> So welcome, Microsoft, to the revolution. We’re glad you’re going to be helping us define this new product category. We admire many of your achievements and know you’ll be a worthy competitor. We’re sure you’re going to come up with a couple of new ideas on your own too. And we’ll be right there, ready.
This whole thing is dripping with condescension and ego. It reads like a nasty letter written to an ex-girlfriend about how you're super successful now and gee I'm glad you're doing well too. Yuck.
> Third, you’ve got to do this with love. You’ll need to take a radically different approach to supporting and partnering with customers to help them adjust to new and better ways of working.
This is so cringe-inducing, I can't believe they paid to have this in the NYT. Microsoft stock up to all-time highs as Teams eats Slack's lunch (for better or worse), while Slack bought for scrap by a company way worse than MSFT. Maybe don't publicly shame potential acquirers in passive-aggressive paid advertisements?
We tried Slack in the early days. No way we could run that across the entire business. It was clear back with Slack being then a cloud based, Electron based, lacking of MS Office integration, lacking Active directory integration a Microsoft me too offering would take all the market share. I’m surprised they didn’t do more to address this. Obviously Covid has massively accelerated Teams adoption too but it was a no brainer for businesses running Office 365.
I’m surprised they so clearly copied Apple’s letter to IBM, which turned out to be a letter to Microsoft. We know how that turned out in the 80s and 90s.
I have to push back on this. Salesforce backpacks seem to be a huge hit with the homeless. I've seen them in multiple major cities now and they are almost de rigueur in SF.
Salesforce will have their sales teams push it alongside their other offerings, raise prices for those who want to use it, kill the free plan, and trim any fat (or strongly encourage cost savings measures, depending on how much autonomy Slack will continue to have post-acquisition) not needed to operate the product. I have no doubt they'll be able to make it profitable, even at the loss of market share (free users and price sensitive paying orgs).
The cost of sales for Slack will be very low for Salesforce, because they’re already selling a ton of stuff to large customers. Their guys are already flying out to the customer, taking them out to dinner, getting their commission checks, etc. they’ll just ask “you want any Slack with that?” Imagine the economics of trying to sell lip balm door to door vs. just putting it in a pharmacy for people to buy when they’re buying other stuff.
For people who don't know Stewart Butterfield is the creator of Flickr and Slack. Both Flickr and Slack are side products/ideas which came up while developing a game.
Everyonce in a while, an acquisition goes well, but usually it's like a private equity buyout; you know it's not going to end well, you just don't know when. Except if it's Oracle, then you know you need to start migrating immediately, cause you can maybe get one more contract renewal in before the terms change.
Slack has no moat. It won the market by dint of excellent marketing and a good enough product with a little design panache. Admittedly, this has been really hard for it's competitors to match 100% but really no chat platform has had any major innovation in like 20 years. They have mostly all failed due to a combination of network effects and poorly-conceived monetization strategies. Slack is hot, but it's not going to last 10 years.
They signed up for this by using Slack in the first place. I don’t mean to be anti-corporation, just saying the wise move for keeping communities around for the long haul does not involve tying yourself to the life of a SV company.
I hate to beat the dead horse but IRC sounds great for such free communities. If it’s just about connecting people without the need for historical data or discovery, IRC is great and won’t die when [tech company] folds
As Salesforce is basically Oracle, Jr, who wants to take bets on when they kill off the free option (or greatly water down the features), raise the prices to fit better with with Salesforce's pricing, and force-integrate it with the rest of their product stack?
we don't use Slack at my job. we do use MuleSoft which got bought by Salesforce. not sure about every touched by Salesforce die but Salesforce is giving out the Oracle vibe. they just keep buying other companies...
Hmm, I would have gone from slack to keybase, if keybase weren't bought out.
It seems to me like running a matrix server without open registration would be about all I need and is startup resistant.
But intros understandably don't seem geared to details for migration of simple automated systems. JSON/HTTP is great, but what does sending messages in via API look like given e2e? Is one installing a whole robot framework to replace a simple webhook (similar to how one would be using a whole keybase install for its CLI)?
Am I paranoid to assume that Salesforce is probably very (mostly?) interested in the business intelligence that comes from analyzing team communications?
I remember that, was on the front page. The writing was on the wall the moment they took out that full page ad in NYT which is a bizarre PR move that signalled fear.
Zoom missed a good opportunity to buy slack. They could have used their inflated stock price to purchase it snd consolidate into a WFH platform. The only weakness is probably the Zoom CEO who probably wouldn’t know how to run both businesses. But I think that would have been a better match than salesforce
[+] [-] adwww|5 years ago|reply
https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/blog/news/dear-microsoft
[+] [-] omh|5 years ago|reply
But it looks like Microsoft considered paying about $8 billion back in 2016[1].
Slack held out, Microsoft built their competitor and Slack are still around. And now Slack are going to sell for $24 billion or more.
I'm not sure that puts Slack in too bad a light.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/04/source-microsoft-mulled-an...
[+] [-] ciarannolan|5 years ago|reply
This whole thing is dripping with condescension and ego. It reads like a nasty letter written to an ex-girlfriend about how you're super successful now and gee I'm glad you're doing well too. Yuck.
[+] [-] paxys|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seibelj|5 years ago|reply
This is so cringe-inducing, I can't believe they paid to have this in the NYT. Microsoft stock up to all-time highs as Teams eats Slack's lunch (for better or worse), while Slack bought for scrap by a company way worse than MSFT. Maybe don't publicly shame potential acquirers in passive-aggressive paid advertisements?
[+] [-] elevenoh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbjbjbjb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graeme|5 years ago|reply
https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/jobs-apple-welc...
[+] [-] antbrain|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tims33|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hajile|5 years ago|reply
I have yet to see anything that got better because it involved Salesforce.
[+] [-] JamesSwift|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burnthrow|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ct0|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkdk8283|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] estomagordo|5 years ago|reply
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/012616/how-d....
And Slack themselves are expecting something similar for 2020.
https://slack.com/intl/en-nl/blog/news/slack-announces-recor....
People who actually know how to reason about business finances will elaborate, I'm sure.
What I'm wondering is, what are some realistic scenarios for how a new owner will pursue more aggressive revenue generation for Slack?
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ponker|5 years ago|reply
This is how Microsoft makes so much money.
[+] [-] minutillo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frankietaylr|5 years ago|reply
Interesting read: https://www.fastcompany.com/3026418/this-story-about-slacks-...
[+] [-] disgruntledphd2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrismeller|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toast0|5 years ago|reply
Everyonce in a while, an acquisition goes well, but usually it's like a private equity buyout; you know it's not going to end well, you just don't know when. Except if it's Oracle, then you know you need to start migrating immediately, cause you can maybe get one more contract renewal in before the terms change.
[+] [-] symlinkk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uCantCauseUCant|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] theandrewbailey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrweasel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tbenst|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tootie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foepys|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] srgpqt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corytheboyd|5 years ago|reply
I hate to beat the dead horse but IRC sounds great for such free communities. If it’s just about connecting people without the need for historical data or discovery, IRC is great and won’t die when [tech company] folds
[+] [-] mrweasel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] remarkEon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnTHaller|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MangoCoffee|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xtracto|5 years ago|reply
Ooh my, that brings me back terrible nightmares. I remember having to use Mule Eclipse based platform to create "service buses". That was crazy.
[+] [-] foolmeonce|5 years ago|reply
It seems to me like running a matrix server without open registration would be about all I need and is startup resistant.
But intros understandably don't seem geared to details for migration of simple automated systems. JSON/HTTP is great, but what does sending messages in via API look like given e2e? Is one installing a whole robot framework to replace a simple webhook (similar to how one would be using a whole keybase install for its CLI)?
[+] [-] karaterobot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CharlesW|5 years ago|reply
(You have to give them your email address to read.)
[+] [-] MikeKusold|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] troughway|5 years ago|reply
Can someone pastebin the article for us?
[+] [-] xwdv|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cutenewt|5 years ago|reply
At that price, it'll be a merger, not an acquisition.
[+] [-] remote_phone|5 years ago|reply