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Skype 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

Skype 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 ago
Skype 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 ago
  Thank you for reminding me that Skype was a good product at one point.
rchaud 7y ago
Skype 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
Then Skype got bought by eBay shortly thereafter for gobs of money, in the somewhat blind hope that synergies would develop between eBay, PayPal, and Skype. Never quite panned out that way. Btw, although I've seen little difference between HipChat and Slack in my day-to-day, the switch from Skype to HipChat was a profound improvement. Messages sent on Skype could and would frequently vanish into the ether, and/or arrive in the conversation thread way out of order. Imagine troubleshooting production issues under those conditions!...

3 ms·

Skype 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

by mattmanser 7y ago

Skype 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 ago
Skype 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 ago
  Thank you for reminding me that Skype was a good product at one point.
rchaud 7y ago
Skype 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
Then Skype got bought by eBay shortly thereafter for gobs of money, in the somewhat blind hope that synergies would develop between eBay, PayPal, and Skype. Never quite panned out that way. Btw, although I've seen little difference between HipChat and Slack in my day-to-day, the switch from Skype to HipChat was a profound improvement. Messages sent on Skype could and would frequently vanish into the ether, and/or arrive in the conversation thread way out of order. Imagine troubleshooting production issues under those conditions!...