[klodolph]

> How does AI change the build vs buy trade off in a way that eliminates economies of scale?

I think a more likely scenario here is that something good and free escapes containment at some point and Slack’s core product just kind of deflates. Not something better than Slack, but something good enough that people don’t care about Slack any more.

I don’t see it as a question of whether you build it or buy it, but a question of the time horizon for selling messaging software as a business strategy. Most business strategies have a finite time horizon. How long can you continue to sell messaging software before there are too many competing solutions available and you stop making money from it?

[rpdillon]

We've already ran this experiment with Zulip and Mattermost. Slack still won.

[klodolph]

N=2, no thank you.

Web browsers used to be exclusively paid software, if you were serious. So did operating systems, SQL databases, C++ compilers, and video codecs.