3 ms·
i like to joke there are two types of tech companies, mutually exclusive. - profit driven - investor money driven skype is a profit company. wire is clearly
by gcb0 12y ago
i like to joke there are two types of tech companies, mutually exclusive.
- profit driven
- investor money driven
skype is a profit company. wire is clearly investor money driven.
So while your example is valid, i don't think they want to displace the corporate consumer that creates the bulky of skype profit. It probably wants to go after the users that uses snapchat/wasup/etc for free, with little revenue besides what is necessary for a "revenue" round A/B/C/IPO deck, and get investor money/get acquired.
PS: while skype is a consumer product, its job is not to drive revenue, but to advertise the corporate solution: Lync. Lync gets microsoft 2bi/yr, while skype peak at 600m/yr in a good year. 600m sounds good, but not when you paid over 8bi for it.
- rplnt 12y agoSadly, we mostly hear about those investor money driven companies.
- gregpilling 12y agoThey have money to hire staff to do PR. Bootstrapped companies are often cash strapped for a long time before they can afford PR people. Founders are told to do it, but reality of running a company gets in the way.
- danyork 12y agoAnd curiously, Microsoft is replacing "Lync" with "Skype for Business".... although I'm not sure if that is a simple renaming of the existing client.
- gcb0 12y agoaparently it is just a rename. i don't deal with any clients that use it anymore, but last i heard they are just adding lync support to skype, and decided to kill one of the brands. cleverly they killed lync.
- MichaelGG 12y agoThey did say they would make the Lync client more like Skype. Which is insane, as Skype is one of the worst pieces of software I use on a day-to-day basis. Lync is a far cleaner, nicer, client. Also, ffs, "Skype for Business".