[throwaway5752]

Look at all the sibling replies.... You just have to get a Mac - works great there! It's like Windows of 15 years ago, redux.

I've had the same experience as you with Slack and Hipchat. The front end guys with the shiny tools love it, and I live with it.

To the extent you're missing the point... it lets people that might not be able to set it up otherwise have secure messaging across desktop and mobile, and a unified place to have all the features that you mentioned vs getting familiar with nc/scp/ftp, grepping chat logs, etc.

That said, they must have one hell of a demo deck (or secret master plan) to get a $1B+ valuation.

[JonoBB]

I can't help but feel that HipChat have somewhat got the rug pulled from under them. Yes, they have done ok in their own right, but they've missed a few tricks as well.

One of the most important for our team is the ability to be signed into multiple organisations/accounts at the same time. Slack handles this perfectly, and HipChat not at all. I don't think I've seen a uservoice request with more votes than HipChat has for this http://help.hipchat.com/forums/138883-suggestions-ideas/sugg...

[timtadh]

At least with hipchat I managed to get desktop notifications working in KDE + Firefox. I tried connecting to hipchat via the XMMP interface but it was horrible and didn't work very well. <rant> I fail to see what any of these "new-fangled" chat systems bring over IRC with a bot that tracks all the convos for history searching. </rant>

[girvo]

* > <rant> I fail to see what any of these "new-fangled" chat systems bring over IRC with a bot that tracks all the convos for history searching. </rant>

Easy: our entire agency (70+ people, half designers/developers, half management, client and accounts, etc) is using it, no matter how tech-savvy they are.

I love IRC, and I ran an IRC server for us developers for a good 6 months, but got us to switch over to Slack for the sole reason that accounts management and PMs are happy to use it, and we get transparent searching across every chat :)

[eli]

Yup, I evaluated Slack and HipChat about a year ago and went with HipChat mostly because of Slack's lame Windows user experience. (IMHO, the Slack client also had too many bells and whistles. I would've like a default "simple" mode that just is an IM client with group chat.)

[sanderjd]

Yeah they should definitely fix this. I don't think it's a very useful product without a good native client.

[eli]

The funny thing is, I'm pretty sure the HipChat client is (or at least was) mostly just a shim around a web browser with some notification stuff bolted on. This doesn't need to be a huge undertaking.

[michaelmachine]

That is all the slack client is as well. You can right click to inspect all the ui elements.

[eli]

Maybe it's changed since I last looked, but they didn't have a client at all. You could download Chrome and then install an "app" through the Chrome store. Well, some of my users prefer Firefox... I don't know, it just wasn't a great onboarding experience.

In retrospect, though, I might've gone too far the other way -- hipchat is pretty bare bones.

[inthewoods]

Slack's lack of a native Windows app sunk it for our org - then the rest adopted Hipchat and I think it is too late for us. I would love to use Slack, alas.

[eli]

Yeah, HipChat definitely has its own issues. The notifications are kinda crude and the integrations aren't as good as in Slack.

[sanderjd]

> people that might not be able to set it up otherwise

And also people who want it, are able to set it up, but would prefer to pay someone else to do it for them. Lots of useful services simply deliver something that people want, could do themselves, but prefer not to. Like and email providers and restaurants.

The valuation "sounds high", but they've shown that they can deliver a product that many users love and many individuals businesses will pay actual money for. I was shocked when I read the amount, but at least they sell a product!

[throwaway5752]

I follow a public company that reported earnings recently, is in a fragmented multi-10-billion segment, has fundamental patents in it's field, and has 9-figure revenue. They have a valuation 1/10 of Slack's. I have no beef with Slack, but the valuation seems completely detached from fundamentals, or reality for that matter. I'm not hating, I hope all the founders & early contributors do great and never have to work again... but it is a high valuation.

[peterjancelis]

Remember that VCs buy preferred equity that can limit their downside (1x liquidation preference at least, maybe a preferred dividend).

The company you follow sells common stock to its shareholders.

[fizx]

Slack's margins have the potential to be absurd. Their market is potentially all businesses. Investors have some downside protection.

[inthewoods]

I'm not sure those two mean real downside protection - but your point is correct - the VCs are betting on the very small chance that Slack is actually adopted by a huge number of businesses. Right now I'd guess it has a fairly narrow adoption among leading edge companies and SF/Valley natives. I'm sure there are exceptions to this - or maybe they truly have moved beyond that core audience and that's what is driving the valuation.

But that's what VCs do - make a large number of bets that will fail and one that blows it out the park.

Their valuation is a reflection of the growth in Slack's business - meaning they have strong enough growth that they can command that kind of valuation on a huge raise. It is also like a reflection on the limited number of companies that have that kind of growth.

But these kind of valuations also create a high-wire act for the companies in my experience. Growth must be maintained at all costs to justify the valuation. They spend like they're going out of style because of this.

[fyolnish]

Please explain the secure part

[throwaway5752]

From an information management perspective. Fewer clients (that Slack supports) and oauth2 integration (identity mgmt/password policies). Fewer opportunities to shoot yourself in the foot managing it, IMO.