6 ms·

Every entrepreneur wants to assume the counterfactual that but for their startup dying for reason #6354, it would've lived!

dmix 2y ago
Yeah I'm not fully buying a startup lives or dies based on packaging deal of a long-embedded mega corp. Unless his startup was VC funded and was already seriously penetrating enterprise and then couldn't get round C of financing because their 100+ person sales team couldn't make the high growth math make sense. Otherwise usually your value prop can't be closely tied to *relatively* minor accounting decisions in the early days or you're already DOA when facing an entrenched opponent whose team can easily undercut you well beyond generic bundling deals (whether via strong existing relationships, making wider non-standard sweetheart deals that wouldn't be under regulatory scrutiny, and marketing budgets). Don't get me wrong this can harm markets generally, and megacorps should be held to higher scrutiny, but usually it's not that simple.
- jollofricepeas 2y ago
  Nah. My best guess is that the pandemic is what happened — if this story is true. The bundling didn’t matter when no one needed a large amount of seats for an in-office workforce. But during COVID and currently, there was no better pricing than what Microsoft is offering for all the things (ex. Azure + 0365 + GitHub). The market shifted from Slack, Zoom and <insert anything else here> to Teams for large enterprises when they recognized that no one was coming back into the office. Source: I bought enterprise software for a Fortune 20 during COVID until I launched my startup.
  - DANmode 2y ago
    Are you open to opportunities?
  - dmix 2y ago
    Zoom became a major business because of Covid and Slack benfited majorly. Neither were powerhouses like Microsoft before then. Whether a small European startup would have won out locally without Microsofts market position + price advantage idk. But without details I'm not sure the financial decision making of a Fortune 20 matters in this conversation which was part of my point. Once your sales team is competing on price vs Microsoft it's basically over for young companies. Your value prop has to be much more than that until you're a mature business.
  - Foobar8568 2y ago
    In Enterprise settings, I have never seen anything than MS bundling over 20 years for that many clients. To my European eyes, Slack and Zoom have been always an US centric or Linux first small companies centric tools.
- appstorelottery 2y ago
  Netscape would probably disagree. :-)
  - dmix 2y ago
    Technically Netspace wasnt a startup, they IPOd early and were bought by AOL for 4 billion in 98. They were real large scale contenders where such a dynamic could really be do or die. There's degrees to market manipulation and market position where this sort of explanation would hold water as being the root cause of death knell.
- djtango 2y ago
  I have first hand seen Teams eat a whole bunch of better product's lunches. Overnight Meet Slack Zoom all got poopoo'd by finance because the company was already paying for MS Office
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    Yeah, Symphony chat lost to Team also. Why didn't Symphony add voice and video chat? I never understood that.
DANmode 2y ago
How many of those entrepreneurs are explicitly agreed with by antitrust regulators of major jurisdictions...?
- constantcrying 2y ago
  You are just assuming OP is telling the truth. Look at his product: https://taskulu.com/ https://taskulu.com/ it wasn't killed by Teams, but by Jira.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    It's why we need the full context before believing everything these "serial entrepreneurs" say whenever they cry "wah-wah #BIG_CORP killed my product", so we can be the judges if indeed big corp killed it, or if it was just a DOA product coasting on the pandemic IT spending boom fueled by zero interest rates, like the other thousands of unprofitable startups of the time that are now under. Since the OP refused to provide any further details or answer any questions people sent towards him, I tend to believe it's the latter.
  - DANmode 2y ago
    I think it's way more necessary to note Microsoft's aggressive use of market leader to stifle competition in previously unrelated industries, than to theoretically award anything to this founder in our court of opinion.
- throwAGIway 2y ago
  Why should I care what a protectionist government agency thinks? As a customer, I am very satisfied with the deal Microsoft offered.
  - bratbag 2y ago
    For now you are. Enshitification ramps up after the competition has been destroyed.
    - 2y ago

dmix 2y ago

Yeah I'm not fully buying a startup lives or dies based on packaging deal of a long-embedded mega corp. Unless his startup was VC funded and was already seriously penetrating enterprise and then couldn't get round C of financing because their 100+ person sales team couldn't make the high growth math make sense. Otherwise usually your value prop can't be closely tied to *relatively* minor accounting decisions in the early days or you're already DOA when facing an entrenched opponent whose team can easily undercut you well beyond generic bundling deals (whether via strong existing relationships, making wider non-standard sweetheart deals that wouldn't be under regulatory scrutiny, and marketing budgets). Don't get me wrong this can harm markets generally, and megacorps should be held to higher scrutiny, but usually it's not that simple.

jollofricepeas 2y ago
Nah. My best guess is that the pandemic is what happened — if this story is true. The bundling didn’t matter when no one needed a large amount of seats for an in-office workforce. But during COVID and currently, there was no better pricing than what Microsoft is offering for all the things (ex. Azure + 0365 + GitHub). The market shifted from Slack, Zoom and <insert anything else here> to Teams for large enterprises when they recognized that no one was coming back into the office. Source: I bought enterprise software for a Fortune 20 during COVID until I launched my startup.
- DANmode 2y ago
  Are you open to opportunities?
- dmix 2y ago
  Zoom became a major business because of Covid and Slack benfited majorly. Neither were powerhouses like Microsoft before then. Whether a small European startup would have won out locally without Microsofts market position + price advantage idk. But without details I'm not sure the financial decision making of a Fortune 20 matters in this conversation which was part of my point. Once your sales team is competing on price vs Microsoft it's basically over for young companies. Your value prop has to be much more than that until you're a mature business.
- Foobar8568 2y ago
  In Enterprise settings, I have never seen anything than MS bundling over 20 years for that many clients. To my European eyes, Slack and Zoom have been always an US centric or Linux first small companies centric tools.
appstorelottery 2y ago
Netscape would probably disagree. :-)
- dmix 2y ago
  Technically Netspace wasnt a startup, they IPOd early and were bought by AOL for 4 billion in 98. They were real large scale contenders where such a dynamic could really be do or die. There's degrees to market manipulation and market position where this sort of explanation would hold water as being the root cause of death knell.
djtango 2y ago
I have first hand seen Teams eat a whole bunch of better product's lunches. Overnight Meet Slack Zoom all got poopoo'd by finance because the company was already paying for MS Office
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  Yeah, Symphony chat lost to Team also. Why didn't Symphony add voice and video chat? I never understood that.

DANmode 2y ago

How many of those entrepreneurs are explicitly agreed with by antitrust regulators of major jurisdictions...?

constantcrying 2y ago
You are just assuming OP is telling the truth. Look at his product: https://taskulu.com/ https://taskulu.com/ it wasn't killed by Teams, but by Jira.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  It's why we need the full context before believing everything these "serial entrepreneurs" say whenever they cry "wah-wah #BIG_CORP killed my product", so we can be the judges if indeed big corp killed it, or if it was just a DOA product coasting on the pandemic IT spending boom fueled by zero interest rates, like the other thousands of unprofitable startups of the time that are now under. Since the OP refused to provide any further details or answer any questions people sent towards him, I tend to believe it's the latter.
- DANmode 2y ago
  I think it's way more necessary to note Microsoft's aggressive use of market leader to stifle competition in previously unrelated industries, than to theoretically award anything to this founder in our court of opinion.
throwAGIway 2y ago
Why should I care what a protectionist government agency thinks? As a customer, I am very satisfied with the deal Microsoft offered.
- bratbag 2y ago
  For now you are. Enshitification ramps up after the competition has been destroyed.
  - 2y ago