[jaypaulynice]

It seems like companies exist nowadays to raise funding. Not to be profitable businesses. Say they go IPO soon after, where does the money come to actually run the company? Is there a designated pool of shares for that? Do they buy back the shares then?

[prklmn]

"Here’s How Unicorns Trick You Into Thinking They’re Real" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-02/the-magic...

[natural219]

Out of all the software this validly applies to, Slack has the most solid business model I've seen in software since Microsoft Office. Almost every modern organization is inclined to stress over whether $6.66 / user / month is worth the price of the substantially enhanced collaboration Slack provides for anywhere between small teams and 1000+ - person companies.

Not a Slack employee or anything, just love the software.

[AstralStorm]

The real question is: why buy Slack when relatively equivalent solutions such as Mattermost or even Discord exist?

Seriously, the only thing that could convince a company is either lower admin cost (vs Mattermost) and way better customer service when something fails. (vs Discord) Pretty sure big co mc corp wouldn't like a potential competitor running its comms.

Additionally a strong competitor is as always email. Perhaps enhanced with scheduling and mailing lists. If you don't like to set it up, you could pay Google for example. And both Google and MS are improving their chat/IM offerings.

They can and will undercut such a start-up instead of buying it, unless they see enough value in an acquihire.

[owenwil]

Because with Mattermost or Discord you have to maintain it yourself, and their tooling isn't very good?

[raesene6]

The major difference, to me, between Slack and Office is that Slack lacks user lock-in.

Companies that make heavy use of office would find it very difficult to move over to another office suite (if they could find one that meets their needs), whereas moving off slack to one of the many alternatives, doesn't seem that hard.

[lamp_book]

If they made it to IPO, then they are golden; the bigger idiot is left holding the bag. With Snapchat, Blue Apron, Twitter, GoPro, Fitbit, etc. the "failed IPO" is their true business model.

[westoque]

> the "failed IPO" is their true business model.

Might be an overstatement. I would say let's see until they innovate on something that people like and would pay for. Until then, I wouldn't call them a failure until they actually run out of business

[lamp_book]

I was going for hyperbole and I do agree. I just think the speculation is getting out of control, not necessarily with Slack in particular, but with tech in general. I'm really curious to see what happens with Airbnb and Uber's IPO roadmaps. If either flops I think the market could see an unpleasant correction.