "category" of software is about how people relate to software, not the software itself. IKEA created a new category of furniture, or it did not? I think Uber created a new category of service, but we always had taxis and gps; Slack didn't necessarily create new software, but in my opinion it put chat apps on the general public's mind and it kinda became the go-to name, same as AWS or IBM. That's worth something.
- techslave 7y agomaybe so, but that’s not his argument. his argument is that it’s so new that people don’t grok it yet. (which of course is wrong)
- srirachafari 7y agoThis exactly. You can tell a lot of the above commenters likely havent spent more than a few hours using Slack. Slack has completely changed the way I, and many of my colleagues, communicate with one another at work. (not saying its better or worse, just absolutely different).
- sjtindell 7y agoOr perhaps they actually haven’t spent enough time not using Slack. I know as someone new to the industry, in all my 4 years I haven’t known a time when I wasn’t able to just ping someone on Slack. It’s natural and obvious to me.
- j8014 7y agoHow has Slack completely changed the way you communicate? You can chat, share files and do a lite screen share in a single app? Integrations? I guess, I don't see it and I've used Slack for years, before that HipChat, and I used IRC for a very long time too.
- ivalm 7y ago
- mnky9800n 7y agoIt's irc but fancy. So I guess they created the fancy?
- 8ytecoder 7y agoThe sense I get is that he's trying to differentiate Slack from the general category of enterprise chat and want to communicate it's more than that. I do know small teams that use Slack to automate their business process workflow that require some manual steps. There's a valid argument that it's yet to realize its full potential in that regard. However, I agree with the general sentiment that Slack must be profitable by now and if their messaging isn't reaching the target audience it's their fault and their fault only. Not to mention the ridiculously high valuation.
- ethbro 7y agoWhy anyone would willingly plug an opaque, overly complicated, poorly optimized, externally controlled failure point into their tech stack is beyond me.
- journalctl 7y agoWhen I go to work every day, I don’t want to have to worry about whether or not our chat server is up. My job isn’t to manage chat servers, it’s to manage all the servers we actually need to get our shit done. I don’t want to get paged at 2 AM because some XMPP server is down, which will, the next morning, prevent everyone from communicating. Sure, Slack goes down too, but I can make some coffee and let an entire team of dedicated people fix it; it’s their emergency, not mine. Only host things if you really need to, and only if you have the resources to support them. Unless you want to add “manage chat servers” to your list of core competencies, just buy something and move on. Our business isn’t managing chat servers. All we need is an IM service so we can communicate and get our stuff done. Slack, for all its faults, works for us, and frees up our time to focus on the problems we actually want to solve.
- rhizome 7y agoIf you want to hear some world-class puffery, check out this interview with Ev Williams that I heard last night on NPR: https://mastersofscale.com/ev-williams-never-underestimate-your-first-idea/ https://mastersofscale.com/ev-williams-never-underestimate-y...
- megaremote 7y agoUm, yes? And they also took time for the market to understand. A lot more time.
- tomc1985 7y ago> why does he think his is something new? Artifice. Just like WeWork trademarking the word We and coming up with a bunch of frothy "created with the power of We" bullshit
- jdlyga 7y agoSlack is just a message board, or chat room, or IRC with modern design.
- journalctl 7y agoWhat’s the new category? “Basic applications that somehow consume multiple gigabytes of RAM”? To be fair, I don’t think Slack pioneered that, but they certainly popularized it.
- kbos87 7y agoAgree - that’s a total cop out. Whether or not they are a novelty product or creating a category is a separate issue and isn’t as important in this context once it’s clear that they have strong product market fit. What matters to the market now is that they are a subscription-based software business model not unlike thousands of other SaaS companies. It’s a very well understood space watched by investors who can compare what they are seeing to many other examples. Slack needs to adjust to life as a public company - how to set expectations, how to manage to those goals. In fairness they also were saddled with hugely inflated expectations before the media and some investors likely realized that they are just like a lot of other SaaS businesses.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]