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Comment by est31 | Hacker News Reader

Don't forget that products like Slack, Uber, Airbnb, etc. all could have basically everyone as their customer. These companies influence the daily lives of millions of people, with comparatively few employees, thanks to the scaling skills of technology. That's why they are valued so high and are still growing. Sure, they might be overvalued and one day the bubble can burst, but neither is it just a ponzi scheme, there is definitely a business behind it.

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They also don’t have very high barriers to entry for competitors. Replacing SAP is really hard after it has been established in a company. On the other hand replacing Slack is really easy. Same for Uber. Customers and drivers can jump ship anytime.

It depends on how you use slack. (I agree that Uber is pretty easy.)

If slack becomes an email replacement (instead of an ephemeral IM client), and a repository for historical knowledge, then it becomes very difficult to replace. In the workplaces where I have used slack, it definitely starts to take on that role (links to discussions are placed in tickets and documents, for example).

From what I have seen Slack may have a strong a foothold in some teams but overall it’s not hard to use something else when new teams are formed. I’m my company everybody is slowly moving to Teams. This can be done gradually. Definitely much easier to replace than SAP.

I'm not sure replacing Slack is as easy as you may think. If you have used their product, then you understand the amount of integrations and dependencies that become built into a team's workflow.

When your entire history of communications, way of tracking tickets, and document repository is stored in a desktop application, replacing Slack may not be as simple as switching to another messaging program.

Could you "replace Outlook" -- it's just an email client after all.

“Could you "replace Outlook" -- it's just an email client after all.”

Absolutely. There is always pain in transitions but some are easier than others.

But why would you? “Hey boss I’m going to take up a bunch of everyone’s time getting everyone on boarded and retrained, as well as doing a nontrivial data migration, because some hot new email client is marginally better”

As almost always for cost reasons. What I am trying to say is that some things are more difficult to replace than others. Moving away from slack is doable. Moving away from Outlook is doable. Moving from 100000 Windows machines to Linux is harder. Moving away from SAP is really hard.

Uber has a big competitive moat, which is willingness to burn money. They've got a lot of it, and any competitor which can't raise as much money for that purpose as Uber has will lose out. It's simple, in any area that a small competitor of Uber operates they just artificially lower prices and do it until the competitor runs out of money. The company with more money wins.

Slack... sure you can just spin up a rocket.chat or matrix instance, but operating those costs money and attention by employees that YOU need to hire and pay. And suddenly the Slack bill you have doesn't seem that high. Quite many companies are in such a situation. There are institutions in different situations, like the French state for example which employs millions (sic) and really wants to keep the data out of foreign hands so they use matrix instead and have staff to maintain the instances. With the costs being irrelevant for most institutions, they select for other criteria instead, which is quality of the product. And Slack for some reason is market leader here. I definitely prefer to use IRC but I'm not delusional, most people aren't like me.

"Uber has a big competitive moat, which is willingness to burn money. "

that's a very bad long term strategy :-)

Most of the time, there won't be anyone trying so most of the time they will make money instead of burning it. As long as they are burning less on average than they are doing in profits they turn a profit in total.

The business model already exists e.g. in the form of American cable companies. They offer crappy services for super expensive prices, but the moment a competitor gets into town and invests heavily, they invest as well and outbid them. This way they ensure that no competitor can make profits and grow beside them in that specific town. So they are safe. Add in government mandated monopolies and "you get counties abc, I get counties def" type deals between cable companies and regulators looking the other way. Same will likely happen for Uber vs Lyft.

Usually those staff are able to setup and manage chat while doing 100 other things for the company, and if they're not then fire them.

The problem with Uber is not that they are lacking a moat, it’s that they have not demonstrated what the market size for ride-sharing is when consumers have to eventually pay the true cost. Given how incredibly expensive ride-sharing is when heavily subsidized, you’re have to be insane to think that the market won’t shrink when prices are 30-50% higher.

And if your answer to that problem is self driving cars, well then I’ll happily point you to the auto-rental market as roughly what kind of a business you’re investing in.

Airbnb is profitable.

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