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0 pointsummonk6y ago0 comments

Some of those (e.g. Slack) are growing phenomenally fast though, and could become profitable quite easily. Others (e.g. Uber and Lyft) have a questionable business model.

Edit: wow I didn't realize Slack had such a large market cap. That is a LOT of growth priced in, probably more than is justified.

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bakuninsbart6y ago

While this is true, I seem to miss what makes Slack special. We use it at work, and it is decent at what it provides, but we could probably just as well switch to Discord, Microsoft Teams or ICQ.

Microsoft Teams especially seems like a deliberate attempt to dethrone Slack, and while it is slightly more annoying to use, it just makes sense for companies to bundle their services and subsciptions.

I do not really see a bright future for slack.

IMTDb6y ago

You could switch, sure. But would you ? You would be losing :

- Message history

- Files that have been shared

- Integrations / bots / ...

- Plus you would need to setup everyone again, create channels, ...

Slack goal is to be cheap enough that it does not represent a major cost for the company and integrated enough that moving would be a pain.

jen206y ago

Would you, though? My company was a very early user of Slack, and imported our history from Skype group chat, IRC and HipChat over various periods in history. You can get the data out of Slack easily enough, so I don’t see that as a major aspect of lock-in if there is a competitive product.

The integration story is more interesting, but to _be_ a competitive product many of these must already exist.

The job of competing with Slack is harder than it once was (just look at MS Teams) but not impossible (just look at Slack...) - there’s lots of room for improvement.

twic6y ago

My company switched from Slack to Mattermost, and then back to Slack. We either did all these things, twice, or lived without them. Switching is not something you'd do on a whim, but it's not really difficult either.

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notahacker6y ago

For the same reasons (good and bad) companies periodically switch other software platforms despite switching costs. History is exportable, and I suspect that for every company that's built clever and essential integrations and comprehensive channel structures there's another one where it's an under-used message board...

trumbitta26y ago

I don't think you can post syntax highlighted code snippets, or do automations with ICQ.

YarickR26y ago

This is something they (ICQ team) are working on right now (actually they are launching ICQ-based Slack-alike collaboration solution, Myteam)

Bombthecat6y ago

Well, probably rpa could help here.. If it makes sense is another story :)

buboard6y ago

> and could become profitable quite easily

That's easy to say and hard to do, especially when u have to justify a very public valuation

mbesto6y ago

> are growing phenomenally fast though, and could become profitable quite easily.

Exactly. Cut their S&M budgets overnight and you'll see a ton of very profitable companies. Just look at their Gross Margins.

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