

Yammer pulls down $85 million in venture funding - bdking
http://www.itworld.com/software/254902/yammer-pulls-down-85-million-venture-funding

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DarkShikari
_The company claims that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 now have Yammer
networks, including Thomson Reuters, Shell, Chevron, Nationwide and Ford
Motor._

This reminds me of claims that "90% of the Fortune 500 use our software", when
in reality "90% of the Fortune 500 have had at least one person download our
evaluation version". How much is Yammer _actually used_?

~~~
bkudria
We don't throw this figure around lightly. Certainly some companies use Yammer
more than others, but every company uses Yammer differently. Some companies
even pay us for it.

~~~
biot
Your reply is a non-statement that sounds like it came straight from the
marketing/PR department.

What percentage of Fortune 500 companies have at least five users who posted
something on Yammer in the last two weeks?

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nosequel
Oh HN, you never disappoint. So many people scratching their heads not seeing
the value in Yammer, and not a single one of them have ever used it.

I've been at a company for a year who uses it extensively, and it is probably
my favorite communication tool we have.

Let the down-voting commence!

~~~
ceejayoz
I've used it, and while I see some value in it, I'm not sure I see $142m
worth.

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pbreit
What is it about HNers that they have so much trouble understanding the appeal
and success of a service like Yammer and the nature of venture investing?

For starters, Yammer is undeniably successful on pretty much every measure,
including revenue (something HNers normally value). Yammer sells to businesses
after all which have a good ability to pay and in a category where businesses
have demonstrated such.

Yammer is executing on a brilliant acquisition model. It is a perfectly
constructed freemium model that takes maximum advantage of the characteristics
of email addresses (as organizing mechanism and communications tool).

And $100 million may seem like a lot of money to raise (and for what?) but
remember that Yammer's founder's previous experience was at PayPal where $225
million was raised. However it's quite apparent where a lot of money could be
spent going up against the likes of Salesforce, Oracle, Jive, etc: sales,
marketing and product development...globally.

Some HNers need to get over their "build it in a weekend" mentality and start
trying to understand how and why services get traction and become successful
(if they care).

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franze
isn't there a time when a company should stop growing via venture funding and
start re-investing it's own profits? you know, like a sustainable company? how
to determine when this points has come? (i thought yammer was already far
beyond that point)

~~~
jim-greer
In many cases a round of this size is like a 'private IPO' and provides some
liquidity for founders or even early employees. This quote suggest that may be
the case here:

<quote>The new funding “is like an IPO without the headaches,” he said, adding
that the start-up can now “stay private for quite some time.”</quote>

~~~
joering2
Someone may need to correct me here, but why would there be a pressure to go
IPO? plenty of companies stay out of public market (in private hands), remain
strong, build brand, bring profits, etc. IF they havent brought strong numbers
already, what would make anyone sure another $85 mil will?

~~~
patio11
There is strong pressure to IPO because that is a liquidity event (opportunity
to turn ownership into money) for investors. The other option is acquisition.
Recently, IPOs are _hard_ , for a combination of regulatory and market
reasons.

One could imagine a hypothetical world where profits paid as dividends to
owners would suffice to give investors the return their business model
requires but that is very much not standard practice in the US tech industry.
To a professional investor (especially a VC firm), a profitable company that
cannot be sold/IPOed is a failure.

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techwraith
Yammer is currently hiring: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3654071>

This link also has some info on what makes us different than
facebook/irc/campfire/status.net

~~~
mlinksva
"Sure, Yammer is just like Facebook, but we're so much more than that.
Corporations don't share cat pictures, they turn into efficient business
machines."

I was expecting something more substantial.

~~~
bkudria
I gave an example in the paragraph right above that. There are many more
examples and testimonials from paying customers at the link I posted. I'm
happy to answer any more questions.

~~~
mlinksva
What example? I read it again, and I really don't see any "info on what makes
us different than facebook/irc/campfire/status.net"

As I already said <https://www.yammer.com/product/index> does give me some
idea of how Yammer is different.

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kloncks
I don't understand all the hate on this thread. Use Yammer at my current
startup; used Yammer before at bigger companies.

Terrific product. There's a lot of features that I'd love to have, but this is
a much-need space.

A social-network for work. i.e. a social network that people will actually
_pay_ to use.

Who has perfected that? $142m is really the start here. Looking forward to
their future.

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ilamont
We use Yammer at our two-person company. It's not like Lotus Notes or other
groupware I've used in the past, but there are similarities to Facebook and
document-sharing tools.

We find utility in the ability to have asynchronous discussions among a
restricted group of people and share links (like Facebook) and also to share
documents and other files. A typical use case is someone posts a file, a link,
or groups of files or links, and then we discuss them.

We could use email for the asynchronous discussions, or Dropbox or Google Docs
for document sharing (and we do, sometimes, for some scenarios). But having
all of these resources in a single, searchable, discussable location is very
useful for us.

~~~
mopoke
We use Yammer at our 300-person company and we've found it really valuable.
We're roughly evenly distributed in 4 countries, so having somewhere which is
asynchronous where people can see what's happening around the group provides a
sense of connection between our staff. Anecdotaly, I've found it particularly
valuable amongst IT people who feel more comfortable sharing ideas and
opinions on there than they might do in person.

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firefoxman1
With the arsenal 37Signals provides, why would any company use Yammer? I found
it as useful as Google Wave. Seriously, it could sort-of replace email if
everyone in a company used it, and if Dropbox didn't exist...and of course
Basecamp had never been dreamed up.

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chubbard
I'm a Yammer user. I'm not head over heels for it, but it's good especially
for decentralized operations. I'm in a consulting company and we don't
actually talk about projects as much as advertise articles we wrote, software
we created, questions, or water cooler type stuff. I see the utility, but $85
Million valuation?! I don't see that. How will Yammer turn a profit with that
debt load? Let's say the exit strategy is selling would anyone want to buy it
at $400M? If not is it worth that risk for less?

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zeruch
Beyond the fact that this seems like "profit by VC injection" what does Yammer
do that couldn't be more easily, more simply and more flexibly solved via
Laconi.ca/Status.net?

~~~
mlinksva
Yammer must have a much, much bigger sales force, so we can start with
whatever a vendor sales force actually does for customers.

Speaking of sales forces, isn't Salesforce Chatter the biggest (as in sales
[force], at least) corporate-social-media-solution?

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jaequery
something about this screams "bailout"

