6 ms·

I think this is overblown. Slack was perfectly capable of remaining a stand alone company. They just wouldn't have been worth ~30 billion.

by treis 6y ago

fennecfoxen 6y ago
Slack has some pretty weird blind spots as a business, too, like that one where all your hundreds or tens-of-thousands of employees must be part of the same general chat channel, where anyone can ping the entire company.
- iscrewyou 6y ago
  Nobody has engineered a checkbox to disable that yet?
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    They've been spending their their effort giving you their third version of a message-composition "block API" that still doesn't-quite-work as documented.
  - dalyons 6y ago
    They have and it’s been an option for years now. (Disabling posting in #general)
- RKearney 6y ago
  > where anyone can ping the entire company. It takes 5 seconds to change the permissions on that channel to restrict posting to admins only. We figured that out a few hours after rolling Slack out to a small subset of users to test.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Is it so weird? Surely #general must be a holdover from IRC or some other pre-Slack messenger.
spurdoman77 6y ago
Yeah, it is actually weird how these stories are getting written. By any sensible standard slack was insane success. Most founders dream about reaching market value of 1bln. Of course it would be cool to be worth 30bln and have control as well, but tbh many founders are insanely happy if they can get exit even for 30mln.
exogeny 6y ago
You’re missing the point. The outcomes and upside are irrelevant, what is relevant is that Microsoft’s only strategy to attack was to give it away for free and bundle it, creating a profoundly unfair (and illegal) advantage that continues the trend of consolidating power and reducing choice.
- formercoder 6y ago
  Predatory pricing is a component of anti trust but a very difficult one to prove legally. One must prove that by giving consumers a cheaper product they are being harmed. It's an interesting conundrum.
  - orf 6y ago
    But it's not that they just gave consumers a cheaper product - they used their dominance in a specific market to gain dominance in another. It's the same thing as bundling Internet Explorer with Windows.
    - nodamage 6y ago
      Bundling IE with Windows was never actually ruled to be illegal. The appeals court overturned the district court's initial ruling and remanded it for further analysis, but the case was ultimately settled before any ruling could be made.
      - WorldMaker 6y ago
        Also, from the 2020 perspective Microsoft seems to have been right that the browser is an important operating system feature/component and may have simply been ahead of the curve in realizing it. (Today's mobile OSes all make the case that it should be a tightly OS managed component. Most consumers today would be extremely confused if an OS didn't include a browser at all; whether or not they primarily use that browser to install a more preferred browser.) It's easy in 2020 to wonder if the Microsoft anti-trust effort delayed innovations like PWA standards and got in the way of people thinking to build earlier cross-platform, lighter weight HTML "app frameworks" than what we are seeing in this timeline with Electron.
jasode 6y ago
>Slack was perfectly capable of remaining a stand alone company. It's possible that Slack's company insiders (founders, C-executives, investment bank advisors, etc) ... all concluded that continuing to compete as an independent company had a more risky outcome: https://www.google.com/search?q=slack+not+profitable https://www.google.com/search?q=slack+not+profitable In other words, let's give the benefit of the doubt and assume all those folks above are above-average intelligent and can use Excel spreadsheets to model user growth, revenue growth, expenses, new products in the pipeline, "what-if" scenarios, etc. Also found a recent related HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24422092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24422092 EDIT REPLY to >"It seems like you stopped reading before my last sentence." Yes, I read that but a healthy business needs to be an ongoing concern and _profitability_ is part of financial health. E.g. Blockbuster Video went from having a market cap worth billions to being worth nothing because of competition from Netflix. Blockbuster went from being profitable to losing money. In one way, Slack is even worse than Blockbuster as it has yet to turn a profit. Setting your snark aside, what justifies your confidence about Slack's possible independent future more than the company's insiders who have all the internal metrics and private financial data to analyze?
- treis 6y ago
  It seems like you stopped reading before my last sentence.
- count 6y ago
  https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/people-think-netflix-killed-blockbuster-now-a-brand-new-report-says-these-7-other-things-mattered-more.html https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/people-think-netflix-kill... Heh, ironically, Blockbuster was almost never profitable either :)
javierluraschi 6y ago
I completely agree, there is no way Slack becomes irrelevant due to Microsoft. Ironically, getting acquired might.

I think this is overblown. Slack was perfectly capable of remaining a stand alone company. They just wouldn't have been worth ~30 billion.

by treis 6y ago

I think this is overblown. Slack was perfectly capable of remaining a stand alone company. They just wouldn't have been worth ~30 billion.

fennecfoxen 6y ago

Slack has some pretty weird blind spots as a business, too, like that one where all your hundreds or tens-of-thousands of employees must be part of the same general chat channel, where anyone can ping the entire company.

iscrewyou 6y ago
Nobody has engineered a checkbox to disable that yet?
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  They've been spending their their effort giving you their third version of a message-composition "block API" that still doesn't-quite-work as documented.
- dalyons 6y ago
  They have and it’s been an option for years now. (Disabling posting in #general)
RKearney 6y ago
> where anyone can ping the entire company. It takes 5 seconds to change the permissions on that channel to restrict posting to admins only. We figured that out a few hours after rolling Slack out to a small subset of users to test.
Apocryphon 6y ago
Is it so weird? Surely #general must be a holdover from IRC or some other pre-Slack messenger.

spurdoman77 6y ago

Yeah, it is actually weird how these stories are getting written. By any sensible standard slack was insane success. Most founders dream about reaching market value of 1bln. Of course it would be cool to be worth 30bln and have control as well, but tbh many founders are insanely happy if they can get exit even for 30mln.

exogeny 6y ago

You’re missing the point. The outcomes and upside are irrelevant, what is relevant is that Microsoft’s only strategy to attack was to give it away for free and bundle it, creating a profoundly unfair (and illegal) advantage that continues the trend of consolidating power and reducing choice.

formercoder 6y ago
Predatory pricing is a component of anti trust but a very difficult one to prove legally. One must prove that by giving consumers a cheaper product they are being harmed. It's an interesting conundrum.
- orf 6y ago
  But it's not that they just gave consumers a cheaper product - they used their dominance in a specific market to gain dominance in another. It's the same thing as bundling Internet Explorer with Windows.
  - nodamage 6y ago
    Bundling IE with Windows was never actually ruled to be illegal. The appeals court overturned the district court's initial ruling and remanded it for further analysis, but the case was ultimately settled before any ruling could be made.
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      Also, from the 2020 perspective Microsoft seems to have been right that the browser is an important operating system feature/component and may have simply been ahead of the curve in realizing it. (Today's mobile OSes all make the case that it should be a tightly OS managed component. Most consumers today would be extremely confused if an OS didn't include a browser at all; whether or not they primarily use that browser to install a more preferred browser.) It's easy in 2020 to wonder if the Microsoft anti-trust effort delayed innovations like PWA standards and got in the way of people thinking to build earlier cross-platform, lighter weight HTML "app frameworks" than what we are seeing in this timeline with Electron.

jasode 6y ago

>Slack was perfectly capable of remaining a stand alone company. It's possible that Slack's company insiders (founders, C-executives, investment bank advisors, etc) ... all concluded that continuing to compete as an independent company had a more risky outcome: https://www.google.com/search?q=slack+not+profitable https://www.google.com/search?q=slack+not+profitable In other words, let's give the benefit of the doubt and assume all those folks above are above-average intelligent and can use Excel spreadsheets to model user growth, revenue growth, expenses, new products in the pipeline, "what-if" scenarios, etc. Also found a recent related HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24422092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24422092 EDIT REPLY to >"It seems like you stopped reading before my last sentence." Yes, I read that but a healthy business needs to be an ongoing concern and _profitability_ is part of financial health. E.g. Blockbuster Video went from having a market cap worth billions to being worth nothing because of competition from Netflix. Blockbuster went from being profitable to losing money. In one way, Slack is even worse than Blockbuster as it has yet to turn a profit. Setting your snark aside, what justifies your confidence about Slack's possible independent future more than the company's insiders who have all the internal metrics and private financial data to analyze?

treis 6y ago
It seems like you stopped reading before my last sentence.
count 6y ago
https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/people-think-netflix-killed-blockbuster-now-a-brand-new-report-says-these-7-other-things-mattered-more.html https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/people-think-netflix-kill... Heh, ironically, Blockbuster was almost never profitable either :)

javierluraschi 6y ago

I completely agree, there is no way Slack becomes irrelevant due to Microsoft. Ironically, getting acquired might.