The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 14 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Walling: Slack's origin was not a pivot but a completely new product
“When pivoting first came out, they would say, like, Slack was a, it was like a video game company, right? And it's like, they pivoted the video game into Slack and said, that's not a pivot. That's just a, you just started a new product. Let's not, let's be rea…”
Pieri: Slack could grow faster by positioning directly against corporate email
“To me, I'm like, you might have more of a chance to grow the business by going after the seven hundred million people or whatever left who are probably still running their company's primary on email than you would living in this like very clearly like We all k…”
Rob Walling: Slack Fees Consume Over 50% of MicroConf Connect's Profit
“I'm used to paying Slack six figures. A year. To run my, you know what I mean? And it like, it's a massive, it's more, I think it's more than 50% of our profit on Connect is, goes to Slack.”
Mooring: Users choose Slack as the 'least worst option'
“And I think about tools like Slack as one of those, you choose Slack as the least worst option to solve that problem for you.”
Walling: Strong SaaS virality requires invited users to create accounts and interact
“Strong virality is when I invite you. Strong virality is Slack, where I'm the tech lead on my five-person dev team, and I invite my four other people. They create an account, And they do stuff and they interact with it more, more deeply than just clicking a li…”
Walling: App store pre-install minimums create useful barriers to entry
“So this to me is actually a good thing because it's a little bit of a barrier to entry for upcoming apps that could potentially compete with you. Not a huge moat though.”
Walling: MicroConf paid six figures annually for Slack
“We were paying six figures a year for f***ing Slack for MicroConf Connect. It was outrageous.”
Bush: The majority of Slack's expenses still go toward sales and marketing
“If you still look at the P and L majority of their expenses are still going towards marketing and sales, which is fascinating to kind of see that.”
Walling: Multi-billion-dollar B2B SaaS companies almost never stay single-product
“When you look at companies that continue to grow year after year after year, it's almost never, especially in the B to B space,
Pretty much never a single product.
I think Slack might be one exception I can think of.
Salesforce, they have a kajillion products.…”
Reimer: Huge gap between employees hating Slack and securing approval to switch
“A big, big learning that, that smacked me right in the face once I Attempted to, ah, to kind of launch it after building it for about nine months was just the wide chasm between people's recognition that their communication patterns are not healthy and that a …”
Rob Walling advises using email for non-urgent matters over Slack
“We say, hey, if you don't need to hear back on something for two, 3:04 hours, send an email. And if you need an urgent answer, and you are hung up, and you cannot proceed, or you're on a call, and you're right now, then Slack me, or frankly, send me a text mes…”
Walling: MicroConf is launching a paid tier for MicroConf Connect
“This is already in the works for us, a microconf. We have microconf connect, right? Which is a Slack channel has like 5100 founders and aspiring founders. We are going to be offering a Premium paid version of that, which is had just has a hand, you know, five …”
Walling: ~70% of SaaS portfolio companies see post-lockdown demand recovery
“Now, since then, with companies that I'm working with and have insight into, stuff has started picking up again, at least to some extent. There are still those big winners, you know, that are Let's say Zoom, you know, or Slack or someone in the podcast space, …”