[latk]

At this valuation an acquisition is less likely. I would have rather expected an acquisition by Microsoft than a series E, but I guess it's too late now.

That would leave an eventual IPO as the only way out, but they'd need to break even first (or at least have a very compelling vision to break even soon). I don't see that happening with their current Teams product, which is an uncompelling entry in a crowded market.

Also, whether Teams eventually succeeds is largely unrelated to SO's unique value: the community. Teams is not valuable because of the community, it's just a spin-off from their public platform. They really need to find a better path to success, because wasting $85M on the status quo is not going to get them there. Their Careers product was more interesting in this respect, but it seems they failed to achieve sufficient scale there.