
Slack Taps Goldman Sachs to Lead IPO - i0exception
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-slack-ipo-exclusive-idUSKBN1O62FR
======
tootie
Fun fact, Goldman built a Slack-like chat service in house that they've spun
off into a company called Symphony. It's pitch is that it's more compliance-
friendly for heavily regulated orgs like banks. Also, it sucks.

~~~
jchw
The funny thing about the whole compliance thing is, a lot of traders were
using AOL Instant Messenger before it shut down, to the point where I believe
Bloomberg Terminal even integrated AIM. Some traders ended up moving to
Discord, which is nearly as strange.

~~~
Rebelgecko
I think if Discord ditched some of the gamer aesthetic (or had a pseudo-
internationalizion setting to replace the meme-y loading screens strings with
a reminder to turn in my TPS report by Friday) they'd get a lot more use in
corporate environments

~~~
dvtrn
That's not their market though, and they seem to be quite fine with that.
Their latest feature: buy games through the Discord client[0]. They know who
they want using their product.

[0] [https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-
us/articles/36001265609...](https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-
us/articles/360012656092-The-Discord-Store-and-Nitro-Games)

~~~
meddlepal
It's kind of silly though that it's not their market. It would cost them very
little to create a brand for Discord-Enterprise that uses the see technology
but markets at companies.

~~~
jchw
I really think they're doing the right thing. It is unfortunate given how
universally useful it is as an application, but way too many services and
companies try too hard to be all things to all people. Discord has had a
single direction and a strong vision, and it's really hard to have that if you
just want to be the world's best chat app. (Telegram feels like it tried to do
that and well, it really hasn't gone as well as it feels like it could've.)

Splitting it in two is of course possible, but that comes with its own set of
caveats in my opinion. Enterprise users have quite a different set of
priorities from gamers...

Either way, I've worked at companies that don't know what they want to be, and
it frankly sucks for many reasons. Good for Discord to know what they want to
be.

------
eikenberry
What does Slack need to raise capital for? They have their niche and are doing
great in it, I don't get why they'd want to be publicly owned with all the
headaches that brings. I don't get why a lot of companies do it when they
could just as well bootstrap and stay private.

~~~
wjossey
I don't know anything about their shareholder distribution at this point, so
this is all conjecture.

Since they took capital, the funds associated with their prior fundraising
rounds ($1.2B total) likely have 10 year horizons. Investors are looking to
recoup their investment during that window. Having the company stay private
means that they either need to raise a new round to buy out their old
investors, or they need to return sufficient profit over a short window (just
a few years) that their investors are happy with the dividend.

Not to mention, there are tons of advantages in having access to the public
markets. It's definitely a headache and work, but it's not without its
benefits.

------
statictype
>Slack is competing against the likes of Microsoft Corp’s (MSFT.O) Teams,
Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google Hangouts Chat and Cisco Systems Inc’s (CSCO.O)
Webex Teams in the so-called workplace collaboration market

How is Webex competing with Slack? Slack is for chat-based collaboration with
people in your workplace. Webex is for scheduling video calls.

Is there some overlapping use-case of either one that I'm missing?

~~~
spoondan
Webex Teams includes what used to be called Cisco Spark. Spark is a Slack
clone.

------
freedomben
I worry this will lead to a further reduction in privacy for average users, as
Slack is pushed toward "enterprise" features which are basically just giving
your boss the ability to read all your private messages.

That said, I think it's naive and foolish to have an expectation of privacy on
your work slack. Should you have privacy? Yes, absolutely. Do I expect it? No,
not at all.

~~~
kevindong
Why should an employer not be able to read messages that employees send to one
another for the purpose of doing their job?

~~~
freedomben
Perfectly fair question.

I view it much like having a conversation in the hallway or by the
watercooler. It would be creepy and weird, and unexpected, to have microphones
and cameras all over the office so the boss can record your conversations and
eavesdrop whenever they like.

It also _screams_ micro-management if the boss needs to drop in, even if you
are just using it "for the purpose of doing [your] job."

I tend to feel that if you trust your employees so little, then you should
just fire them. Conversely if my employer trusted me so little, I should
probably quit.

Where I would probably make an exception would be if one of the employees
filed an HR complaint or something, then I think looking at the existing
record would be fine. But, it should be limited in scope to that incident.

~~~
cozicoolmail
I personally do not think it is a right of an employee to have privacy when
having a discussion with another employee, over a work medium, about a work
related matter.

Just because using the ability to read private messages screams micro-
management, it doesn't mean that it's not occasionally necessary to discover
instances of harassment or abuse.

------
empath75
Maybe after he becomes a billionaire, Stewart can finally retire and actually
release a game.

~~~
wpietri
I'm hoping he'll do it the other way around next time. He should try to create
a useful service and then discover that there was a great game inside it all
along.

~~~
keithwhor
He’s playing the long game, just you wait.

------
pavlov
Feels like this might be one of those IPOs that end up being fishing
expeditions for a higher acquisition price, like happened with Qualtrics last
month (bought out by SAP week before the IPO).

~~~
aluminussoma
I doubt it. The founders the company saw Flickr starve to death after its
acquisition. Surely they don't want the same to happen to Slack.

Side thought: I wonder if Flickr could have become what Instagram is today if
not for the acquisition!

~~~
philwelch
Chat apps (even "enterprise" chat apps) are commodities. Here today, gone
tomorrow. The same is going to happen to Slack inevitably; an acquisition (or,
really, any financial exit) at least get something for the founders.

~~~
AznHisoka
There are high switching costs.

Once everyone in your 1000+ company is using it, its hard to get them all to
switch to another chat product. You got saved conversations, workflows,
integrations, etc.

~~~
user5994461
There is no switching costs involved. I am in one of the big corporation who's
gone through 5 different chat clients. It could decide overnight that one of
them must die and it wouldn't matter.

It's one of the lowest switching costs. A few weeks lost to redo the
integrations that really matter. That's about it.

Zero benefit in the end, they're all a basic chat with some fanciness of top.
It's just time wasted for all the users who hates change and have to learn a
new tool for no benefit.

~~~
pmart123
Do you think Slack or Github has higher switching costs?

~~~
user5994461
Slack for sure. All the employees are going to be pissed off for months and
lose a lot of productivity while they learn the new UI.

Git only impacts developers, a smaller user base, who can figure out how to
use a new website.

That being said. They are both easy switch. Just need to update the URL to the
new tool.

------
acchow
Slack feels so lacking compared to Facebook's Workplace.

~~~
mtanski
Except for the fact that very few large companies are willing to give Facebook
their data. That is any kind of data besides their social ad campaigns.

------
RyanShook
I’ve heard a lot of people talking about MS Teams. Is it as easy to use as
Slack?

~~~
Uehreka
My team at my job is pushing Teams over Slack (which the rest of my dept
uses). As someone who has to use both, I find Slack to be wayyyy more useful.

Teams treats each message as if it is a “post” that is meant to be “commented”
on and is extremely oriented around thread-based communication. Each “top-
level” message gets borders and huge margins and padding in the UI. As a
result, you can see fewer messages on the screen at a time. By contrast, Slack
_has_ the feature of threads, but defaults to being focused on the general
flow of conversation, with more messages on the screen at a time.

Some people probably like the thread-based communication model Teams uses. I
do not count myself among them.

~~~
chiefalchemist
I guess Yammer became in some form Teams.

------
sjg007
Google should buy them.

~~~
aphextron
Or Microsoft. With that, GitHub, and VSCode, Microsoft will have effectively
subsumed the entire average developer workflow again.

~~~
Keyframe
Teams is actually not bad at all (sans linux/skype annoyance), but yeah.

~~~
ekianjo
Teams is super slow. Searching for past messages takes forever. Keyboard
shortcuts are awkward... the list could go on. I cant say it compares well to
Slack.

~~~
sjg007
Nobody has email or chat search right, not google nor slack.

~~~
throwawaymath
I find Google's email search to be pretty fantastic, to be honest. It's never
failed me, even when I had to search years and gigabytes of emails.

~~~
ekianjo
Only if you know exactly what you are looking for... sometimes going thru
years of emails can be super painful.

