29 ms·

Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Slack

858 points by jmsflknr 6y ago

astlouis44 6y ago
It's pretty obvious that Salesforce is going after the same model as Microsoft - bundling enterprise software to create a stronger moat against competitors offering unbundled, standalone versions, and to strengthen the value prop when selling to customers. Will be fascinating to see this rivalry pick up steam as time goes on.
- davio 6y ago
  My previous megacorp switched from Slack to Teams for that reason. Save millions annually for essentially the same product.
orf 6y ago
Damn. I can't see how this ends well for Slack users in the long term. > Combining Slack with Salesforce Customer 360 will be transformative for customers and the industry. The combination will create the operating system for the new way to work, uniquely enabling companies to grow and succeed in the all-digital world. Oh. Oh no.
- kace91 6y ago
  It funny that, everywhere in my circle, people are going "damn, we need to find an alternative now". It really says something about a company that people see their name getting close as a sign they should stop using a product.
  - untog 6y ago
    I doubt they care. What I suspect Salesforce realised long ago was that they don't need to appeal to their end-users, they just need to appeal to the managers in charge of signing contracts. In that regard, Slack is a fantastic fit. Sadly I suspect the people saying "we need to find a Slack alternative" today are the same ones that have been saying "Slack sucks" this whole time, to little effect.
  - aleksanb 6y ago
    Come to zulip! We switched our company to zulip wholesale after covid forced work from home onto everyone, and wow, talk about a force multiplier.
    - vlovich123 6y ago
      How does it compare with Matrix?
    - mushufasa 6y ago
      zulip is one of those rare pieces of software that really gives me joy to use. feature-by-feature on paper, it doesn't necessarily stand out compared to the crowded landscape. It's not a new distributed protocol or anything unique. but you really can tell it's well crafted, with love as slack used to say. And if you don't believe me, you can inspect the source code yourself!
  - daniellarusso 6y ago
    This is what I am excited for. I have wanted our company to move away from Slack to something w better thread discussions. We have long resisted Salesforce because of pricing, say, compared to Pipedrive for CRM. I am interested to see what happens with pricing and many orgs locked data. I know we do not pay for the high uptime plan.
  - jariel 6y ago
    It says much more about the people saying that than anything. Salesforce is a reasonably good operating entity, I don't see any reason for Slackers to flinch. But consider that 'Slack' was a movement - literally the name, the original premise, there was a corporate/hip aspect to it. Which now it's not, just the opposite, because it's 'Salesforce'. So at least in part - 'it's not cool now'.
    - pojzon 6y ago
      TBH it would be the same in case Microsoft would buy them out. Its really hard to get out of the shadow of failed products. Products that people started hating with passion.
    - CharlesW 6y ago
      Agreed, the reactions I'm seeing here feel more more emotional than rational. (Which is totally legitimate. Emotions are a dominant factor in product "love".) If the product were to get worse, there are any number of effectively-equivalent (if not as lovable) substitutes.
      - jariel 6y ago
        It's 'legit' to feel a certain way, the opposite to make decisions about business and productivity that way. The real trick is, to figure out all those things we do that we think are based on utility, but are not. The Saab ad comparing their car to the Jets the make appeals to our 'every little boy wants to be a pilot' fantasy. But the Ford ads that tell us how 'strong' our vehicle is going to be ... even though many of us will never, ever use them for this purpose. Like the guy with 1000 different tools in his shed - he buys them 'because they are useful'. But really, it's the 'emotion/novelty' of utility, not actual utility. At least 1/2 of the tech industry is driven by this, it's hilarious. We HNers, so neurotically passionate about whatever it happens to be ... are the most guilty. Of course a lot comes out of purely speculative and creative use of technology, it's just that we should be better at discerning. Slack, if it's bad, is probably because it's a noisy channel, not because it's Salesforce.
        6y ago
  - slg 6y ago
    Is this specifically a problem with Salesforce? I think people would have this reaction with almost any company that purchases Slack. It represents a shift in focus from being a messaging company to being a piece of a bigger portfolio. That shift alone is much more important than whatever the other pieces in the portfolio happen to be.
    - chadlavi 6y ago
      If it had been Microsoft buying them I would have been like, well, they've done ok with GitHub so far. And I begrudgingly feel that way as someone who reviles their flagship OS and office products.
      - Axsuul 6y ago
        How do you feel about Heroku then? Salesforce purchased them about 8 years ago.
        chadlavi 6y ago
        I've never used it. But I did use a CRM product a while ago that got purchased by SalesForce, and it was a disaster.
  - eplanit 6y ago
    I guess it's the 21st century equivalent to being purchased by Computer Associates -- which was known as the place where good software goes to die.
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    This seemed to be the response in every conversation I've had with people about Slack being acquired. No matter who acquired Slack, it just seemed like negative value to the existing customers who signed on for a ubiquitous messaging platform.
  - Axsuul 6y ago
    Most are quick to overreact but in reality, the switching costs are non-trivial.
- buildbuildbuild 6y ago
  Heroku's consistent user experience post-Salesforce-aquisition gives me a little hope. It would be nice to hear Salesforce offer some assurances of product independence, though.
  - mccolin 6y ago
    I agree Heroku has in this way been a model acquisition, but in this instance I can't see Salesforce being able to make those assurances – they likely see Slack as a key interface for their products and services, and integrating the two to support that vision will require oversight. I can still see a world where Slack is a tool that continues to operate and serve its customers, similar to Heroku post-acquisition, but Salesforce augments their services with Slack tie-ins (and vice-versa). Short: there's a middle ground I think they can strike.
- codeulike 6y ago
  "SlackForce" here we come. The clash of meaning in those two words says it all.
- tazjin 6y ago
  Wow. I had to use a Salesforce tool once, and I can confidently say that the only worse things out there are various online tax return forms and Workday.
- scruple 6y ago
  > The combination will create the operating system for the new way to work, uniquely enabling companies to grow and succeed in the all-digital world. I'm just complaining, but... Why do people write things like this? I see it in my own employer and our marketing material, too. It's confusing bullshit that is devoid of any meaning.
  - codeulike 6y ago
    Its for managers. It works.
  - arkitaip 6y ago
    The text targets key partners, investors and other financial people who needs to be convinced that this is indeed The Best Deal Possible for everyone involved.
  - treis 6y ago
    It's not really devoid of meaning if you understand the space. Roughly, Salesforce is about processes and Slack is about communication. Think about handling something like responding to a RFP. Salesforce is good at breaking that down into several pieces of work and assigning them to different people, but the communication and UI sucks. Slack makes communicating across a team easy but lacks the tools to build in formal processes. Combining those will, at least theoretically, end up as a better product.
- Communitivity 6y ago
  Great for Matrix though. I love Slack, and think this is one of the worst possible ends for it, from the users POV. I hope it was a profitable exit for the founders and employees though. I am also surprised, as I'd think the COVID pandemic would have boosted its use. Though, after thinking about it I've seen MS Teams everywhere outside of Open Source and startups. A post-mortem of why they sold, and the events leading to it, would be an awesome thing for one of the founders to do.
- Axsuul 6y ago
  "We will remain an independent & open platform. We want to be a multiplier on the value of your entire software investment." "We'll still be Slack. I'll still be the CEO." Source: https://twitter.com/stewart/status/1333901107978936320 https://twitter.com/stewart/status/1333901107978936320
untog 6y ago
> Combining Slack with Salesforce Customer 360 will be transformative for customers and the industry. The combination will create the operating system for the new way to work, uniquely enabling companies to grow and succeed in the all-digital world. oh no. It sounds like they're not even going to try to maintain the whole "wholly independent subsidiary" act. Slack is being swallowed wholesale.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  I can't imagine our company sticking with Slack if we are forced to start using Salesforce as well. Although I'm not really sure what we would use at that point. Teams needs the whole Office subscription and we're already on G Suite.
  - untog 6y ago
    I'd say that I'm amazed Google hasn't come up with a competent Slack competitor yet, but then it's "Google" and "a messaging product", the two are like oil and water.
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      >it's "Google" and "a messaging product", the two are like oil and water. What are you talking about? Messaging products are so integral to Google's vision that they can't stop making them.
      - prewett 6y ago
        The problem is they can't settle down on something. I can't even tell you what their current messaging product is right now. Google Wave is dead. Google Facebook^HPlus is dead. I think Hangouts is dead? The thing in my GMail gives me notices that it's going away. Is it Google Voice? Why would I use a product with the name "Voice" to type "Text" to people, especially when it used to be a phone substitute. Certainly nothing is integrated, aside from whatever the thing in GMail is that's going away (and a 100 pixel wide chat isn't going to be useful for team discussions, anyway). Messaging for Google feels like "this ought to be something we can be good at, but can't actually figure out what to do". Google makes "messaging products" but it's just something that floats on top on top of the sea of Google stuff. Like oil on top of water.
productceo 6y ago
Salesforce is rising as a formidable foe to Microsoft.
- goatherders 6y ago
  No they aren't. What is the SF equivilant to O365, Azure, Office, and Windows?
  - ipsum2 6y ago
    They don't have to be exactly matching Microsoft 1:1 to be a competitor. But Office/O365 -> Quip, Azure -> Heroku, Windows -> Lightning Platform (a bit of a stretch)
    - goatherders 6y ago
      Quip isn't an Office competitor. Just because it offers similar functionality doesn't make it a competitor.
jmsflknr 6y ago
More context here: https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/01/salesforce-buys-slack/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/01/salesforce-buys-slack/
tilolebo 6y ago
Damn it, here we go again :-(
juvoni 6y ago
This is a major win for Discord.
- ehejsbbejsk 6y ago
  How so?
  - tiborsaas 6y ago
    They are not Slack.
- offtop5 6y ago
  I'd argue that discord brand simply doesn't lend itself well to business. maybe they'll spin off a business oriented division with a different name,
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Because "slack" is so business-like?
    - offtop5 6y ago
      Look at the use cases. Discord is very much known for people talking about video games , not much else. Slack started as an internal business tool and it remains so.
      - Spivak 6y ago
        Discord also caters to small-med non-gaming online communities almost by accident because the kinds of moderation features you'd need are the same as if you were a streamer with an audience.
      - steveklabnik 6y ago
        There's a bunch of open source projects using it now as well. I have two separate family Discord servers. Quite a few social ones that aren't specifically gaming focused too.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
easton 6y ago
I'm somewhat surprised that Amazon didn't end up acquiring Slack, considering that the major thing they are missing compared to Microsoft is productivity tools. If they had purchased Dropbox and Slack they could've gotten a foothold rather quickly and slowed down one of Microsoft's major selling points (you already use Office, why not Azure?). Discord could be another interesting company in the chat space, as I'm sure they are considering an enterprise play (if they aren't they are insane, considering they have one of the more user friendly chat services and with SSO and a SLA they could probably charge $10 per user). (Yes, I know Chime exists. But I don't think I've ever heard of anyone using it, and Slack is still rather popular.)
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Amazon would have been frustrating, but I suspect less terrible than Salesforce. What a mess.
- naringas 6y ago
  however amazon is not really a tech-first company, their main business is retail (even if a lot of their revenue comes from AWS).
  - greenshackle2 6y ago
    Retail is the lion share of revenue but AWS is over half of profits last I checked.
  - 98codes 6y ago
    Quite the other way, they're a cloud company with a gift shop.
  - cafed00d 6y ago
    I would say Amazon’s main business is commerce. They want to be involved everywhere people are buying/selling things. AWS & Amazon.com are coincidences of them starting up around the same time as the internet. Before long, they’ll own the entire feature for “oh, I need to buy cereal. Alexa buy me cereal. Ok, done. <few mins later>. I’m passing by the Amazon Go store on way home, Alexa. Can I return these shoes I bought last week and pick up my cereal there. Sure.”
crispyporkbites 6y ago
At least now we know that slack is enterprise ready Finally!
iou 6y ago
The pacman continues... ·····•····· ᗤ ᗣᗣᗣᗣ
draw_down 6y ago
Seems like an ignominious end for them. I hope this helps them take on MS, I guess.
subsubzero 6y ago
Kinda bummed by this news. I know a bunch of people over at Slack and I'm sure none of them are excited about being acquired. I still don't understand how salesforce has gotten so big where they can acquire $25B healthy companies which really don't fit into their eco-system.
- JoeOfTexas 6y ago
  Their sales teams have been locking in all major corporations. I have no idea how they cornered a market so fast. They are living like kings right now.
  - op03 6y ago
    Cause gaining Enterprise market share has nothing to do with tech and everything to do with scaling a sales team.
  - thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
    Chat is mostly ephemeral, so there isn't much lost in switching providers even at large corporations. If a better chat app takes off in the next year there isn't much stickiness in the current app, especially when individual teams start using the new product. This is how I've seen both AWS and Slack become standards and large corps–the innovating teams start using it regardless of the corp standard.
  - codeulike 6y ago
    You talking about Salesforce? They've been around since 1999 and have been dominant in SaaS ever since the phrase was first coined. There's nothing fast about it.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Low-code/no-code is a very compelling pitch to businesses that see software as cost center.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
tenaciousDaniel 6y ago
Can't wait to see which Slack alternative wins after everyone jumps ship.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Teams seems to be doing surprisingly well. Considering how many businesses have it "included" with their Office subscriptions, it just has to be good enough to avoid someone wanting to pay extra for an outside service. If Lync was half as good as Teams is now, companies like Slack never would've gotten off the ground.
  - denimnerd42 6y ago
    We still use Lync aka communicator aka skype. the killer feature is screenshare and exchange integration. its actually really hard to get some team members to join us on mattermost because they don’t see the point. :/ Looking forward to teams replacing mattermost and business skype going away.
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      I always found Skype for Business/Lync got confused if you had the software installed but weren't part of the business' domain. My experiences with SfB were: 1. I'm an outside contributor to a company using my personal machine. And 2. My organization but whilst using another organization's hardware. In both cases, joining Skype for Business meetings was downright nightmarish.
  - FridgeSeal 6y ago
    I am absolutely not going back to using Teams: it was a slower, buggier, poorly-designed and consistently weird application. Google isn't capable of putting together a useful chat and then keeping it alive for a meaningful amount of time to save their lives. Discord seems to be on a streak trying to re-invent their image as a competitor in the space, and having used it for enough gaming related things, I'd definitely consider it for work. Zulip seems to garner a lot of positive attention as well.
  - 6y ago
hienyimba 6y ago
I hope this acquisition does not pass regulatory oversight. This is how it starts. Very soon, we will have another competition-killing, anti-competitive behemoth on our hands like we did with FANGM and then we will suddenly ask ourselves how it all happened. THIS. Right here. Is how it happens.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  The general trend seems to be winner takes all single suppliers in each market segment. They have no direct competition so eventually become a tax on us all.
  - CharlesW 6y ago
    > They have no direct competition… I don't understand this sentiment at all. Slack is a nicely-done, enterprise-y chat app with a lot of users, most of who liked the idea of not paying for anything. There are many competitors, including several open source options.
    - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      Right now but how many competitors does Facebook have or Google. Each operates in its own narrow niche and dominates it. Chat apps will go the same way thanks to the network effects.
      - CharlesW 6y ago
        I think you're right, but I don't think of that as the result of a lack of competitors. In the enterprise space, it's going to be Salesforce/Slack vs. Microsoft/Teams.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      Yes there are lots of competitors, including ones specialized for various industries. In finance there is Symphony, which along with being less infantile and more straight-laced than Slack also offers integrations with financial information products like factset.
corentin88 6y ago
Congrats to the Slack's team.
ivraatiems 6y ago
Well, Slack, it was nice knowing you. I wonder who Discord will get bought up by when it replaces Slack after a year or two of Salesforce mismanagement? It's so sad that this is the cycle for software now. Start small, get big fast, get sold, get ruined. I realize I am presupposing Salesforce will ruin Slack - but it's hard to see how they won't, unless they take the approach Microsoft took with Github and keep it as a totally separate business unit. Even then, there's often meddling (see e. g. Facebook with Instagram and Oculus).
- virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago
  > It's so sad that this is the cycle for software now ...now?
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    Earlier you could just stick with the version you had on your CD or floppy and not care what the C-suits was up to on the company that made the software you used. So I guess it wasn't as obvious back then?
    - ivraatiems 6y ago
      That and software wasn't a service, so you weren't chained to the price points and plan levels that executives decided. If Salesforce decides to force everybody using Slack to get Salesforce instead (which seems not unlikely), there's no recourse. We can't just say "well, we have a perpetual license, so we'll do what we want."
    - Spivak 6y ago
      I still know quite a few people who still use their old version of WordPerfect. At some point it became feature complete for them and they've stuck with it ever since.
  - ajkjk 6y ago
    It was sad then, too.
- 6y ago
kingbirdy 6y ago
> The transaction is anticipated to close in the second quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2022 It seems like it will be a little while before Salesforce can start integrating into Slack at least
superfamicom 6y ago
Having gone through many corporate chat transitions, I'm curious where we are headed next or when it will circle back. We already use Salesforce products so I don't see Slack going away unless something much better comes along. MSN / AIM, IRC, Google Chat, Campfire, HipChat, Slack / Discord, ???
- NortySpock 6y ago
  Don't forget Lync / Skype for Business!
  - 310260 6y ago
    I'd prefer to forget it.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  I think these chat apps lack business context. Gitlab and GitHub don’t have real time chat, that would be a start. Then on top of that, to have context driven chat (a chat that is about a merge request, a branch). Or in Jira, to seamlessly chat on a ticket with those involved. That stuff doesn’t exist yet. We have the primitive version of context-less chat which is great for context-less conversation (normal social interaction). In business, we have something very specific to talk about so would like to see a new idea in this space. The place where this does seem to be evolving is in customer support. When you chat with a representative, they have a lot of context. Your account, order, possible issue, etc.
mkurz 6y ago
"Salesforce to Acquire Slack for $27.7 Billion" Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/technology/salesforce-slack-deal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/technology/salesforce-sla...
- raverbashing 6y ago
  How is Slack worth 27 Billion dollars? No, really. That's an unreal price. Slack benefits little from network effects. Deployment has no fundamental secret sauce. This is a crazy number. This does not make sense.
  - quicklyfrozen 6y ago
    The number may be crazy, but Slack does benefit from network effects. For example, my company has many bots/integrations with other systems, years of institutional knowledge, and connections with multiple external vendors. Switching would be painful so there'd have to be some pretty compelling reasons. (And who's got time to recreate all our custom emojis? :-))
    - rabidrat 6y ago
      That's a moat, not network effects. A network effect would be if your friends at other companies get value from joining Slack while you're on it. But there's not (except maybe sharing integrations/bots).
      - quicklyfrozen 6y ago
        I'm assuming that third parties are a lot more likely to join an external channel on a platform they're already using (and are more likely to be responsive as well). I think all the existing integration are examples of an indirect network effect -- companies wouldn't invest in providing them if there weren't already users on the platform.
theNJR 6y ago
I'm a bit confused by what this means for WORK shareholders. "Under the terms of the agreement, Slack shareholders will receive $26.79 in cash and 0.0776 shares of Salesforce common stock for each Slack share, representing an enterprise value of approximately $27.7 billion based on the closing price of Salesforce’s common stock on November 30, 2020." Lets say you own 100 shares of WORK. Does that mean you get both 1. $4,434 in cash (100 * 43.84 current value of WORK) and 2. 7.76 shares of CRM (100 * .0776) Edit: I can't read!
- pashabitz 6y ago
  $2,679 in cash
- jbeam 6y ago
  $2,679 in cash and the fractional shares of CRM (0.76) will likely be converted to cash as well at some market rate.
- manigandham 6y ago
  100 shares of WORK will be converted to $2679 and 7.76 shares of CRM. Where did you get 43.84 from? The current value of WORK doesn't matter, it's the closing price on 11/30. The stock price will effectively be pinned at that now since nobody will want to trade at another price.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - theNJR 6y ago
    >Where did you get 43.84 from? WORK closing price. I just realized I can't read though, misinterpreted the press release.
  - biggc 6y ago
    > The stock price will effectively be pinned at that now Won't it fluctuate with Salesforce's value?
- advisedwang 6y ago
colinmhayes 6y ago
I can't possibly see this going well for salesforce. Buying slack for 70x revenue is insane. Their entire market is going to be eaten by teams and google chat, if it hasn't already. Microsoft has such a gigantic advantage when it comes to enterprise productivity software because everyone is already using office. And those that aren't are on g-suite. Slack's recent guidance was horrible too.
- paxys 6y ago
  Google chat isn't a real competitor in the space. It has always been Slack and MS, and being #2 is a rapidly growing sector is still very valuable.
  - colinmhayes 6y ago
    Not when your competitors are completely free
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    It certainly is when it comes free with G Suite. A company that uses G Suite certainly isn't going to use MS, and usually won't choose to pay separately for Slack. In what sense therefore could it possibly not be a real competitor? It's there, it works, it's fine. It's also relatively young and so we can expect it to improve significantly over the coming years, similar to how Meet has been improving over the past few years.
- stingraycharles 6y ago
  Honest question: what is Google chat? I only know Hangouts, I did not know they had a Slack/Teams app as well? Or is this the very old app that was integrated into Gmail back in the day?
  - colinmhayes 6y ago
    Yea, google has a competitor called chat. As other comments have said it doesn't really stack up with teams/slack, but the video system is pretty good. It works well enough, an has seen consistent improvements over the year. Doubt any company would specifically choose google chat, but I know that many that already have deals for g-suite are using it. The thing is pretty much every company has a contract for office or google chat these days. Hard to imagine paying for slack when you've already got these free apps available.
astlouis44 6y ago
I wonder how Microsoft is going to respond to this..? Although a slightly different market, I could easily see them acquiring Discord and rebranding it towards corporate customers turned off by the incoming Salesforce integration with Slack. After all, Slack managed to Trojan Horse it's way into companies, and now with many people using Discord at home... it's not a stretch to say Discord could take the same approach! Discord have recently been actively re-positioning themselves less towards the gaming community overall, and more towards being a general purpose chat application. Teams will likely see a flurry of updates and new features as well.
kescher 6y ago
Salesforce, more like Buyforce. They are acquiring so many companies, it's not even funny.
- hobofan 6y ago
  That's just what CRM companies do, isn't it? SAP is also just a huge pile of acquisitions that's held together by some duct tape.
  - hu3 6y ago
    I don't envy their authentication team. Must be a nightmare to consolidate old and new users under the same duct taped roof while dealing with acquired systems intricacies. Some hardcore engineering there for sure.
interestica 6y ago
> enabling companies to grow and succeed in the all-digital world That's not the only world, right? Anyone wanna succeed in the real world?
tekacs 6y ago
For people looking for an alternative to switch to, we’ve been using Quill [0], which is pretty much a more slick, clean Zulip. It has a great approach to threads, where you can make them mandatory or optional on a per-channel basis (even when optional they have names and are more useful than Slack threads). They also support adding external parties to channels/threads by email or SMS and even more interestingly, their model is such that you can direct message people in other Quill organizations if you know their details. [0]: https://quill.chat https://quill.chat
- aloknnikhil 6y ago
  On first glance that page looks like something Apple might have put together. I genuinely thought this was from Apple.
  - tekacs 6y ago
    The aesthetics have a certain feel that makes them seem Apple-ish, yes. I feel that when I use it day-to-day, too. :)
- Aeolun 6y ago
  This does not appear to be open source? It doesn’t even have a pricing section.
  - tekacs 6y ago
    It's not open source and it's free for now, presumably for the duration of the beta.
abhij89 6y ago
Back then: https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/04/source-microsoft-mulled-an-8-billion-bid-for-slack-will-focus-on-skype-instead/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/04/source-microsoft-mulled-an... Microsoft must be cursing their decision right now..
- intern4tional 6y ago
  Over what? Teams is currently eating Slacks lunch.
  - heavyarms 6y ago
    I'm so tired of hearing this argument. The amount of revenue generated by customers who use only Microsoft Teams without an Office365 subscription is exactly $0 [1]. MS gives you exactly 2 options to get teams: 1. Free 2. Included as part of Office365. Teams is currently eatings Slacks lunch, but the lunch was paid for by a corporate IT guy who switched to Office365 so he could lay off some IT admins and save some money compared to managing an on-premise Exchange server. [1](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/compare-microsoft-teams-options https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-team...)
    - goatherders 6y ago
      I don't understand. What argument are you tired of hearing? Teams has more users than Slack. Doesn't matter how/why they got them.
      - hacker_newz 6y ago
        Captive users don't really count.
        sib 6y ago
        But lots of Slack users are captive as well (e.g., when CIO licenses Slack for <$FORTUNE_500_CO> )
thrower123 6y ago
They got destroyed by Microsoft's pushing of Teams.
kyleblarson 6y ago
Get ready for annoying nickel and dime'ing for Slack pricing.
- krrrh 6y ago
  Nickel would be a challenge for a man so dedicated to Tin. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/jun/20/digitalmedia.yahoo1 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/jun/20/digitalmedia.y...
qppo 6y ago
This is one of those acquisitions that makes me think there's a tech bubble. Hope I'm wrong.
crsv 6y ago
Eh people will be salty about the Salesforce name but honestly their acquisition of Heroku hasn't caused me any pains regarding our experience with that platform. I'm as skeptical as anyone else, and I think there's more risk in a tighter "integration" making it a miserable experience. Might be a good time in the market for a new Slack competitor!
- dzhiurgis 6y ago
  Wonder what's going to happen to free tier. Some integration into core Salesforce might make sense for reps / teams. Another useful product might be live chats based on Slack tech. Seems good fit, but I do wonder how well they are going to integrate.
  - natchy 6y ago
    maybe free tier was never sustainable and was only a tactic to increase user volume and thus increase Heroku valuation towards an acquisition.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - easterncalculus 6y ago
    Judging from Salesforce's past acquisitions I'd bet (and hope) that we won't see a lot of changes being forced on Slack users in the future. Salesforce will probably use it internally and include Salesforce product integrations, and likely start to use it instead of Chatter.
- nitwit005 6y ago
  I don't believe Salesforce got much value out of Heroku however. Their main app isn't built on top of it, and they were shopping around for cloud providers to expand to places like Australia.
  - ryanSrich 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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emmanueloga_ 6y ago
Whatever happened to matrix.org/vector/riot.im/element.io? (side note: most confusing branding ever :-/). Element seemed to be picking up some momentum a few months back. There was recent news that they acquired gitter too [1]. These days I only hear about slack exodus and discord this and discord that, though. If I get it right, from all the group messengers that appeared around 6 years ago, the only one with an open protocol seems to be Matrix, but it hasn't proven to be to their advantage, apparently. Only Element, Zulip and Mattermost are open source? Honorable mention: IRCCloud was a "hot thing" for a while, but it seems like it wasn't enough to revitalize IRC. [2] -- Appendix, initial releases: * Slack: August 2013; 7 years ago * Discord: May 13, 2015; 5 years ago * Mattermost: October 2, 2015; 5 years ago * Zulip: ca 2014, at least 5/6 years ago? * Matrix protocol: ca September 2014; 6 years ago * vector/riot/element: ca September 2016, 4 years ago -- 1: https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/30/element-acquires-gitter-to-get-more-developers-on-board-with-the-open-matrix-messaging-protocol/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/30/element-acquires-gitter-to... 2: https://www.irccloud.com/ https://www.irccloud.com/
- na85 6y ago
  I would love to see IRC make a comeback but the fact is IRC on mobile is a pain in the ass. Users want persistence and IRC is designed for the opposite.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - keyle 6y ago
    I agree. We should evolve the IRC spec to support the modern requirements of common users. Then web clients are just an addition. Call it IRC2 or anything if it offends the original IRC nerds (which I'm part of)
    - remexre 6y ago
      Well, there's IRCv3... Problem with multi-device is you need some way of authenticating multiple TCP connections as the same logical user, at which point a lot of IRC's simplicity of implementation has been lost. Whether that's a worthwhile sacrifice is a different question though; I think it might be (as a young IRC nerd).
dang 6y ago
The Salesforce-Slack stack so far: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25269934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25269934 <-- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25255231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25255231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25211262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25211262
v1g1l4nt3 6y ago
It makes sense for them to buy Slack instead of Discord, since Discord has no ambitions to go into the enterprise business. This tweet is from 2017, but there hasn't been any announcements stating otherwise: https://twitter.com/discord/status/904787004357058561 https://twitter.com/discord/status/904787004357058561
zmmmmm 6y ago
Makes me mourn for keybase once more :-( I guess I could be wrong but I feel like the chances of Slack surviving with its genuine "compatibility with everything" story and overall usability intact 3 years from now is small.
theandrewbailey 6y ago
I wonder if they will rename Slack to Chat Cloud.
MrsPeaches 6y ago
Is there any reason Rocket.chat [1] never gets a look in, in these discussions? It's open source and you can self host pretty easily. We've been using it for 6 months and really couldn't be happier. https://rocket.chat/ https://rocket.chat/
- sebmellen 6y ago
  +1 Rocket.chat is awesome and the best open-source Slack alternative imo.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
xyst 6y ago
how is it that a chat app is worth $27B?
- abalashov 6y ago
  With 86% gross margins, I'm not entirely surprised it's seen as a good proposition: https://slack.com/blog/news/slack-announces-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-year-2020-results https://slack.com/blog/news/slack-announces-fourth-quarter-a...
  - ebg13 6y ago
    With operating losses at 93% of total revenue, bringing FY2020 net income deeply negative, I'm still surprised.
aprdm 6y ago
I ctrl + f and saw no mention of rocket chat, is it no longer trendy? Have been using for a while on prems and it sort of just works. Good on Slack I guess! A very nice exit.
- myguysi 6y ago
  Posted 2 minutes before you https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25270708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25270708
dr_dshiv 6y ago
Time for Stewart to make his next "failed" game. Go big!!!
simonbarker87 6y ago
Soooo, I bought a very small number of Slack shares at the market open today with no idea this was coming down the pike oh well
- jasonv 6y ago
  This has been much discussed the last bit of time, on what basis are you buying shares in a company..?
  - simonbarker87 6y ago
    Yeah this is a fun little lesson for me. I’d been thinking through the summer that we need to expand what we do with our money and had been dithering, put together a short list of companies (like kid summer) and slack was one of them. I faffed about, put it off and then last night just decided “you know what, just place some trades and pull the plaster off” so I bought like 50 shares across a handful of companies - I own 3 slack shares so I’m not all that bothered. I’ve risked very little money in my first share purchases - I couldn’t even buy a new low end mountain bike for what I’ve got at risk.
madrox 6y ago
"Congratulations to Slack on its exit" I say as I forgot they are post-IPO. I always thought it strange how big Slack got to begin with. History will probably remember its ultimate accomplishment was getting lots of companies to switch from direct-message communication to chat rooms. However, that was probably inevitable as an internet savvy generation took over more companies, and Slack was simply well-timed. It's not like the product was light years ahead of its myriad of competitors. It had a little better design and had friendly corporate terms. Which is good news. If Salesforce really does ruin Slack, I have no doubt someone will swoop into the space just as quickly as they did.
- J5892 6y ago
  If they fuck up Slack, everyone will move to MS Teams. That is, unless some start-up dreams up some kind of revolutionary paradigm shift in how people communicate online. Maybe something in the AR space ~10 years from now.
  - ryanSrich 6y ago
    What about Mac users though? I can’t imagine using a Microsoft product in any capacity that isn’t entirely separate from Microsoft - meaning GitHub and VSCode. Teams feels entirely too tied to MSFT. The UI seems unbearable.
    - 0xffff2 6y ago
      I use Teams on my Linux workstation every day, entirely through the web site running in Chrome (organization-specific IT peculiarities prevent the "native" app from working on our Linux). It works just as well as Slack ever has for me. There are plenty of Mac users in my org too, but I don't know if they use an app or the web site.
      - midasz 6y ago
        Teams videochat works flawlessly on my linux worklaptop as well (native though), I get disconnected from video calls a lot using Slack... If Teams fixes their chatroom issue I'd definitely be willing to make the switch entirely.
justaguy88 6y ago
What do we migrate to now?
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Pidgin enterprise where you can log into multiple enterprise chat applications with one account.
geocrasher 6y ago
I posted this in the watercooler chat at work (we use slack) and got the option to install the Salesforce plugin for Slack. Because of course.
abalashov 6y ago
For me the fascinating headline here is the 86% gross margins. FY2020 gross revenue at Slack was $630.4m, GAAP gross profit $533.2m [1]. SaaS apps are comically, stupidly profitable at scale. That's educational. [1] https://slack.com/blog/news/slack-announces-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-year-2020-results https://slack.com/blog/news/slack-announces-fourth-quarter-a...
- ebg13 6y ago
  Except they had net income of -$570M (that's a minus sign in front) because their operational losses are staggeringly high.
  - abalashov 6y ago
    Yes, but that's the aspect of the cost structure that the acquirer is most equipped to tweak.
    - ebg13 6y ago
      Indeed. I expect mass layoffs basically immediately.
      - nemo44x 6y ago
        Yes the redundant orgs will probably be mainly laid off eventually. You don’t need 2 HR’s, G/A, etc. Sales will probably be reduced quite a bit and the engineering team will stick around.
        Axsuul 6y ago
        Slack's culture is very different from Salesforce's so I think they will at least keep around HR.
        kyawzazaw 6y ago
        What did Salesforce do with Tableau, MuleSoft and Quip?
dcanelhas 6y ago
I'm not a slack power user, but I feel that it's a bit like IRC but with a fancy (and slow) GUI wrapped around it. Certainly I am wrong, but how wrong?
- 2sk21 6y ago
  Same opinion - I have mostly used Slack as a chat tool and it works very nicely for that
- draw_down 6y ago
  What exactly does this fresh, original observation have to do with the company being acquired?
- Bjartr 6y ago
  You're about right, but I think not recognizing the value of having a UX that the average person feels comfortable with Both for daily usage and initial setup. IRC, for all its strengths, does not achieve that.
- Spivak 6y ago
  Slack, maybe unfortunately, always invites the comparison to IRC because they borrowed a lot of their early UX from IRC with mentions, bots, channels, and /commands but that's pretty much where the comparison ends. You can have IRC-style chatbots that parse messages and do things but Slack "integrations" are a lot more powerful and "magic" if your mental model of Slack is just fancy shmancy IRC. Slack bundles basically all the features you'd have to implement out of band with IRC like chat history, search, user statuses, notifications for mentions, formatted content, media content like gifs and videos, reminders, attachments, pastebins. Then there are things that you can't really do with the IRC protocol like reactions, threads, editing messages, messages with dynamically updating content (our Github bot for example changes the color of PR messages as the status changes), and embedded content like Polls that only take up one message and don't spam the chat with votes, shared history across devices.
- kevindong 6y ago
  At its core, that's a fully accurate description albeit a misleading one (along the lines of claiming that central AC is just window AC but without something sticking out of your window). As it turns out, UX matters and Slack delivers far better UX than IRC since one single entity can control the entirety of the communication pipeline (from protocol to how messages are displayed).
romenrg 6y ago
$27.7 Billion. Really impressive.
somehnguy 6y ago
Well, RIP Slack. Salesforce is a cancer that ruins everything they touch as far as I'm concerned.
- anaganisk 6y ago
  What happened to heroku?
nottorp 6y ago
So question: which of all the alternatives to Slack has text as a first class citizen? We don't use video or audio chat at all; just text chat, pinning important info to channels, swapping small files, searching chat history and a few plugins like reminders and github. May be important to mention that we have a lot of separate projects going on and we separate each in its own channel. We absolutely want mobile and desktop clients, not a "web UI" that happens to sort of work on all platforms. Could the hive mind give me some names of alternatives to consider?
- s3r3nity 6y ago
  You could check out Discord - they’ve been pivoting pretty well into an all round Slack competitor with some slick features IMO.
rpncreator 6y ago
The timing of this is impeccable. The Dreamforce (Salesforce's annual developer and user conference) keynote is tomorrow (December 2nd 2020).
leoc 6y ago
As SV ticker moments go, is this one second only to TWITTER ACQUIRES MAGIC PONY https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11937756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11937756 ? Literal Boomer meme.
sjg007 6y ago
Anyone read the press release? Salesforce wants to use Slack as an input device driver. Imagine slacking with your customers, colleagues etc... need to create a DB entry? Slack command. Need to schedule some follow up, slack command. Need to track a bunch of tasks? Slack-Force integrations. I see an AI bot here to help get that data into Salesforce. To quote: "Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world" I work day to day in Slack. It's better than email and the need for workflow and knowledge integrations is clear. Asana needs to get a chat layer going ASAP. The knowledge workflow integration sector is the next big thing.
- tomp 6y ago
  > It's better than email Is it? I regret every time I have to search for some information in past chats. Even M$ Outlook is better.
  - sjg007 6y ago
    Oh yes in that sense worse. In fact both are terrible and there is a lot of room to improve.
- soared 6y ago
  Last year I somehow ended up using the iOS imessage thing where I chat directly with a company and it was excellent. Never saw or heard of it again, but I would love to have a similar ability on slack. I have to chat with like ~10 vendors on a weekly basis for short-burst communication and end up having a bunch of weird shared slack-room things. Salesforce could clean that up and it'd be a great b2b messaging system.
  - twodave 6y ago
    Support for the Apple Card works this way too. It's honestly a joy.
- J5892 6y ago
  I'm just terrified that they'll integrate Slack's clean web interface with the massive net of clutter that is Salesforce's UI.
beezle 6y ago
Am I the only one having flashbacks to the dot.bomb? It is not just Slack of course but certainly this is good icing on the cake of crazy valuations.
nof1 6y ago
Not sure this is good news for me as a Slack user...
mullingitover 6y ago
They started out trying to make an MMO, ended up making Flickr instead. Then they tried making another MMO, but ended up making Slack instead. I really hope they get cracking on another MMO soon.
- idlewords 6y ago
  Or try designing a really great office collaboration suite and end up accidentally making a killer game.
  - Waterluvian 6y ago
    My wife and I once spent TWO hours stuffing photocopiers into an elevator in Deus Ex. So, getting close with that one.
    - keyle 6y ago
      Now that's relationship goals.
    - bartread 6y ago
      One of the oddest comments I've yet seen on HN. Was this part of a mission or just for grins?
      - Waterluvian 6y ago
        We went into the police station for a mission but my inner child called out to me. She says it's the day she realised she wanted to marry me.
  - mey 6y ago
    Do games created in excel count? https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/04/how-an-accountant-created-an-entire-rpg-inside-an-excel-spreadsheet/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/04/how-an-accountant-cre...
    - 6y ago
diveanon 6y ago
Jesus what a bunch of salty FUD in this thread. Congrats to the Slack team on building a $28B product.
- anaganisk 6y ago
  Yeah right? People are just conveniently forgetting Heroku.
mijail 6y ago
Kudos to whoever thought of this at sfdc. This is a visionary acquisition and it makes sense on so many levels. From the fabric of slack's unique sales model to what this means for enterprise communication.
ThomPete 6y ago
I assume this means room for another indie in that space now that Slack has been eaten?
navanchauhan 6y ago
I have always wondered if any company uses IRC?
- derwiki 6y ago
  Yelp did until a few years ago
  - navanchauhan 6y ago
    Any reason why they moved away from it?
    - derwiki 6y ago
      I don’t have first hand knowledge but I think a bunch of small things (not knowing who someone is by just a username, sending messages after hours when user is offline, etc)
meitros 6y ago
Interesting...no slack blog post about it. Just a report of the salesforce news article
dboreham 6y ago
The entire concept of a single chat service with a single UI is bogus. Some sort of mass delusion going on such that everyone nods their head every time one of these mono-services becomes popular. Protocols. Interoperability. Federation.
- dcwca 6y ago
  User experience beats all of those things.
k_sze 6y ago
This makes me wonder what’s going to happen to the partnership between Atlassian and Slack.
doctor_eval 6y ago
I can’t believe no one has mentioned Jabber yet.
dfee 6y ago
What would’ve been the right trade here. I believe if you’d purchased Slack a few days ago on the original announcement of interest, and then sold them after this announcement, but before there’s time for antitrust to take a look at this, you’d have paid massive taxes on short term gains.
TechNerds 6y ago
It is interesting how this news somehow leaks days before the real news is released...

858 points by jmsflknr 6y ago

It's pretty obvious that Salesforce is going after the same model as Microsoft - bundling enterprise software to create a stronger moat against competitors offering unbundled, standalone versions, and to strengthen the value prop when selling to customers. Will be fascinating to see this rivalry pick up steam as time goes on.

davio 6y ago
My previous megacorp switched from Slack to Teams for that reason. Save millions annually for essentially the same product.

orf 6y ago

Damn. I can't see how this ends well for Slack users in the long term. > Combining Slack with Salesforce Customer 360 will be transformative for customers and the industry. The combination will create the operating system for the new way to work, uniquely enabling companies to grow and succeed in the all-digital world. Oh. Oh no.

kace91 6y ago
It funny that, everywhere in my circle, people are going "damn, we need to find an alternative now". It really says something about a company that people see their name getting close as a sign they should stop using a product.
- untog 6y ago
  I doubt they care. What I suspect Salesforce realised long ago was that they don't need to appeal to their end-users, they just need to appeal to the managers in charge of signing contracts. In that regard, Slack is a fantastic fit. Sadly I suspect the people saying "we need to find a Slack alternative" today are the same ones that have been saying "Slack sucks" this whole time, to little effect.
- aleksanb 6y ago
  Come to zulip! We switched our company to zulip wholesale after covid forced work from home onto everyone, and wow, talk about a force multiplier.
  - vlovich123 6y ago
    How does it compare with Matrix?
  - mushufasa 6y ago
    zulip is one of those rare pieces of software that really gives me joy to use. feature-by-feature on paper, it doesn't necessarily stand out compared to the crowded landscape. It's not a new distributed protocol or anything unique. but you really can tell it's well crafted, with love as slack used to say. And if you don't believe me, you can inspect the source code yourself!
- daniellarusso 6y ago
  This is what I am excited for. I have wanted our company to move away from Slack to something w better thread discussions. We have long resisted Salesforce because of pricing, say, compared to Pipedrive for CRM. I am interested to see what happens with pricing and many orgs locked data. I know we do not pay for the high uptime plan.
- jariel 6y ago
  It says much more about the people saying that than anything. Salesforce is a reasonably good operating entity, I don't see any reason for Slackers to flinch. But consider that 'Slack' was a movement - literally the name, the original premise, there was a corporate/hip aspect to it. Which now it's not, just the opposite, because it's 'Salesforce'. So at least in part - 'it's not cool now'.
  - pojzon 6y ago
    TBH it would be the same in case Microsoft would buy them out. Its really hard to get out of the shadow of failed products. Products that people started hating with passion.
  - CharlesW 6y ago
    Agreed, the reactions I'm seeing here feel more more emotional than rational. (Which is totally legitimate. Emotions are a dominant factor in product "love".) If the product were to get worse, there are any number of effectively-equivalent (if not as lovable) substitutes.
    - jariel 6y ago
      It's 'legit' to feel a certain way, the opposite to make decisions about business and productivity that way. The real trick is, to figure out all those things we do that we think are based on utility, but are not. The Saab ad comparing their car to the Jets the make appeals to our 'every little boy wants to be a pilot' fantasy. But the Ford ads that tell us how 'strong' our vehicle is going to be ... even though many of us will never, ever use them for this purpose. Like the guy with 1000 different tools in his shed - he buys them 'because they are useful'. But really, it's the 'emotion/novelty' of utility, not actual utility. At least 1/2 of the tech industry is driven by this, it's hilarious. We HNers, so neurotically passionate about whatever it happens to be ... are the most guilty. Of course a lot comes out of purely speculative and creative use of technology, it's just that we should be better at discerning. Slack, if it's bad, is probably because it's a noisy channel, not because it's Salesforce.
      - 6y ago
- slg 6y ago
  Is this specifically a problem with Salesforce? I think people would have this reaction with almost any company that purchases Slack. It represents a shift in focus from being a messaging company to being a piece of a bigger portfolio. That shift alone is much more important than whatever the other pieces in the portfolio happen to be.
  - chadlavi 6y ago
    If it had been Microsoft buying them I would have been like, well, they've done ok with GitHub so far. And I begrudgingly feel that way as someone who reviles their flagship OS and office products.
    - Axsuul 6y ago
      How do you feel about Heroku then? Salesforce purchased them about 8 years ago.
      - chadlavi 6y ago
        I've never used it. But I did use a CRM product a while ago that got purchased by SalesForce, and it was a disaster.
- eplanit 6y ago
  I guess it's the 21st century equivalent to being purchased by Computer Associates -- which was known as the place where good software goes to die.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  This seemed to be the response in every conversation I've had with people about Slack being acquired. No matter who acquired Slack, it just seemed like negative value to the existing customers who signed on for a ubiquitous messaging platform.
- Axsuul 6y ago
  Most are quick to overreact but in reality, the switching costs are non-trivial.
buildbuildbuild 6y ago
Heroku's consistent user experience post-Salesforce-aquisition gives me a little hope. It would be nice to hear Salesforce offer some assurances of product independence, though.
- mccolin 6y ago
  I agree Heroku has in this way been a model acquisition, but in this instance I can't see Salesforce being able to make those assurances – they likely see Slack as a key interface for their products and services, and integrating the two to support that vision will require oversight. I can still see a world where Slack is a tool that continues to operate and serve its customers, similar to Heroku post-acquisition, but Salesforce augments their services with Slack tie-ins (and vice-versa). Short: there's a middle ground I think they can strike.
codeulike 6y ago
"SlackForce" here we come. The clash of meaning in those two words says it all.
tazjin 6y ago
Wow. I had to use a Salesforce tool once, and I can confidently say that the only worse things out there are various online tax return forms and Workday.
scruple 6y ago
> The combination will create the operating system for the new way to work, uniquely enabling companies to grow and succeed in the all-digital world. I'm just complaining, but... Why do people write things like this? I see it in my own employer and our marketing material, too. It's confusing bullshit that is devoid of any meaning.
- codeulike 6y ago
  Its for managers. It works.
- arkitaip 6y ago
  The text targets key partners, investors and other financial people who needs to be convinced that this is indeed The Best Deal Possible for everyone involved.
- treis 6y ago
  It's not really devoid of meaning if you understand the space. Roughly, Salesforce is about processes and Slack is about communication. Think about handling something like responding to a RFP. Salesforce is good at breaking that down into several pieces of work and assigning them to different people, but the communication and UI sucks. Slack makes communicating across a team easy but lacks the tools to build in formal processes. Combining those will, at least theoretically, end up as a better product.
Communitivity 6y ago
Great for Matrix though. I love Slack, and think this is one of the worst possible ends for it, from the users POV. I hope it was a profitable exit for the founders and employees though. I am also surprised, as I'd think the COVID pandemic would have boosted its use. Though, after thinking about it I've seen MS Teams everywhere outside of Open Source and startups. A post-mortem of why they sold, and the events leading to it, would be an awesome thing for one of the founders to do.
Axsuul 6y ago
"We will remain an independent & open platform. We want to be a multiplier on the value of your entire software investment." "We'll still be Slack. I'll still be the CEO." Source: https://twitter.com/stewart/status/1333901107978936320 https://twitter.com/stewart/status/1333901107978936320

untog 6y ago

> Combining Slack with Salesforce Customer 360 will be transformative for customers and the industry. The combination will create the operating system for the new way to work, uniquely enabling companies to grow and succeed in the all-digital world. oh no. It sounds like they're not even going to try to maintain the whole "wholly independent subsidiary" act. Slack is being swallowed wholesale.

Hamuko 6y ago
I can't imagine our company sticking with Slack if we are forced to start using Salesforce as well. Although I'm not really sure what we would use at that point. Teams needs the whole Office subscription and we're already on G Suite.
- untog 6y ago
  I'd say that I'm amazed Google hasn't come up with a competent Slack competitor yet, but then it's "Google" and "a messaging product", the two are like oil and water.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    >it's "Google" and "a messaging product", the two are like oil and water. What are you talking about? Messaging products are so integral to Google's vision that they can't stop making them.
    - prewett 6y ago
      The problem is they can't settle down on something. I can't even tell you what their current messaging product is right now. Google Wave is dead. Google Facebook^HPlus is dead. I think Hangouts is dead? The thing in my GMail gives me notices that it's going away. Is it Google Voice? Why would I use a product with the name "Voice" to type "Text" to people, especially when it used to be a phone substitute. Certainly nothing is integrated, aside from whatever the thing in GMail is that's going away (and a 100 pixel wide chat isn't going to be useful for team discussions, anyway). Messaging for Google feels like "this ought to be something we can be good at, but can't actually figure out what to do". Google makes "messaging products" but it's just something that floats on top on top of the sea of Google stuff. Like oil on top of water.

productceo 6y ago

Salesforce is rising as a formidable foe to Microsoft.

goatherders 6y ago
No they aren't. What is the SF equivilant to O365, Azure, Office, and Windows?
- ipsum2 6y ago
  They don't have to be exactly matching Microsoft 1:1 to be a competitor. But Office/O365 -> Quip, Azure -> Heroku, Windows -> Lightning Platform (a bit of a stretch)
  - goatherders 6y ago
    Quip isn't an Office competitor. Just because it offers similar functionality doesn't make it a competitor.

jmsflknr 6y ago

More context here: https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/01/salesforce-buys-slack/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/01/salesforce-buys-slack/

tilolebo 6y ago

Damn it, here we go again :-(

juvoni 6y ago

This is a major win for Discord.

ehejsbbejsk 6y ago
How so?
- tiborsaas 6y ago
  They are not Slack.
offtop5 6y ago
I'd argue that discord brand simply doesn't lend itself well to business. maybe they'll spin off a business oriented division with a different name,
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Because "slack" is so business-like?
  - offtop5 6y ago
    Look at the use cases. Discord is very much known for people talking about video games , not much else. Slack started as an internal business tool and it remains so.
    - Spivak 6y ago
      Discord also caters to small-med non-gaming online communities almost by accident because the kinds of moderation features you'd need are the same as if you were a streamer with an audience.
    - steveklabnik 6y ago
      There's a bunch of open source projects using it now as well. I have two separate family Discord servers. Quite a few social ones that aren't specifically gaming focused too.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

easton 6y ago

I'm somewhat surprised that Amazon didn't end up acquiring Slack, considering that the major thing they are missing compared to Microsoft is productivity tools. If they had purchased Dropbox and Slack they could've gotten a foothold rather quickly and slowed down one of Microsoft's major selling points (you already use Office, why not Azure?). Discord could be another interesting company in the chat space, as I'm sure they are considering an enterprise play (if they aren't they are insane, considering they have one of the more user friendly chat services and with SSO and a SLA they could probably charge $10 per user). (Yes, I know Chime exists. But I don't think I've ever heard of anyone using it, and Slack is still rather popular.)

ogre_codes 6y ago
Amazon would have been frustrating, but I suspect less terrible than Salesforce. What a mess.
naringas 6y ago
however amazon is not really a tech-first company, their main business is retail (even if a lot of their revenue comes from AWS).
- greenshackle2 6y ago
  Retail is the lion share of revenue but AWS is over half of profits last I checked.
- 98codes 6y ago
  Quite the other way, they're a cloud company with a gift shop.
- cafed00d 6y ago
  I would say Amazon’s main business is commerce. They want to be involved everywhere people are buying/selling things. AWS & Amazon.com are coincidences of them starting up around the same time as the internet. Before long, they’ll own the entire feature for “oh, I need to buy cereal. Alexa buy me cereal. Ok, done. <few mins later>. I’m passing by the Amazon Go store on way home, Alexa. Can I return these shoes I bought last week and pick up my cereal there. Sure.”

crispyporkbites 6y ago

At least now we know that slack is enterprise ready Finally!

iou 6y ago

The pacman continues... ·····•····· ᗤ ᗣᗣᗣᗣ

draw_down 6y ago

Seems like an ignominious end for them. I hope this helps them take on MS, I guess.

subsubzero 6y ago

Kinda bummed by this news. I know a bunch of people over at Slack and I'm sure none of them are excited about being acquired. I still don't understand how salesforce has gotten so big where they can acquire $25B healthy companies which really don't fit into their eco-system.

JoeOfTexas 6y ago
Their sales teams have been locking in all major corporations. I have no idea how they cornered a market so fast. They are living like kings right now.
- op03 6y ago
  Cause gaining Enterprise market share has nothing to do with tech and everything to do with scaling a sales team.
- thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
  Chat is mostly ephemeral, so there isn't much lost in switching providers even at large corporations. If a better chat app takes off in the next year there isn't much stickiness in the current app, especially when individual teams start using the new product. This is how I've seen both AWS and Slack become standards and large corps–the innovating teams start using it regardless of the corp standard.
- codeulike 6y ago
  You talking about Salesforce? They've been around since 1999 and have been dominant in SaaS ever since the phrase was first coined. There's nothing fast about it.
ForHackernews 6y ago
Low-code/no-code is a very compelling pitch to businesses that see software as cost center.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago

tenaciousDaniel 6y ago

Can't wait to see which Slack alternative wins after everyone jumps ship.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Teams seems to be doing surprisingly well. Considering how many businesses have it "included" with their Office subscriptions, it just has to be good enough to avoid someone wanting to pay extra for an outside service. If Lync was half as good as Teams is now, companies like Slack never would've gotten off the ground.
- denimnerd42 6y ago
  We still use Lync aka communicator aka skype. the killer feature is screenshare and exchange integration. its actually really hard to get some team members to join us on mattermost because they don’t see the point. :/ Looking forward to teams replacing mattermost and business skype going away.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    I always found Skype for Business/Lync got confused if you had the software installed but weren't part of the business' domain. My experiences with SfB were: 1. I'm an outside contributor to a company using my personal machine. And 2. My organization but whilst using another organization's hardware. In both cases, joining Skype for Business meetings was downright nightmarish.
- FridgeSeal 6y ago
  I am absolutely not going back to using Teams: it was a slower, buggier, poorly-designed and consistently weird application. Google isn't capable of putting together a useful chat and then keeping it alive for a meaningful amount of time to save their lives. Discord seems to be on a streak trying to re-invent their image as a competitor in the space, and having used it for enough gaming related things, I'd definitely consider it for work. Zulip seems to garner a lot of positive attention as well.
- 6y ago

hienyimba 6y ago

I hope this acquisition does not pass regulatory oversight. This is how it starts. Very soon, we will have another competition-killing, anti-competitive behemoth on our hands like we did with FANGM and then we will suddenly ask ourselves how it all happened. THIS. Right here. Is how it happens.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
The general trend seems to be winner takes all single suppliers in each market segment. They have no direct competition so eventually become a tax on us all.
- CharlesW 6y ago
  > They have no direct competition… I don't understand this sentiment at all. Slack is a nicely-done, enterprise-y chat app with a lot of users, most of who liked the idea of not paying for anything. There are many competitors, including several open source options.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    Right now but how many competitors does Facebook have or Google. Each operates in its own narrow niche and dominates it. Chat apps will go the same way thanks to the network effects.
    - CharlesW 6y ago
      I think you're right, but I don't think of that as the result of a lack of competitors. In the enterprise space, it's going to be Salesforce/Slack vs. Microsoft/Teams.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Yes there are lots of competitors, including ones specialized for various industries. In finance there is Symphony, which along with being less infantile and more straight-laced than Slack also offers integrations with financial information products like factset.

corentin88 6y ago

Congrats to the Slack's team.

ivraatiems 6y ago

Well, Slack, it was nice knowing you. I wonder who Discord will get bought up by when it replaces Slack after a year or two of Salesforce mismanagement? It's so sad that this is the cycle for software now. Start small, get big fast, get sold, get ruined. I realize I am presupposing Salesforce will ruin Slack - but it's hard to see how they won't, unless they take the approach Microsoft took with Github and keep it as a totally separate business unit. Even then, there's often meddling (see e. g. Facebook with Instagram and Oculus).

virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago
> It's so sad that this is the cycle for software now ...now?
- rightbyte 6y ago
  Earlier you could just stick with the version you had on your CD or floppy and not care what the C-suits was up to on the company that made the software you used. So I guess it wasn't as obvious back then?
  - ivraatiems 6y ago
    That and software wasn't a service, so you weren't chained to the price points and plan levels that executives decided. If Salesforce decides to force everybody using Slack to get Salesforce instead (which seems not unlikely), there's no recourse. We can't just say "well, we have a perpetual license, so we'll do what we want."
  - Spivak 6y ago
    I still know quite a few people who still use their old version of WordPerfect. At some point it became feature complete for them and they've stuck with it ever since.
- ajkjk 6y ago
  It was sad then, too.
6y ago

kingbirdy 6y ago

> The transaction is anticipated to close in the second quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2022 It seems like it will be a little while before Salesforce can start integrating into Slack at least

superfamicom 6y ago

Having gone through many corporate chat transitions, I'm curious where we are headed next or when it will circle back. We already use Salesforce products so I don't see Slack going away unless something much better comes along. MSN / AIM, IRC, Google Chat, Campfire, HipChat, Slack / Discord, ???

NortySpock 6y ago
Don't forget Lync / Skype for Business!
- 310260 6y ago
  I'd prefer to forget it.
runawaybottle 6y ago
I think these chat apps lack business context. Gitlab and GitHub don’t have real time chat, that would be a start. Then on top of that, to have context driven chat (a chat that is about a merge request, a branch). Or in Jira, to seamlessly chat on a ticket with those involved. That stuff doesn’t exist yet. We have the primitive version of context-less chat which is great for context-less conversation (normal social interaction). In business, we have something very specific to talk about so would like to see a new idea in this space. The place where this does seem to be evolving is in customer support. When you chat with a representative, they have a lot of context. Your account, order, possible issue, etc.

mkurz 6y ago

"Salesforce to Acquire Slack for $27.7 Billion" Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/technology/salesforce-slack-deal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/technology/salesforce-sla...

raverbashing 6y ago
How is Slack worth 27 Billion dollars? No, really. That's an unreal price. Slack benefits little from network effects. Deployment has no fundamental secret sauce. This is a crazy number. This does not make sense.
- quicklyfrozen 6y ago
  The number may be crazy, but Slack does benefit from network effects. For example, my company has many bots/integrations with other systems, years of institutional knowledge, and connections with multiple external vendors. Switching would be painful so there'd have to be some pretty compelling reasons. (And who's got time to recreate all our custom emojis? :-))
  - rabidrat 6y ago
    That's a moat, not network effects. A network effect would be if your friends at other companies get value from joining Slack while you're on it. But there's not (except maybe sharing integrations/bots).
    - quicklyfrozen 6y ago
      I'm assuming that third parties are a lot more likely to join an external channel on a platform they're already using (and are more likely to be responsive as well). I think all the existing integration are examples of an indirect network effect -- companies wouldn't invest in providing them if there weren't already users on the platform.

theNJR 6y ago

I'm a bit confused by what this means for WORK shareholders. "Under the terms of the agreement, Slack shareholders will receive $26.79 in cash and 0.0776 shares of Salesforce common stock for each Slack share, representing an enterprise value of approximately $27.7 billion based on the closing price of Salesforce’s common stock on November 30, 2020." Lets say you own 100 shares of WORK. Does that mean you get both 1. $4,434 in cash (100 * 43.84 current value of WORK) and 2. 7.76 shares of CRM (100 * .0776) Edit: I can't read!

pashabitz 6y ago
$2,679 in cash
jbeam 6y ago
$2,679 in cash and the fractional shares of CRM (0.76) will likely be converted to cash as well at some market rate.
manigandham 6y ago
100 shares of WORK will be converted to $2679 and 7.76 shares of CRM. Where did you get 43.84 from? The current value of WORK doesn't matter, it's the closing price on 11/30. The stock price will effectively be pinned at that now since nobody will want to trade at another price.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- theNJR 6y ago
  >Where did you get 43.84 from? WORK closing price. I just realized I can't read though, misinterpreted the press release.
- biggc 6y ago
  > The stock price will effectively be pinned at that now Won't it fluctuate with Salesforce's value?
advisedwang 6y ago

colinmhayes 6y ago

I can't possibly see this going well for salesforce. Buying slack for 70x revenue is insane. Their entire market is going to be eaten by teams and google chat, if it hasn't already. Microsoft has such a gigantic advantage when it comes to enterprise productivity software because everyone is already using office. And those that aren't are on g-suite. Slack's recent guidance was horrible too.

paxys 6y ago
Google chat isn't a real competitor in the space. It has always been Slack and MS, and being #2 is a rapidly growing sector is still very valuable.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  Not when your competitors are completely free
- crazygringo 6y ago
  It certainly is when it comes free with G Suite. A company that uses G Suite certainly isn't going to use MS, and usually won't choose to pay separately for Slack. In what sense therefore could it possibly not be a real competitor? It's there, it works, it's fine. It's also relatively young and so we can expect it to improve significantly over the coming years, similar to how Meet has been improving over the past few years.
stingraycharles 6y ago
Honest question: what is Google chat? I only know Hangouts, I did not know they had a Slack/Teams app as well? Or is this the very old app that was integrated into Gmail back in the day?
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  Yea, google has a competitor called chat. As other comments have said it doesn't really stack up with teams/slack, but the video system is pretty good. It works well enough, an has seen consistent improvements over the year. Doubt any company would specifically choose google chat, but I know that many that already have deals for g-suite are using it. The thing is pretty much every company has a contract for office or google chat these days. Hard to imagine paying for slack when you've already got these free apps available.

astlouis44 6y ago

I wonder how Microsoft is going to respond to this..? Although a slightly different market, I could easily see them acquiring Discord and rebranding it towards corporate customers turned off by the incoming Salesforce integration with Slack. After all, Slack managed to Trojan Horse it's way into companies, and now with many people using Discord at home... it's not a stretch to say Discord could take the same approach! Discord have recently been actively re-positioning themselves less towards the gaming community overall, and more towards being a general purpose chat application. Teams will likely see a flurry of updates and new features as well.

kescher 6y ago

Salesforce, more like Buyforce. They are acquiring so many companies, it's not even funny.

hobofan 6y ago
That's just what CRM companies do, isn't it? SAP is also just a huge pile of acquisitions that's held together by some duct tape.
- hu3 6y ago
  I don't envy their authentication team. Must be a nightmare to consolidate old and new users under the same duct taped roof while dealing with acquired systems intricacies. Some hardcore engineering there for sure.

interestica 6y ago

> enabling companies to grow and succeed in the all-digital world That's not the only world, right? Anyone wanna succeed in the real world?

tekacs 6y ago

For people looking for an alternative to switch to, we’ve been using Quill [0], which is pretty much a more slick, clean Zulip. It has a great approach to threads, where you can make them mandatory or optional on a per-channel basis (even when optional they have names and are more useful than Slack threads). They also support adding external parties to channels/threads by email or SMS and even more interestingly, their model is such that you can direct message people in other Quill organizations if you know their details. [0]: https://quill.chat https://quill.chat

aloknnikhil 6y ago
On first glance that page looks like something Apple might have put together. I genuinely thought this was from Apple.
- tekacs 6y ago
  The aesthetics have a certain feel that makes them seem Apple-ish, yes. I feel that when I use it day-to-day, too. :)
Aeolun 6y ago
This does not appear to be open source? It doesn’t even have a pricing section.
- tekacs 6y ago
  It's not open source and it's free for now, presumably for the duration of the beta.

abhij89 6y ago

Back then: https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/04/source-microsoft-mulled-an-8-billion-bid-for-slack-will-focus-on-skype-instead/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/04/source-microsoft-mulled-an... Microsoft must be cursing their decision right now..

intern4tional 6y ago
Over what? Teams is currently eating Slacks lunch.
- heavyarms 6y ago
  I'm so tired of hearing this argument. The amount of revenue generated by customers who use only Microsoft Teams without an Office365 subscription is exactly $0 [1]. MS gives you exactly 2 options to get teams: 1. Free 2. Included as part of Office365. Teams is currently eatings Slacks lunch, but the lunch was paid for by a corporate IT guy who switched to Office365 so he could lay off some IT admins and save some money compared to managing an on-premise Exchange server. [1](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/compare-microsoft-teams-options https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-team...)
  - goatherders 6y ago
    I don't understand. What argument are you tired of hearing? Teams has more users than Slack. Doesn't matter how/why they got them.
    - hacker_newz 6y ago
      Captive users don't really count.
      - sib 6y ago
        But lots of Slack users are captive as well (e.g., when CIO licenses Slack for <$FORTUNE_500_CO> )

thrower123 6y ago

They got destroyed by Microsoft's pushing of Teams.

kyleblarson 6y ago

Get ready for annoying nickel and dime'ing for Slack pricing.

krrrh 6y ago
Nickel would be a challenge for a man so dedicated to Tin. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/jun/20/digitalmedia.yahoo1 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/jun/20/digitalmedia.y...

qppo 6y ago

This is one of those acquisitions that makes me think there's a tech bubble. Hope I'm wrong.

crsv 6y ago

Eh people will be salty about the Salesforce name but honestly their acquisition of Heroku hasn't caused me any pains regarding our experience with that platform. I'm as skeptical as anyone else, and I think there's more risk in a tighter "integration" making it a miserable experience. Might be a good time in the market for a new Slack competitor!

dzhiurgis 6y ago
Wonder what's going to happen to free tier. Some integration into core Salesforce might make sense for reps / teams. Another useful product might be live chats based on Slack tech. Seems good fit, but I do wonder how well they are going to integrate.
- natchy 6y ago
  maybe free tier was never sustainable and was only a tactic to increase user volume and thus increase Heroku valuation towards an acquisition.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- easterncalculus 6y ago
  Judging from Salesforce's past acquisitions I'd bet (and hope) that we won't see a lot of changes being forced on Slack users in the future. Salesforce will probably use it internally and include Salesforce product integrations, and likely start to use it instead of Chatter.
nitwit005 6y ago
I don't believe Salesforce got much value out of Heroku however. Their main app isn't built on top of it, and they were shopping around for cloud providers to expand to places like Australia.
- ryanSrich 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

emmanueloga_ 6y ago

Whatever happened to matrix.org/vector/riot.im/element.io? (side note: most confusing branding ever :-/). Element seemed to be picking up some momentum a few months back. There was recent news that they acquired gitter too [1]. These days I only hear about slack exodus and discord this and discord that, though. If I get it right, from all the group messengers that appeared around 6 years ago, the only one with an open protocol seems to be Matrix, but it hasn't proven to be to their advantage, apparently. Only Element, Zulip and Mattermost are open source? Honorable mention: IRCCloud was a "hot thing" for a while, but it seems like it wasn't enough to revitalize IRC. [2] -- Appendix, initial releases: * Slack: August 2013; 7 years ago * Discord: May 13, 2015; 5 years ago * Mattermost: October 2, 2015; 5 years ago * Zulip: ca 2014, at least 5/6 years ago? * Matrix protocol: ca September 2014; 6 years ago * vector/riot/element: ca September 2016, 4 years ago -- 1: https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/30/element-acquires-gitter-to-get-more-developers-on-board-with-the-open-matrix-messaging-protocol/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/30/element-acquires-gitter-to... 2: https://www.irccloud.com/ https://www.irccloud.com/

na85 6y ago
I would love to see IRC make a comeback but the fact is IRC on mobile is a pain in the ass. Users want persistence and IRC is designed for the opposite.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- keyle 6y ago
  I agree. We should evolve the IRC spec to support the modern requirements of common users. Then web clients are just an addition. Call it IRC2 or anything if it offends the original IRC nerds (which I'm part of)
  - remexre 6y ago
    Well, there's IRCv3... Problem with multi-device is you need some way of authenticating multiple TCP connections as the same logical user, at which point a lot of IRC's simplicity of implementation has been lost. Whether that's a worthwhile sacrifice is a different question though; I think it might be (as a young IRC nerd).

dang 6y ago

The Salesforce-Slack stack so far: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25269934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25269934 <-- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25255231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25255231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25211262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25211262

v1g1l4nt3 6y ago

It makes sense for them to buy Slack instead of Discord, since Discord has no ambitions to go into the enterprise business. This tweet is from 2017, but there hasn't been any announcements stating otherwise: https://twitter.com/discord/status/904787004357058561 https://twitter.com/discord/status/904787004357058561

zmmmmm 6y ago

Makes me mourn for keybase once more :-( I guess I could be wrong but I feel like the chances of Slack surviving with its genuine "compatibility with everything" story and overall usability intact 3 years from now is small.

theandrewbailey 6y ago

I wonder if they will rename Slack to Chat Cloud.

MrsPeaches 6y ago

Is there any reason Rocket.chat [1] never gets a look in, in these discussions? It's open source and you can self host pretty easily. We've been using it for 6 months and really couldn't be happier. https://rocket.chat/ https://rocket.chat/

sebmellen 6y ago
+1 Rocket.chat is awesome and the best open-source Slack alternative imo.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

xyst 6y ago

how is it that a chat app is worth $27B?

abalashov 6y ago
With 86% gross margins, I'm not entirely surprised it's seen as a good proposition: https://slack.com/blog/news/slack-announces-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-year-2020-results https://slack.com/blog/news/slack-announces-fourth-quarter-a...
- ebg13 6y ago
  With operating losses at 93% of total revenue, bringing FY2020 net income deeply negative, I'm still surprised.

aprdm 6y ago

I ctrl + f and saw no mention of rocket chat, is it no longer trendy? Have been using for a while on prems and it sort of just works. Good on Slack I guess! A very nice exit.

myguysi 6y ago
Posted 2 minutes before you https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25270708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25270708

dr_dshiv 6y ago

Time for Stewart to make his next "failed" game. Go big!!!

simonbarker87 6y ago

Soooo, I bought a very small number of Slack shares at the market open today with no idea this was coming down the pike oh well

jasonv 6y ago
This has been much discussed the last bit of time, on what basis are you buying shares in a company..?
- simonbarker87 6y ago
  Yeah this is a fun little lesson for me. I’d been thinking through the summer that we need to expand what we do with our money and had been dithering, put together a short list of companies (like kid summer) and slack was one of them. I faffed about, put it off and then last night just decided “you know what, just place some trades and pull the plaster off” so I bought like 50 shares across a handful of companies - I own 3 slack shares so I’m not all that bothered. I’ve risked very little money in my first share purchases - I couldn’t even buy a new low end mountain bike for what I’ve got at risk.

madrox 6y ago

"Congratulations to Slack on its exit" I say as I forgot they are post-IPO. I always thought it strange how big Slack got to begin with. History will probably remember its ultimate accomplishment was getting lots of companies to switch from direct-message communication to chat rooms. However, that was probably inevitable as an internet savvy generation took over more companies, and Slack was simply well-timed. It's not like the product was light years ahead of its myriad of competitors. It had a little better design and had friendly corporate terms. Which is good news. If Salesforce really does ruin Slack, I have no doubt someone will swoop into the space just as quickly as they did.

J5892 6y ago
If they fuck up Slack, everyone will move to MS Teams. That is, unless some start-up dreams up some kind of revolutionary paradigm shift in how people communicate online. Maybe something in the AR space ~10 years from now.
- ryanSrich 6y ago
  What about Mac users though? I can’t imagine using a Microsoft product in any capacity that isn’t entirely separate from Microsoft - meaning GitHub and VSCode. Teams feels entirely too tied to MSFT. The UI seems unbearable.
  - 0xffff2 6y ago
    I use Teams on my Linux workstation every day, entirely through the web site running in Chrome (organization-specific IT peculiarities prevent the "native" app from working on our Linux). It works just as well as Slack ever has for me. There are plenty of Mac users in my org too, but I don't know if they use an app or the web site.
    - midasz 6y ago
      Teams videochat works flawlessly on my linux worklaptop as well (native though), I get disconnected from video calls a lot using Slack... If Teams fixes their chatroom issue I'd definitely be willing to make the switch entirely.

justaguy88 6y ago

What do we migrate to now?

runawaybottle 6y ago
Pidgin enterprise where you can log into multiple enterprise chat applications with one account.

geocrasher 6y ago

I posted this in the watercooler chat at work (we use slack) and got the option to install the Salesforce plugin for Slack. Because of course.

abalashov 6y ago

For me the fascinating headline here is the 86% gross margins. FY2020 gross revenue at Slack was $630.4m, GAAP gross profit $533.2m [1]. SaaS apps are comically, stupidly profitable at scale. That's educational. [1] https://slack.com/blog/news/slack-announces-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-year-2020-results https://slack.com/blog/news/slack-announces-fourth-quarter-a...

ebg13 6y ago
Except they had net income of -$570M (that's a minus sign in front) because their operational losses are staggeringly high.
- abalashov 6y ago
  Yes, but that's the aspect of the cost structure that the acquirer is most equipped to tweak.
  - ebg13 6y ago
    Indeed. I expect mass layoffs basically immediately.
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      Yes the redundant orgs will probably be mainly laid off eventually. You don’t need 2 HR’s, G/A, etc. Sales will probably be reduced quite a bit and the engineering team will stick around.
      - Axsuul 6y ago
        Slack's culture is very different from Salesforce's so I think they will at least keep around HR.
        kyawzazaw 6y ago
        What did Salesforce do with Tableau, MuleSoft and Quip?

dcanelhas 6y ago

I'm not a slack power user, but I feel that it's a bit like IRC but with a fancy (and slow) GUI wrapped around it. Certainly I am wrong, but how wrong?

2sk21 6y ago
Same opinion - I have mostly used Slack as a chat tool and it works very nicely for that
draw_down 6y ago
What exactly does this fresh, original observation have to do with the company being acquired?
Bjartr 6y ago
You're about right, but I think not recognizing the value of having a UX that the average person feels comfortable with Both for daily usage and initial setup. IRC, for all its strengths, does not achieve that.
Spivak 6y ago
Slack, maybe unfortunately, always invites the comparison to IRC because they borrowed a lot of their early UX from IRC with mentions, bots, channels, and /commands but that's pretty much where the comparison ends. You can have IRC-style chatbots that parse messages and do things but Slack "integrations" are a lot more powerful and "magic" if your mental model of Slack is just fancy shmancy IRC. Slack bundles basically all the features you'd have to implement out of band with IRC like chat history, search, user statuses, notifications for mentions, formatted content, media content like gifs and videos, reminders, attachments, pastebins. Then there are things that you can't really do with the IRC protocol like reactions, threads, editing messages, messages with dynamically updating content (our Github bot for example changes the color of PR messages as the status changes), and embedded content like Polls that only take up one message and don't spam the chat with votes, shared history across devices.
kevindong 6y ago
At its core, that's a fully accurate description albeit a misleading one (along the lines of claiming that central AC is just window AC but without something sticking out of your window). As it turns out, UX matters and Slack delivers far better UX than IRC since one single entity can control the entirety of the communication pipeline (from protocol to how messages are displayed).

romenrg 6y ago

$27.7 Billion. Really impressive.

somehnguy 6y ago

Well, RIP Slack. Salesforce is a cancer that ruins everything they touch as far as I'm concerned.

anaganisk 6y ago
What happened to heroku?

nottorp 6y ago

So question: which of all the alternatives to Slack has text as a first class citizen? We don't use video or audio chat at all; just text chat, pinning important info to channels, swapping small files, searching chat history and a few plugins like reminders and github. May be important to mention that we have a lot of separate projects going on and we separate each in its own channel. We absolutely want mobile and desktop clients, not a "web UI" that happens to sort of work on all platforms. Could the hive mind give me some names of alternatives to consider?

s3r3nity 6y ago
You could check out Discord - they’ve been pivoting pretty well into an all round Slack competitor with some slick features IMO.

rpncreator 6y ago

The timing of this is impeccable. The Dreamforce (Salesforce's annual developer and user conference) keynote is tomorrow (December 2nd 2020).

leoc 6y ago

As SV ticker moments go, is this one second only to TWITTER ACQUIRES MAGIC PONY https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11937756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11937756 ? Literal Boomer meme.

sjg007 6y ago

Anyone read the press release? Salesforce wants to use Slack as an input device driver. Imagine slacking with your customers, colleagues etc... need to create a DB entry? Slack command. Need to schedule some follow up, slack command. Need to track a bunch of tasks? Slack-Force integrations. I see an AI bot here to help get that data into Salesforce. To quote: "Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world" I work day to day in Slack. It's better than email and the need for workflow and knowledge integrations is clear. Asana needs to get a chat layer going ASAP. The knowledge workflow integration sector is the next big thing.

tomp 6y ago
> It's better than email Is it? I regret every time I have to search for some information in past chats. Even M$ Outlook is better.
- sjg007 6y ago
  Oh yes in that sense worse. In fact both are terrible and there is a lot of room to improve.
soared 6y ago
Last year I somehow ended up using the iOS imessage thing where I chat directly with a company and it was excellent. Never saw or heard of it again, but I would love to have a similar ability on slack. I have to chat with like ~10 vendors on a weekly basis for short-burst communication and end up having a bunch of weird shared slack-room things. Salesforce could clean that up and it'd be a great b2b messaging system.
- twodave 6y ago
  Support for the Apple Card works this way too. It's honestly a joy.
J5892 6y ago
I'm just terrified that they'll integrate Slack's clean web interface with the massive net of clutter that is Salesforce's UI.

beezle 6y ago

Am I the only one having flashbacks to the dot.bomb? It is not just Slack of course but certainly this is good icing on the cake of crazy valuations.

nof1 6y ago

Not sure this is good news for me as a Slack user...

mullingitover 6y ago

They started out trying to make an MMO, ended up making Flickr instead. Then they tried making another MMO, but ended up making Slack instead. I really hope they get cracking on another MMO soon.

idlewords 6y ago
Or try designing a really great office collaboration suite and end up accidentally making a killer game.
- Waterluvian 6y ago
  My wife and I once spent TWO hours stuffing photocopiers into an elevator in Deus Ex. So, getting close with that one.
  - keyle 6y ago
    Now that's relationship goals.
  - bartread 6y ago
    One of the oddest comments I've yet seen on HN. Was this part of a mission or just for grins?
    - Waterluvian 6y ago
      We went into the police station for a mission but my inner child called out to me. She says it's the day she realised she wanted to marry me.
- mey 6y ago
  Do games created in excel count? https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/04/how-an-accountant-created-an-entire-rpg-inside-an-excel-spreadsheet/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/04/how-an-accountant-cre...
  - 6y ago

diveanon 6y ago

Jesus what a bunch of salty FUD in this thread. Congrats to the Slack team on building a $28B product.

anaganisk 6y ago
Yeah right? People are just conveniently forgetting Heroku.

mijail 6y ago

Kudos to whoever thought of this at sfdc. This is a visionary acquisition and it makes sense on so many levels. From the fabric of slack's unique sales model to what this means for enterprise communication.

ThomPete 6y ago

I assume this means room for another indie in that space now that Slack has been eaten?

navanchauhan 6y ago

I have always wondered if any company uses IRC?

derwiki 6y ago
Yelp did until a few years ago
- navanchauhan 6y ago
  Any reason why they moved away from it?
  - derwiki 6y ago
    I don’t have first hand knowledge but I think a bunch of small things (not knowing who someone is by just a username, sending messages after hours when user is offline, etc)

meitros 6y ago

Interesting...no slack blog post about it. Just a report of the salesforce news article

dboreham 6y ago

The entire concept of a single chat service with a single UI is bogus. Some sort of mass delusion going on such that everyone nods their head every time one of these mono-services becomes popular. Protocols. Interoperability. Federation.

dcwca 6y ago
User experience beats all of those things.

k_sze 6y ago

This makes me wonder what’s going to happen to the partnership between Atlassian and Slack.

doctor_eval 6y ago

I can’t believe no one has mentioned Jabber yet.

dfee 6y ago

What would’ve been the right trade here. I believe if you’d purchased Slack a few days ago on the original announcement of interest, and then sold them after this announcement, but before there’s time for antitrust to take a look at this, you’d have paid massive taxes on short term gains.

TechNerds 6y ago

It is interesting how this news somehow leaks days before the real news is released...