I can't think of a more dystopian thing to happen. A terrible chat app that sucks way too many resources and too much time from you and your computer purchased by a company that thrives on...
I can't think of a more dystopian thing to happen. A terrible chat app that sucks way too many resources and too much time from you and your computer purchased by a company that thrives on pestering people to purchase products and services they don't want or need.
Unfortunately, I'm forced to use this garbage application. I'm hoping that my org has enough sense to switch apps now that it's associated with salesforce, but I don't know how likely that is, given that they had to spend a lot to purchase it in the first place.
I use Slack on the daily too, and wouldn't call it a "terrible chat app" or "garbage application"... I prefer it to most of the alternatives out there, even though it is a bit of a memory hog. But...
I use Slack on the daily too, and wouldn't call it a "terrible chat app" or "garbage application"... I prefer it to most of the alternatives out there, even though it is a bit of a memory hog. But this news is definitely slightly worrying, since even though I doubt they will change much, Salesforce isn't exactly known for being a particularly ethical company.
I concur. In the context of a business application, I've been mostly ok with it. Yeah, it's electron, and it uses up a bunch of ram, but hey, it's running on a 32gb+ macbook I get from work that I...
I concur. In the context of a business application, I've been mostly ok with it. Yeah, it's electron, and it uses up a bunch of ram, but hey, it's running on a 32gb+ macbook I get from work that I do nothing but open iterm and chrome on and sometimes vscode or intellij so whatever.
Let me tell you, it's a heck of a lot better than Chime.
I know people also complain about being paged, but that seems to be more a cultural issue than a slack issue. Slack is just the conduit for the symptom, not the cause.
I don't know, nobody knows. On the one hand, I trust the conventional wisdom about diversifying, so I think an S&P 500 index fund or a total market fund is the way to go. You automatically own...
I don't know, nobody knows. On the one hand, I trust the conventional wisdom about diversifying, so I think an S&P 500 index fund or a total market fund is the way to go. You automatically own some tech stocks that way (look at the top 6 companies), and I don't see a reason to own more than that.
On the other hand, in my personal experience, I have made most of the money I have by procrastinating about diversifying away from a tech stock, all the while thinking "it can't keep going up... can it?"
Anyway, I don't think this news is a sign that big tech will suddenly stop making lots of money, and I don't think the widespread anti-tech sentiment is a reason they will stop making money. There are big companies that made lots of money for decades while being hated. And as long as they keep making lots of money, the price might go down sometimes but it seems unlikely that there will be a sudden decline like in the dot-com era.
Some money-losing unicorns might go bust like WeWork did. I keep thinking Tesla is eventually going to really screw things up, though it seems they are no longer in a bet-the-company situation so maybe not?
I'm currently YOLOing my 401k on a tech index fund. So let's hope it does. They do say you should be in more volatile assets when you're younger, right?
"it can't keep going up... can it?"
I'm currently YOLOing my 401k on a tech index fund. So let's hope it does. They do say you should be in more volatile assets when you're younger, right?
I mean, considering Salesforce paid way over the market cap (rn it's at 25 billion, and it was only around 12.5 billion a few months ago) if anything it's a sign the market's still hot.
I mean, considering Salesforce paid way over the market cap (rn it's at 25 billion, and it was only around 12.5 billion a few months ago) if anything it's a sign the market's still hot.
Well, it doesn't have that much competition. It's mostly just Teams, which is certainly a fierce competitor since it's almost free while Slack is incredibly expensive in comparison. But Slack...
Well, it doesn't have that much competition. It's mostly just Teams, which is certainly a fierce competitor since it's almost free while Slack is incredibly expensive in comparison. But Slack still has a strong brand in the slow moving corporate world, and unlike some tech companies, it has a pretty straight forward monetization method and value add.
B2B SaaS is probably the most beloved type of company that exists by institutional investors.
27b is definitely on the high side - it's higher than Slack's market cap on close today, for instance. But I think it's overly reductionist to just call it a "chat app with a lot of competition"....
27b is definitely on the high side - it's higher than Slack's market cap on close today, for instance. But I think it's overly reductionist to just call it a "chat app with a lot of competition". It has one (large) competitor, and to be a business chat app is far more involved than you'd first think. There are moats there.
One problem slack had was penetration into older companies (while I think almost every tech company I've worked for either used slack or made their own internal version [but those were very very very large companies]), and Salesforces does help a lot with that, since they have the deep corporate enterprise connections that a recently IPOd startup doesn't (and that Microsoft does!), which can help with the slowing growth.
Maybe they'll do some integrations with the CRM too? Honestly never used it myself, can't say how well that'd work. But it's not a completely offbeat price.
I think most companies already own Microsoft Teams. So selling slack is a hard sell, even with deep connections to the C level suite. Deep integration with CRM is a possibility. Salesforce tried...
I think most companies already own Microsoft Teams. So selling slack is a hard sell, even with deep connections to the C level suite.
Deep integration with CRM is a possibility. Salesforce tried it before with Chatter, and it failed miserably. Zoom would have been a better fit. Internal communication is much less interesting to a CRM system than external communication.
The issue with Teams in many orgs is that it's not well configured. It came bundled with Office 365 and not every org has moved to instant messaging over email. Even the concept of SharePoint...
The issue with Teams in many orgs is that it's not well configured. It came bundled with Office 365 and not every org has moved to instant messaging over email. Even the concept of SharePoint Online sites (which Teams are derived from) are foreign to them. I've seen all kinds of problematic, and even dangerous, O365 enterprise configurations. Teams is basically a bonus tool but orgs are primarily getting it because it's part of the package with new Outlook, Word, Excel, and even SharePoint. I've long held that this is how Microsoft was inflating its Teams user count the entire time—just because people had access didn't mean they were actually using it.
Microsoft is selling the promise of O365 but not out of the box configurations for many organizations to ensure a proper or viable Teams experience. Compounding this is that Teams is the product of three or four different legacy applications, folded into each other, so the overall design and usage goal can be a little muddled. In most cases I've seen, unless there has been a giant corporate push to change the culture of communication, many orgs simply don't use the Teams part of Teams, and treat it like a better-performing Skype.
Slack, in comparison, comes out of the box configured pretty decently for most enterprise use and its design promotes its main featureset a lot better. I've seen people pick up both Teams and Slack and find Slack to be much more easy to figure out and acclimatize to group messaging than with Teams thanks to how Slack's interface presents its concepts.
I can understand why Salesforce thinks Slack is its way forward here. Unlike Chatter, which was more of a LinkedIn style social media approach, Slack is more under-the-hood but still-open group messaging within an organization, that offers better central control so it can be dramatically more nimble and configurable than Teams under an O365 environment.
Suffice to say, I think what will be the big selling point in the near future is ease of use. Most people are not technical, and don't want to figure out technology. Slack has historically been a lot better about catering to those people than pretty much all of its competitors, and I think this is what Salesforce will be leveraging.
Sounds like Benioff wants to try again with his failed Chatter/ Customer 360 approach.
Sounds like Benioff wants to try again with his failed Chatter/ Customer 360 approach.
And according to Benioff, adding Slack as the new interface for Customer 360 is the "icing on the cake."
"This is very cool and very different than anything I've ever seen. It's kind of a dream that I've always had that we could have this type of a user interface and now with Salesforce and Slack coming together we do," Benioff added.
I can't think of a more dystopian thing to happen. A terrible chat app that sucks way too many resources and too much time from you and your computer purchased by a company that thrives on pestering people to purchase products and services they don't want or need.
Unfortunately, I'm forced to use this garbage application. I'm hoping that my org has enough sense to switch apps now that it's associated with salesforce, but I don't know how likely that is, given that they had to spend a lot to purchase it in the first place.
I use Slack on the daily too, and wouldn't call it a "terrible chat app" or "garbage application"... I prefer it to most of the alternatives out there, even though it is a bit of a memory hog. But this news is definitely slightly worrying, since even though I doubt they will change much, Salesforce isn't exactly known for being a particularly ethical company.
I concur. In the context of a business application, I've been mostly ok with it. Yeah, it's electron, and it uses up a bunch of ram, but hey, it's running on a 32gb+ macbook I get from work that I do nothing but open iterm and chrome on and sometimes vscode or intellij so whatever.
Let me tell you, it's a heck of a lot better than Chime.
I know people also complain about being paged, but that seems to be more a cultural issue than a slack issue. Slack is just the conduit for the symptom, not the cause.
SalesForce paid 27.7 Instagrams, almost 7 Marvel Entertainments, and 70% of ARM for just one Slack!? They want something to rival Teams that badly?
They’re making an expensive bet that work-from-home is a permanent solution.
Should I get out of tech stocks now before the bubble bursts?
I don't know, nobody knows. On the one hand, I trust the conventional wisdom about diversifying, so I think an S&P 500 index fund or a total market fund is the way to go. You automatically own some tech stocks that way (look at the top 6 companies), and I don't see a reason to own more than that.
On the other hand, in my personal experience, I have made most of the money I have by procrastinating about diversifying away from a tech stock, all the while thinking "it can't keep going up... can it?"
Anyway, I don't think this news is a sign that big tech will suddenly stop making lots of money, and I don't think the widespread anti-tech sentiment is a reason they will stop making money. There are big companies that made lots of money for decades while being hated. And as long as they keep making lots of money, the price might go down sometimes but it seems unlikely that there will be a sudden decline like in the dot-com era.
Some money-losing unicorns might go bust like WeWork did. I keep thinking Tesla is eventually going to really screw things up, though it seems they are no longer in a bet-the-company situation so maybe not?
I'm currently YOLOing my 401k on a tech index fund. So let's hope it does. They do say you should be in more volatile assets when you're younger, right?
Personally I am just waiting until the market realizes most "tech" companies aren't actually in the business of making new technologies.
I mean, considering Salesforce paid way over the market cap (rn it's at 25 billion, and it was only around 12.5 billion a few months ago) if anything it's a sign the market's still hot.
That's still 27 billion for a chat app with a lot of competition. Pretty crazy if you ask me.
Well, it doesn't have that much competition. It's mostly just Teams, which is certainly a fierce competitor since it's almost free while Slack is incredibly expensive in comparison. But Slack still has a strong brand in the slow moving corporate world, and unlike some tech companies, it has a pretty straight forward monetization method and value add.
B2B SaaS is probably the most beloved type of company that exists by institutional investors.
It has a price to sales of over 30.
It grew revenue 50% yoy as of July.
That is nose bleed valuation.
Benioff is paying a lot for non-organic growth.
27b is definitely on the high side - it's higher than Slack's market cap on close today, for instance. But I think it's overly reductionist to just call it a "chat app with a lot of competition". It has one (large) competitor, and to be a business chat app is far more involved than you'd first think. There are moats there.
One problem slack had was penetration into older companies (while I think almost every tech company I've worked for either used slack or made their own internal version [but those were very very very large companies]), and Salesforces does help a lot with that, since they have the deep corporate enterprise connections that a recently IPOd startup doesn't (and that Microsoft does!), which can help with the slowing growth.
Maybe they'll do some integrations with the CRM too? Honestly never used it myself, can't say how well that'd work. But it's not a completely offbeat price.
I think most companies already own Microsoft Teams. So selling slack is a hard sell, even with deep connections to the C level suite.
Deep integration with CRM is a possibility. Salesforce tried it before with Chatter, and it failed miserably. Zoom would have been a better fit. Internal communication is much less interesting to a CRM system than external communication.
The issue with Teams in many orgs is that it's not well configured. It came bundled with Office 365 and not every org has moved to instant messaging over email. Even the concept of SharePoint Online sites (which Teams are derived from) are foreign to them. I've seen all kinds of problematic, and even dangerous, O365 enterprise configurations. Teams is basically a bonus tool but orgs are primarily getting it because it's part of the package with new Outlook, Word, Excel, and even SharePoint. I've long held that this is how Microsoft was inflating its Teams user count the entire time—just because people had access didn't mean they were actually using it.
Microsoft is selling the promise of O365 but not out of the box configurations for many organizations to ensure a proper or viable Teams experience. Compounding this is that Teams is the product of three or four different legacy applications, folded into each other, so the overall design and usage goal can be a little muddled. In most cases I've seen, unless there has been a giant corporate push to change the culture of communication, many orgs simply don't use the Teams part of Teams, and treat it like a better-performing Skype.
Slack, in comparison, comes out of the box configured pretty decently for most enterprise use and its design promotes its main featureset a lot better. I've seen people pick up both Teams and Slack and find Slack to be much more easy to figure out and acclimatize to group messaging than with Teams thanks to how Slack's interface presents its concepts.
I can understand why Salesforce thinks Slack is its way forward here. Unlike Chatter, which was more of a LinkedIn style social media approach, Slack is more under-the-hood but still-open group messaging within an organization, that offers better central control so it can be dramatically more nimble and configurable than Teams under an O365 environment.
Suffice to say, I think what will be the big selling point in the near future is ease of use. Most people are not technical, and don't want to figure out technology. Slack has historically been a lot better about catering to those people than pretty much all of its competitors, and I think this is what Salesforce will be leveraging.
Sounds like Benioff wants to try again with his failed Chatter/ Customer 360 approach.
The free issue of Casey Newton's "Platformer" newsletter this week is on the Slack acquisition: How Microsoft crushed Slack
A little off-topic, but I hope that Butterfield will go back to Glitch and finish it off, but free it from the browser.
God, wouldn't that be magical?
I knew one of the guys who was illustrating it. It was so cool to see the progress... then it all suddenly stopped.
I won't let the dream die :)