8 ms·

Loom is probably the simplest billion-dollar piece of software, but it's also excellent software and I am happy they're getting paid. Screen recording before L

by habosa 3y ago

Loom is probably the simplest billion-dollar piece of software, but it's also excellent software and I am happy they're getting paid. Screen recording before Loom was a pain. You had to open up some program, start it, save the file, upload the file somewhere, and share it. And if you had to edit the recording at all ... probably start over. With Loom it's all one click and it's ready to share the instant you hit the Stop button. At my company we make and share dozens of Looms per day and it's a key part of maintaining a remote culture.

segasuperstar 3y ago
My immediate reaction was that value-wise it was a joke, how can they be worth $1 billion? I agree with what you're saying here though, one click, ACL controlled and simple to use videos. Concur with the enablement of the remote culture. I would have thought Atlassian could clone that so simply. The Loom software is super buggy though, I have to open their site or extension or desktop app multiple times before it starts working, but when it does work the editing is just about OK. I have thought about using Google Meet to record my desktop, I've heard the editor in that is pretty good, and you can stop, start, trim/edit & share in Google Drive or share further with a link.
- diogenes4 3y ago
  > I have thought about using Google Meet to record my desktop, I've heard the editor in that is pretty good, and you can stop, start, trim/edit & share in Google Drive or share further with a link. Surely loom can't be any worse than google chrome
- Atotalnoob 3y ago
  They are worth $1 billion due to their customer base.
  - tootie 3y ago
    I think the concern is more that they have such a small moat. Their product seems too easy to copy. But given that they are first to market, did a very a good job with what they offer and have acquired a lot of customers, that is all worth a lot of money. Is "a lot" $1B? Hard to say.
    - jschumacher 3y ago
      Once you host your videos with Loom and link them everywhere, the moat ain’t that small anymore. Also, their AI features are excellent. But certainly agree that more competition entered the space in the last couple of years.
      - kbos87 3y ago
        The brand also becomes a reinforcing moat in an interesting way when you become a household name. When your employees think to themselves "I want to send a quick video update to team X" and they instantly default to downloading Loom, IT's decision for which vendor to buy a solution like this from is practically made for them.
        modusops123 3y ago
        yeah ppl nowadays say "send me a Loom". It's a billion-dollar brand.
- baq 3y ago
  People pay for it. It’s probably something like 30x revenue or whatever growth valuation but still the point stands: it’s good enough to have quite a few paying customers.
- nikanj 3y ago
  > The Loom software is super buggy though Perfect fit for Atlassian’s portfolio then
  - woleium 3y ago
    That’s exactly what I thought too, lol.
  - warthog 3y ago
    ahahah nice burn
- wutwutwat 3y ago
  > My immediate reaction was that value-wise it was a joke, how can they be worth $1 billion? It's probably way more about the in to the large install base of users to start pushing other Atlassian suite products on. "Hey there happy Atlassian (formarly Loom) customer, since you're now in our ecosystem where products go to die, may we interest you in a Jira or a Confluence? They come with a complementary week of consecutive downtime on the house!"
  - brazzledazzle 3y ago
    Don't forget forcing everyone to their SaaS offering only to be shown not to have a validated disaster recovery plan that resulted in almost 2 weeks (4/5-4/17) of consecutive downtime for many customers. Cherry on top was the 57 customers they screwed up the backup restore for and brought back older data. By the time they realized it they had to work with the customers to merge the newer backups with the changes they'd made since the initial restore.
- jimmySixDOF 3y ago
  I had to uninstall the desktop app it was uploading 6MB chunks at random times for no reason I could figure out. I hope this is an opportunity to improve their local software but not holding my breath lol the Atlassian Godzilla.
Spivak 3y ago
How does it compete with macOS screenshot in recording mode? Because that sounds basically the same flow just drag/dropping the output file into Slack.
- baq 3y ago
  Click button, record video, paste link into slack/github vs click button, record video, figure out what to do with the useless huge file; also annotations and whatever ai they managed to put in there to summarize the transcript
  - Spivak 3y ago
    Huh? Click button, record video, "file" appears in the bottom corner of the screen, drag that into Slack or the Github editor, done. I would be worried about the links expiring, is Loom really hosting arbitrary unlimited sized video content forever for $12/mo? Damn, it's a good thing they got bought.
    - carstenhag 3y ago
      With loom you can edit it quite easily. I currently use Kap (on MacOS). Tool quality it not as good as Loom. Needs more maintainers I guess. For me, something like Loom without the online-first approach would be nice. It doesn't exist. I searched. Screenshot tools are a solved problem, screen capturing isn't.
      - jazzyjackson 3y ago
        After a screengrab with quicktime you just > edit > trim and then save as. Transcripting audio and summarizing would be nice creature comforts but I'm in the "billion dollars for what now?" camp.
    - da39a3ee 3y ago
      it sounds like they're hosting it for 1 month for $12. You never know when the company will decide to delete old videos from non-subscribers.
tempsy 3y ago
They raised $200M and last raised at $1.5B. Depending on liquidation preference clauses I don't think any employee outside the founders will make much from this sale.
- runako 3y ago
  Would you mind sharing the ballpark arithmetic that leads to this conclusion?
  - darig 3y ago
    [dead]
  - lmeyerov 3y ago
    most of the employees came in at later rounds, so play it out. ex: They'd get say $100K in options on paper, but the pitch would be the company is high-growth, so expectation of 2X, 10X, 20X, etc over next few years. That $100K is really $200K next year, $2M the year after, etc. Except they sold the company at a ~flat multiple over the valuation. If employees got RSUs, then at least they made say $65K after short-term capital gains (30%+). But if as options... no growth over the latest valuation's strike price, so nothing. $65K is not $200K and certainly not $2M.. and $0 is even worse. FWIW, I'm a happy customer, am happy for the founders, and hope the new features keep rolling out through the acquisition -- our usage of Loom grows every month! The issue here is not the founders, but HR & VC. This is why joining companies with high valuations is a big risk as the VC's have already set inflated prices that ate your potential payout -- you earn on growth over the strike price at time of joining -- and these high markup companies have a lot of revenue to grow into.
    - nlavezzo 3y ago
      That’s not how option pricing works. This is a private company, and it was raising money using preferred shares. The employee shares underlying the options would have been common stock. At least once a year the company would be required to do a 409a valuation to set the FMV for those underlying common shares and thus the strike price for any options in the next year or less. The 409a valuation for common shares is pretty much always going to be significantly discounted vs preferred for a variety of reasons like lack of liquidation preference, lack of liquidity, etc. These discounts are often 50% plus, but the shares likely have a 1:1 economic value to other share classes in a sale, except the most recent preferred that get to use their preference. Anyways the reality is going to be determined by each company’s details, but option strike prices at private companies are generally much lower than the current going price for preferred due to the discounts provided by the 409a valuation.
notwhereyouare 3y ago
>it's a key part of maintaining a remote culture. is it? We don't do this at my company and I feel we have a good culture
- theogravity 3y ago
  Loom is part of ours (our company is fully remote, no offices). One use-case is we use it to create demo videos of our work and attach it to our git pull requests so reviewers can see how to test our code changes. Others might be things like showing buggy app behavior.
AlchemistCamp 3y ago
Why Loom though? There are alternatives like Awesome Screenshot that don't have a garbage Chrome-only dev/support target.
aeyes 3y ago
I already have Slack and it has the same feature, I don't even have to send a link. Just hit record and send the video. I guess I don't get it.
- jguimont 3y ago
  but you cannot link those into jira tickets!
  - aeyes 3y ago
    I understand that your response is sarcasm but: You can link to Slack messages.
pcurve 3y ago
I didn't even realize what Loom was until now. I love their product demo video on their home page. https://www.loom.com/ https://www.loom.com/ Brilliantly made. And I'm completely sold on the value of this software. Screen recording is the best way to log software design defects.

by habosa 3y ago

segasuperstar 3y ago

My immediate reaction was that value-wise it was a joke, how can they be worth $1 billion? I agree with what you're saying here though, one click, ACL controlled and simple to use videos. Concur with the enablement of the remote culture. I would have thought Atlassian could clone that so simply. The Loom software is super buggy though, I have to open their site or extension or desktop app multiple times before it starts working, but when it does work the editing is just about OK. I have thought about using Google Meet to record my desktop, I've heard the editor in that is pretty good, and you can stop, start, trim/edit & share in Google Drive or share further with a link.

diogenes4 3y ago
> I have thought about using Google Meet to record my desktop, I've heard the editor in that is pretty good, and you can stop, start, trim/edit & share in Google Drive or share further with a link. Surely loom can't be any worse than google chrome
Atotalnoob 3y ago
They are worth $1 billion due to their customer base.
- tootie 3y ago
  I think the concern is more that they have such a small moat. Their product seems too easy to copy. But given that they are first to market, did a very a good job with what they offer and have acquired a lot of customers, that is all worth a lot of money. Is "a lot" $1B? Hard to say.
  - jschumacher 3y ago
    Once you host your videos with Loom and link them everywhere, the moat ain’t that small anymore. Also, their AI features are excellent. But certainly agree that more competition entered the space in the last couple of years.
    - kbos87 3y ago
      The brand also becomes a reinforcing moat in an interesting way when you become a household name. When your employees think to themselves "I want to send a quick video update to team X" and they instantly default to downloading Loom, IT's decision for which vendor to buy a solution like this from is practically made for them.
      - modusops123 3y ago
        yeah ppl nowadays say "send me a Loom". It's a billion-dollar brand.
baq 3y ago
People pay for it. It’s probably something like 30x revenue or whatever growth valuation but still the point stands: it’s good enough to have quite a few paying customers.
nikanj 3y ago
> The Loom software is super buggy though Perfect fit for Atlassian’s portfolio then
- woleium 3y ago
  That’s exactly what I thought too, lol.
- warthog 3y ago
  ahahah nice burn
wutwutwat 3y ago
> My immediate reaction was that value-wise it was a joke, how can they be worth $1 billion? It's probably way more about the in to the large install base of users to start pushing other Atlassian suite products on. "Hey there happy Atlassian (formarly Loom) customer, since you're now in our ecosystem where products go to die, may we interest you in a Jira or a Confluence? They come with a complementary week of consecutive downtime on the house!"
- brazzledazzle 3y ago
  Don't forget forcing everyone to their SaaS offering only to be shown not to have a validated disaster recovery plan that resulted in almost 2 weeks (4/5-4/17) of consecutive downtime for many customers. Cherry on top was the 57 customers they screwed up the backup restore for and brought back older data. By the time they realized it they had to work with the customers to merge the newer backups with the changes they'd made since the initial restore.
jimmySixDOF 3y ago
I had to uninstall the desktop app it was uploading 6MB chunks at random times for no reason I could figure out. I hope this is an opportunity to improve their local software but not holding my breath lol the Atlassian Godzilla.

Spivak 3y ago

How does it compete with macOS screenshot in recording mode? Because that sounds basically the same flow just drag/dropping the output file into Slack.

baq 3y ago
Click button, record video, paste link into slack/github vs click button, record video, figure out what to do with the useless huge file; also annotations and whatever ai they managed to put in there to summarize the transcript
- Spivak 3y ago
  Huh? Click button, record video, "file" appears in the bottom corner of the screen, drag that into Slack or the Github editor, done. I would be worried about the links expiring, is Loom really hosting arbitrary unlimited sized video content forever for $12/mo? Damn, it's a good thing they got bought.
  - carstenhag 3y ago
    With loom you can edit it quite easily. I currently use Kap (on MacOS). Tool quality it not as good as Loom. Needs more maintainers I guess. For me, something like Loom without the online-first approach would be nice. It doesn't exist. I searched. Screenshot tools are a solved problem, screen capturing isn't.
    - jazzyjackson 3y ago
      After a screengrab with quicktime you just > edit > trim and then save as. Transcripting audio and summarizing would be nice creature comforts but I'm in the "billion dollars for what now?" camp.
  - da39a3ee 3y ago
    it sounds like they're hosting it for 1 month for $12. You never know when the company will decide to delete old videos from non-subscribers.

tempsy 3y ago

They raised $200M and last raised at $1.5B. Depending on liquidation preference clauses I don't think any employee outside the founders will make much from this sale.

runako 3y ago
Would you mind sharing the ballpark arithmetic that leads to this conclusion?
- darig 3y ago
  [dead]
- lmeyerov 3y ago
  most of the employees came in at later rounds, so play it out. ex: They'd get say $100K in options on paper, but the pitch would be the company is high-growth, so expectation of 2X, 10X, 20X, etc over next few years. That $100K is really $200K next year, $2M the year after, etc. Except they sold the company at a ~flat multiple over the valuation. If employees got RSUs, then at least they made say $65K after short-term capital gains (30%+). But if as options... no growth over the latest valuation's strike price, so nothing. $65K is not $200K and certainly not $2M.. and $0 is even worse. FWIW, I'm a happy customer, am happy for the founders, and hope the new features keep rolling out through the acquisition -- our usage of Loom grows every month! The issue here is not the founders, but HR & VC. This is why joining companies with high valuations is a big risk as the VC's have already set inflated prices that ate your potential payout -- you earn on growth over the strike price at time of joining -- and these high markup companies have a lot of revenue to grow into.
  - nlavezzo 3y ago
    That’s not how option pricing works. This is a private company, and it was raising money using preferred shares. The employee shares underlying the options would have been common stock. At least once a year the company would be required to do a 409a valuation to set the FMV for those underlying common shares and thus the strike price for any options in the next year or less. The 409a valuation for common shares is pretty much always going to be significantly discounted vs preferred for a variety of reasons like lack of liquidation preference, lack of liquidity, etc. These discounts are often 50% plus, but the shares likely have a 1:1 economic value to other share classes in a sale, except the most recent preferred that get to use their preference. Anyways the reality is going to be determined by each company’s details, but option strike prices at private companies are generally much lower than the current going price for preferred due to the discounts provided by the 409a valuation.

notwhereyouare 3y ago

>it's a key part of maintaining a remote culture. is it? We don't do this at my company and I feel we have a good culture

theogravity 3y ago
Loom is part of ours (our company is fully remote, no offices). One use-case is we use it to create demo videos of our work and attach it to our git pull requests so reviewers can see how to test our code changes. Others might be things like showing buggy app behavior.

AlchemistCamp 3y ago

Why Loom though? There are alternatives like Awesome Screenshot that don't have a garbage Chrome-only dev/support target.

aeyes 3y ago

I already have Slack and it has the same feature, I don't even have to send a link. Just hit record and send the video. I guess I don't get it.

jguimont 3y ago
but you cannot link those into jira tickets!
- aeyes 3y ago
  I understand that your response is sarcasm but: You can link to Slack messages.

pcurve 3y ago

I didn't even realize what Loom was until now. I love their product demo video on their home page. https://www.loom.com/ https://www.loom.com/ Brilliantly made. And I'm completely sold on the value of this software. Screen recording is the best way to log software design defects.