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Just curious, don't you think it'd be much harder to justify their valuation if it's just an open protocol?

Yes, I do think so. But I also think fundamental functionality like team chat should be a solved problem by now, and shouldn't be so concentrated to a single company.

Obviously, having a captive userbase to extract revenue from is good for their valuation. It probably isn't so great for the users though.

Also allows them to invest more in the product, which is great for the users

In theory.

Have you used their client?

Yep, use it every day. Agree that it takes a lot of resources. But lack of investments in one aspect of the product doesn't mean that they haven't / aren't investing in other aspects.

Which is why they fixed their resource hog of a client right?

By no means am I calling the product perfect. Resource hogging is an issue that is particularly important to most HN users.

But would you say that they're _not_ investing in the product? They're improving on search, their API, adding new integrations with Github, etc. Those might not be the things that matter the most to you or other HN users, but they are investments in the product.

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