[HN Gopher] Atlassian Acquires Loom
___________________________________________________________________
Atlassian Acquires Loom
Author : amrrs
Score : 93 points
Date : 2023-10-12 13:17 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlassian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlassian.com)
| andygcook wrote:
| For anyone else curious, Loom raised $205M with the last round at
| a $1.5B valuation. This deal is for $975M in cash.
|
| Sources: - https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/loom
|
| - https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenli1/2022/03/14/nearly-bro...
|
| - https://twitter.com/andrew__reed/status/1712458243883110599?...
|
| (Edit: formatting)
| pyrophane wrote:
| Without knowing the specific of their last round, does anyone
| have an idea of what selling at roughly 2/3 of their previous
| valuation likely means for their employees?
|
| I know that VCs typically have some kind of "upside protection"
| in later rounds that guarantees them first money out in the
| event of a sale on some multiple of their investment, but I
| don't know what terms are common.
| djbusby wrote:
| Frequently Investors and Founders get money before Employees.
|
| Investors frequently have clauses (warrants/ratchet) to
| increase their position if the sale wasn't at some threshold,
| which will affect (to downside) the basis for Employees
| payout.
|
| If the Employee thought the stock was at $150/share at 1.5B
| they will get less than $97 on payout.
| gangstead wrote:
| The startup system is pretty rigged against accidentally
| making anyone rich who is a mere employee. That money is for
| the investors, not the working class. The days of the office
| assistant making millions on stock are long gone. There's
| options with huge tax implications, long vesting periods, the
| investors get preferred stock, they get guaranteed multiples,
| if there's a down round there's a carve-out that you won't be
| part of.
|
| Not only do the investors have priority shares over
| employees, each investor can negotiate a guaranteed multiple.
| For example if they put in 100 million for 10% ownership but
| also had a 5X multiple guarantee and a sale price of 1
| billion then the 500 million they walk away with ends up
| being 50% of the sale price. That part of the agreement isn't
| made public as far as I know.
| Corrado wrote:
| Darn it! We just started looking at using Loom to enhance our
| development efforts. I'm loath to add another Atlassian product
| to our lineup though.
| rasbt wrote:
| It's fascinating that it's a 1B business. I thought it was just
| uploading screen recordings to the cloud (basically UI around
| uploading. Like macOS QuickTime + YouTube private video upload)
| athorax wrote:
| Who is asking for this? As Atlassian consolidates
| Loom into its platform, engineers will soon be able to visually
| log issues in Jira, leaders will use videos to connect with
| employees at scale, sales teams will send tailored video updates
| to clients, and HR teams will onboard new employees with
| personalized welcome videos
| chrisandchris wrote:
| Generation TikTok?
| tekla wrote:
| > personalized welcome videos
|
| Kill me please.
| threeseed wrote:
| If the alternative is going back into the office to watch it
| in person I will take the video.
| malermeister wrote:
| _at 2x speed while having the tab backgrounded_
| chasd00 wrote:
| ...and transcribed and then summarized
| dartos wrote:
| This is the way
| OJFord wrote:
| On mute
| bayindirh wrote:
| Well, being able to screen record a reproduction of a bug is
| practical, and it's easy to do it in macOS or Linux, but I'm
| not sure about this on Windows.
|
| Maybe a unified tool with a better integration will allow
| better bug reports, but pep talks by management at scale? No,
| thanks.
| jahnu wrote:
| Is it easy to do on macOS if system sound is needed to
| demonstrate the bug?
| bayindirh wrote:
| There are dummy drivers which bypass that limitation when
| required. I didn't install them, since I never needed sound
| to demonstrate something.
| jahnu wrote:
| Ok thanks. Still not as trivially easy as it should be
| then :(
| bayindirh wrote:
| No, it's very easy: https://existential.audio/blackhole/
|
| Blackhole is Free and Open Source.
|
| Also, Rogue Amoeba has a product called "Loopback". It's
| not cheap, but it's another alternative:
| https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/
| jahnu wrote:
| Yeah I'm aware of Blackhole but honestly these sorts of
| hacks are fine for me a software engineer but not for
| regular users which is what trivially easy means to me.
|
| There is no good reason it's not possible in Quicktime to
| record the system audio along with the screen.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Not sure with the OS tool, but QuickTime is on all Macs and
| it's screen recorder can record system audio and/or
| microphone audio easily.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| >engineers will soon be able to visually log issues in Jira
|
| I see this issue all the time in bug reports and it can be
| pretty helpful to see a short video on how to replicate the
| issue. Depending upon the type of user submitting those reports
| they are often _more_ helpful than straight text because I
| don't have to have as lengthy back-and-forth Q&A on getting
| more details.
| j45 wrote:
| The free version of Jing used to have a 5 minute limit and it
| was the perfect constraint to ensure short or multiple videos
| cm2012 wrote:
| I know someone who just had an issue, they couldn't get any
| screen recorder through security. This is probably a good way
| around that.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Good grief. If the age of YouTube has taught us anything, it's
| that creating _good_ video of something takes a lot more skill
| than writing something _decent_ about something. Trying to find
| the relevant issue in a bunch of unrelated info, within a long
| writeup, which a user necessarily edits, at least a little, by
| the nature of writing something out? Pretty easy. Trying to
| find it in a rambling, 15-minute video? Welp! Good luck, Jira
| people.
| butlike wrote:
| The best thing about video is it tethers me to the speed of
| the content the rambling, 15-minute video content creator
| mandated; not the speed I can peruse an article.
|
| Also the first person to invent Ctrl+F for video will be a
| billionaire.
| debugnik wrote:
| > Also the first person to invent Ctrl+F for video will be
| a billionaire.
|
| At least YouTube (desktop web) lets you open the (often
| auto-generated) captions as a transcript on the side.
| ebiester wrote:
| I don't use loom, but I remember an interview with
| someone who had it in their workflow. Isn't some of
| Loom's appeal transcript and video search?
| j45 wrote:
| Look let's you play back the video faster.
|
| Also has captioning, transcripts and summarization.
|
| For when a bug doesn't seem possible, video remains
| invaluable.
| city17 wrote:
| Not quite Ctrl F, but Loom does use some AI magic to
| summarize videos and automatically add sections so you can
| skip to the interesting bits quickly. Only used it once
| recently, but it perfectly divided my video according to
| the 3 points I was addressing.
| mistersquid wrote:
| > Trying to find the relevant issue in a bunch of unrelated
| info, within a long writeup, which a user necessarily edits,
| at least a little, by the nature of writing something out?
| Pretty easy.
|
| This sentiment is one of the reasons why so much
| documentation is not good.
|
| Writing good, usable, technical documentation is HARD.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I doubt people will record 15 minute videos to report an
| issue. From my experience people are much better at recording
| a relevant video vs. describing the issue in our text.
| j45 wrote:
| It's super common and reasonable if it saves days and
| dozens of emails just to replicate
| lelanthran wrote:
| My experience with enterprise customers is that recording a
| video is much more effort than typing "the thingy won't foo
| the bar" ...
| rqtwteye wrote:
| That's mainly because creating and submitting videos is
| hard with current tools.
| torton wrote:
| The standards are not nearly the same. A team-internal Loom
| is not intended to be a viral polished social media clip.
|
| Here's a sample scenario from one of my previous jobs: a PR
| is not getting reviews. After a day I record a three-minute
| Loom where I walk through the problem and the solution, and
| post it on the team's channel. A few hours later the PR is
| approved, without any synchronous work and without me having
| to spend twenty minutes thinking out and typing out a blog
| sized post on Slack on the same topic. If anyone ever feels
| the need to dig out that commit again, the Loom is still
| accessible.
|
| Loom found a way to solve real problems without more typing
| or more meetings, and that's why it's been successful. Slack,
| by the way, has a "record a clip now" feature that I liked
| even more than Loom for the purpose; but by that point we
| already standardized on Loom and Loom is better at organizing
| clips.
| fidotron wrote:
| Video is one of those things everyone thinks everyone else
| would want but when faced with using it themselves they find it
| violently annoying. i.e. ideal for enterprise sales.
|
| That said there is a niche of user testing video capture and so
| on, but that is not what this is.
| sb8244 wrote:
| I do all of these things with loom today and love it.
| dewey wrote:
| I wish people would just record a video and showing what is
| causing them a problem. It's better than writing "I'm trying to
| do x and it doesn't work". At least on a video I can see the
| exact error message, the view they are on which browser they
| are using etc.
|
| You can condition people to give you all this information but
| it's an uphill battle, so I'd rather just get it myself from
| the source if possible.
|
| I feel like there's a misunderstanding here where people think
| engineers will now record videos instead of writing their usual
| issue description. This is clearly not the use case of Loom.
| j45 wrote:
| My experience has been contrary to expecting developers to
| create videos (which is a good idea too). This approach of
| video first, and video tickets are prioritized has been my
| only approach for almost 15 years.
|
| It started with Jing from Techsmith that had one key feature
| like loom - record and auto upload to the cloud and put the
| URL into your clipboard ready to paste into an email.
|
| It's surprising use of video in this way isn't more
| ubiquitous.
|
| Loom might actually be able to do the very thing you are
| saying it can't. They have a few AI features that seems to
| auto generate a title and summary recently.
| Metus wrote:
| I am still dreaming of something that would allow a user to
| file a ticket, have them record audio and video like loom to
| describe the issue and what they were trying to achieve, and
| then dump a screen record of the last minute before opening
| the ticket as well as as much info about the machine's state
| as possible. And/or maybe connecting to helpdesk with video
| directly. Existing software comes close but is not quite
| there yet.
| hiatus wrote:
| I think logrocket fits the bill for web applications.
| phero_cnstrcts wrote:
| And yet they still haven't implemented CD burning. >:-(
| dartos wrote:
| Managers and leadership.
|
| Those are Atlssian's customers.
| j45 wrote:
| Having users submit a bug by video is literally one of the
| biggest biggest cheat codes.
|
| Have been using it for a very long time (I still miss Jing!)
|
| There is no emailing back and forth meaninglessly. The user
| just records and talks about what they want to do and what hats
| happening.
|
| The support side sees exactly how the user is doing it to make
| it instantaneous to replicate the issue.
|
| There is no need for the user to give detailed screenshots and
| type up a whole scenario.
| the8472 wrote:
| > engineers will soon be able to visually log issues in Jira
|
| I already use windows game mode for screen captures. Why would
| I need a separate application for that?
| layer8 wrote:
| Where I've worked Game Mode was disabled by GPO in enterprise
| environments.
| the8472 wrote:
| Disabling a built-in, non-networked feature and then
| replacing it with a cloud-linked, self-updating 3rd-party
| one doesn't seem like it would improve security.
| layer8 wrote:
| They were using on-prem Atlassian, no cloud link and no
| self-updating, of course.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| $1.5B for a _screen recorder_
| a1o wrote:
| I thought it was a point and click game
| organsnyder wrote:
| Ask me about it!
| codegeek wrote:
| Reminds me of the infamous dropbox comment :)
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| Even after more than a decade, I still don't see what the
| "infamous dropbox comment" fundamentally gets wrong.
|
| 1. Why would I want to host my sensitive data on someone
| else's servers instead of my own servers and storage
| hardware?
|
| 2. Why _shouldn 't_ someone have a physical media backup for
| time-urgent, sensitive files? Last I was in school, if I had
| a final presentation, I would absolutely store it both on a
| hypothetical cloud storage volume and a backup on a thumb
| drive. If I were still in school today I'd do the same thing.
| Would you really risk your final course grade on the
| possibility that Dropbox is down when you are up to present?
| And nevermind the arbitrary and random account suspensions
| that all SaaS providers are infamous for (looking at you,
| Google).
| runako wrote:
| The answers to your questions are in relative market sizes.
| Yes, there are millions of people who agree with your two
| points. There are also millions of people who disagree.
| (The second set is likely much larger than the first point,
| but that doesn't matter.) Millions of people is frequently
| a market.
| tehbeard wrote:
| Your arguments are not related at all to the original
| infamous comment.
|
| Your points are valid ones about data privacy, and
| redundancy of important data. And how Joe public doesn't
| seem to notice those.
|
| The original infamous comment dismissed a tool that made a
| task easier for regular users because the server nerd says:
| "I can build it in my shed out of rsync and bash using a
| server I maintain, why should I use this?".
| threeseed wrote:
| Screen recorder used by 200,000 customers many of which will be
| enterprise.
|
| That's what Atlassian is paying for. The ability to cross-sell.
| svnt wrote:
| Yep. Given the multiple we can safely assume the growth has
| leveled off, and Atlassian will say they can use their
| channel to reinitiate growth.
|
| Maybe they are right. Or maybe it ends up in the junk drawer.
| Either way they captured a potential next generation
| competitor for a relatively low cost to them.
| wg0 wrote:
| 5000 Dollars per customer. Interesting.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| When both major operating systems now include native screen
| recording out of the box.
|
| _checks website_
|
| Oh yes they put AI which is actually ML in it. Hence the money.
| Yep just keep pumping that bubble I'm sure it'll work this
| time...
| dewey wrote:
| Let me guess, you could build it in a weekend? It's obviously
| more than about the video recording tech. Compliance, team
| permissions, sales, enterprise contracts and making it work on
| all devices are not trival.
| j45 wrote:
| Most recently there was a bombshell around being able to
| record a tab with some new security features making it much
| harder.
| dartos wrote:
| And the infrastructure around storing and distributing those
| videos.
|
| Along with existing integrations into other enterprise software
| (like confluence, jira, and zoom)
|
| The compliance work for storing and distributing this data is
| already done.
|
| The staff of experts that don't need to be sourced by
| recruiters.
|
| The new ability to prevent sites like Monday from integrating
| with it.
|
| Not to mention the existing loom customers.
|
| Reducing an entire company down to the simplest form of their
| product and comparing that to the price of the company is kind
| of dumb.
| j45 wrote:
| It's ok if it's just a screen recorder.
|
| Creating a video service where uploading the video includes
| next to no waiting is not trivial.
|
| That would be hard enough to build at this scale for the OP
| and most people.
|
| There hasn't been one like it before.
| the8472 wrote:
| JIRA already had attachments.
|
| Win+G, drag & drop
| game_the0ry wrote:
| I gave you an upvote bc I mostly agree, but as a
| counterpoint...
|
| Atlassian is a big company that is successful at what they
| do, bigger than Loom and presumably with more resources. So I
| am confident they could have just copied Loom's business
| model and maybe even implemented better to fit their needs,
| since they have staff in place. It would certainly involve
| staffing up where needed, but I think they could have pulled
| it off and saved money. Also, with an acquisition, now they
| ave to integrate Loom into the broader Atlassian org, which
| wont be trivial.
|
| So there are legit trade-offs with an acquisition.
|
| That being said, spending $1B on a acquisition also saves
| time.
| codegeek wrote:
| It's not just about saving time. Acquisitions like these
| also help companies like Atlassian increase brand value
| because Loom is extremely popular and is a great product.
| Now Atlassian gets to claim all of that under their brand.
| j45 wrote:
| That's just the first building block.
| runako wrote:
| Wait until you find out how much Microsoft's flagship text
| editor is worth.
| squokko wrote:
| $1.5B for a screen recorder _with customers_
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37856974.
| Zambyte wrote:
| From loom.com
|
| > Loom works wherever you do.
|
| > Get Loom for Free
|
| > For Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android
|
| Looks like Loom does not work wherever I do.
| pcmaffey wrote:
| Also loom does not work at all offline, even the video
| recording...
| butlike wrote:
| I suspect this will become a more-and-more common occurance
| as deep fake videos become more ubiquitous. There will have
| to be some mechanism to validate the origin of the video is
| truly from the content creator. If the video was created
| offline and uploaded after the fact, who knows if it's
| generated audio super-imposed over a deep fake?
| VTimofeenko wrote:
| In that case it's possible to generate a deepfake offline,
| then open the video in a player and record that. I doubt
| online-ness by itself will do anything if it's still just a
| video signal leaving the machine.
| CalRobert wrote:
| All of our backend devs (including myself) are on Linux (and
| use Firefox) so Loom was a nonstarter for us.
| otachack wrote:
| It's always a blast when technology and marketing collide.
| j45 wrote:
| It's surprising loom doesn't work on Linux. I wonder why.
| fishnchips wrote:
| Can they acquire Asana and merge it with Jira so that I can
| dislike one project management tool instead of two?
| butlike wrote:
| Jirana or Asira? I'm drinking my morning Bawls with Guarana,
| reading Jirana!
| sb8244 wrote:
| Do you dislike the tools or dislike the process that gets
| created around the tools?
| malermeister wrote:
| I dislike the tools for the process they encourage.
| fishnchips wrote:
| I think both tools could use some serious UX love. The
| processes folks introduce around them - that's a different
| topic obviously. You can enforce atrocious processes with
| Trello or ClickUp but I find these much less bad.
| nicoburns wrote:
| If you have influence on what tools you use at your place of
| work, then consider trying https://www.shortcut.com/. It's UX
| is IMO fantastic (and it's UI is _fast_ ) while being a lot
| more full-featured than something like Trello.
|
| (not associated with the company - just a happy customer who
| feels like they ought to be more widely known than they seem to
| be)
| fishnchips wrote:
| I think my team looked into that, among good few others.
| There is a decent number of tools that would work better for
| dev/product teams, but if you want to have one solution for
| the whole company, the list is shorter. We're currently
| living with ClickUp.
| gigatexal wrote:
| 975M for what the company does seems awfully high imo. But nice
| exit all things considered for the Loom folks and their
| investors.
| blairbeckwith wrote:
| companies are generally valued based on their revenue and user
| base rather than their product
|
| it is true that $975M is too high a price for a screen recorder
| when they could have bought a licence to Cleanshot for $19
| j45 wrote:
| Neat.
|
| Does cleanshot auto upload and process the video as well?
| blairbeckwith wrote:
| There is an associated cloud service called Cleanshot Cloud
| - all licenses get a small amount of storage for free, or
| you can upgrade to Unlimited for a monthly subscription.
|
| Alternatively, because it's a great native-first app, you
| can just set the saving directory to an existing cloud
| provider on your machine like Dropbox and let it handle
| uploading and serving the file.
| j45 wrote:
| Associated?
|
| See the thing with something like loom is it just works.
|
| I used mono snap for a while for example.
|
| Native apps to capture are great but they seem to get
| acquired.
| blairbeckwith wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is. Lots of apps, native or
| not, get acquired. What are we talking about here?
| programmarchy wrote:
| Yeah, Loom nailed this feature. Streaming the upload while
| recording means the video is ready to share instantly,
| which is very slick. Great UX.
| j45 wrote:
| They really did nail it.
|
| Maybe it's easier now to do but it definitely was faster
| than a native app locally uploading to the cloud as you
| record.
| altdataseller wrote:
| For a second, I thought they acquired the diet app and were
| planning to diversify into the diet business
| consumer451 wrote:
| Tried out Loom, installed the desktop tool, took up >50% of CPU
| at random times when not being used.
|
| Nope, nope, nope.
| jitl wrote:
| Bummer. Our sales and customer success people really like Loom,
| and users often send us loom recordings to report issues or
| suggest features. I'm not happy it's Atlassian.
| antondd wrote:
| What do you folks think Loom's revenue was in the recent years?
| I'm curious what the ARR multiple would be in this deal. 20X?
| 40X?
| altdataseller wrote:
| Probably much much lower. If this was 2020 or 2021, perhaps,
| but multiples haven't even in that high in the public market
| for high growth companies for the past few years
| davinci123 wrote:
| You can do approximate math from Series C, where they raised
| $130M at $1.5B valuation - announced in May 2021. The ARR
| multiples in 2021 was 50X NTM ARR. They potentially hit $30M
| by end of 2021 (raised sometime late 2020/early 2021).
|
| Now even if they grew at 40-50% YoY CAGR (which is on the
| bullish side) - $60M-$70M ARR, approximately giving them a
| 10-12x ARR multiple for NTM revenue, put them squarely in the
| median to high-end valuation mutiple for PLG companies
| growing at 30-50% YoY
| (https://www.meritechcapital.com/benchmarking/historical-
| trad...)
| sb8244 wrote:
| C'mon Atlassian, have the decency to throw another 25M their
| way...
| davinci123 wrote:
| Almost like buying a retail product for $9.99 :D
| lijok wrote:
| People really will buy anything hey
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Oh great, that's what Jira and Confluence needed in order to make
| them more sluggish, less responsive and more user unfriendly... a
| video messaging platform integration. Good grief, who thinks of
| these things :-(
|
| With 1 billion and a team of software developers, I would put
| Jira and Confluence back on the right road, not acquire a video
| company ;-)
| j45 wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| The loom integration has been useful to attract some users who
| don't use Jira otherwise.
|
| I just wish Jira-1369 would get solved after 20 years because
| users refuse to adopt Jira or confluence when they're getting
| waterboarded with notifications instead of a timed digest that
| can be set.
| jedberg wrote:
| Jira-1369 was closed four years ago.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| Great, more potential clients to sell Jira to :(
| lasermike026 wrote:
| Why is this a good thing?
| usrnm wrote:
| Some people will get fat bonuses
| blackoil wrote:
| Good for who? Receiving billion dollar must feel good.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Great, the developers of Jira are expanding their horizons.
|
| On the other hand, having used Loom a few times, I admit I can
| completely understand why. Loom is an almost unbelievable piece
| of software.
| heisgone wrote:
| This make perfect sense. Atlassian is cornering the market of
| "features nobody ask for but make for good sales pitch to
| clueless managers".
| hshsh667 wrote:
| Absolutely agree
| jjoonathan wrote:
| You have to fill in the mandatory metadata correctly (both on
| the meeting and in the linked Epic, you did remember to link an
| Epic right?) or the meeting won't start. Just imagine how
| pretty the Atlassian admin's productivity dashboards will look
| now!
| edgyquant wrote:
| In what world is loom something no one asked for? I, and my
| team, use it everyday and have at my past two jobs as well. For
| engineers it's a life saver being able to share a quick video
| of some code and the bug youre getting (or asking what some
| piece of code does) and also forcing junior engineers to do
| this for a PR guarantees the feature works/is a form of QA.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Coming from a deep, shameful corner of ignorance, but what's
| special about recording a screen and sharing it via the comms
| tool of choice (IM, Slack, Signal, e-mail)?
|
| I do love the idea of sharing a screen recording of features
| though.
| swivelmaster wrote:
| It's well-executed and convenient. That's worth a lot.
| hannes0 wrote:
| This discussion reminds me of when Dropbox was at ShowHN
| and someone was commenting on how this could be done with
| FTP.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
| scott_w wrote:
| To be fair, the person asking the question genuinely is
| interested in the answer:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37858345
| eastbound wrote:
| I still haven't purchased Dropbox. When the choice came
| up, it seemed important for our backups not to be made in
| USA.
|
| So, indeed, a very cool replacement was SSH.
|
| I still don't know anyone who didn't leave Dropbox after
| they jacked up the prices. A USB key is much cheaper (and
| reliable, at the rate at which Dropbox nukes accounts
| that they deem not compliant with whatever policy).
| solardev wrote:
| Most people I know just went with their cloud provider's
| sync solution once everyone added one (GDrive, iCloud,
| Amazon photos, OneDrive, Creative Cloud, etc.)
|
| Can't remember the last time I saw a USB key in use
| anymore.
|
| The cloud stuff is convenient, but it quickly became a
| commoditu Dropbox is still better in some small ways
| (like delta syncs) but it wasn't enough I guess.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's amusing to see "but it wasn't enough I guess" in
| relation to a profitable $10 billion company with 3,000
| employees. That's a pretty good outcome!
| solardev wrote:
| True! It's still a useful product, but the pressure to
| keep getting huge-r is always there I guess. I knew
| someone who worked there and they seemed pretty desperate
| for new initiatives (like the failed Paper). Most of
| their competitors have online storage as part of their
| product portfolio. I don't know of anything else major
| that Dropbox does...
| eastbound wrote:
| Well, it's relevant: Atlassian launched a paid issue
| tracker in 2003 when the open-source Mantis was all the
| rage.
|
| There is always room for a smooth paid service compared
| to the rough free one. Android and Linux vs twice-more-
| expensive Apple.
| ajkjk wrote:
| > I still don't know anyone who didn't leave Dropbox
| after they jacked up the prices.
|
| Funny, I don't know anyone who did.
| antonjs wrote:
| No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.[1]
|
| [1] https://m.slashdot.org/story/21026
| dmurray wrote:
| Surely those are the qualities Atlassian will want to
| change as quickly as possible, though.
| cco wrote:
| It always destroys my laptop, MacBook Pro i5 from 2020.
| Desktop app, chrome extension, whatever, it absolutely
| chews up my CPU.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| They're not necessarily buying it just for the tech; I have
| no doubt that Atlassian could build their own version of
| Loom.
|
| I'd guess that a big part of it is customer acquisition and
| then raising prices or ramping customers to other Atlassian
| products.
| eptcyka wrote:
| No, I mean, desktop and mobile screen recording, in my
| opinion, seems to be simple enough even for laymen. I
| could also be convinced otherwise :)
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| As others have pointed out, it's not the recording that's
| the hard part per se; more so the entire workflow from
| hitting firing up the recording tool to getting the final
| recording -- possibly edited -- into the cloud for
| sharing in some seamless flow.
|
| Lots of ancillary stuff involved. I know a team that went
| down this route and built a competing tool and the
| hardest part was working out the streaming upload and
| storage. Then you layer on things like permissions,
| lifecycle management, etc.
| politelemon wrote:
| Also recently Atlassian released a Whiteboard (read
| Miro/infinite canvas) feature in Confluence cloud, so
| this could become another tool in the set that they
| release to keep people collaborating on their platform
| and not heading elsewhere.
| groestl wrote:
| I have a lot of doubt Atlassian can build anything in a
| reasonable timeframe. CLOUD-6999.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Oh that's nothing. Check out CONFSERVER-5926. Create
| April 2006 and finally closed with resolution
| Duplicate(???) in 2019.
| throwanem wrote:
| Loom makes it very easy to voice over and annotate a
| recording, with both individually editable in a way raw
| screen recordings don't support, and to share the result
| via a link.
|
| It's not (yet?) heavily used among engs where I am, but we
| love it anyway for massively shortening the feedback loop
| with designers who can drop a 30-second demo of some
| prototype UI at the head of a Slack thread and
| asynchronously receive the kind of nuanced feedback that'd
| usually need to start off with a (necessarily synchronous)
| huddle.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Cool, this is the answer I was looking for. Thank you so
| much!
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| Their video summarization and speed-ups are killer
| features.
| jzelinskie wrote:
| I think lots of people haven't realized that video clips
| like Loom are actually built into Slack. The button that
| looks like a video camera below the input text box does
| it.
|
| It's not a full replacement, but it's the one you already
| have.
| gumby wrote:
| I had never even noticed that button before. thanks.
| BossingAround wrote:
| Slack's huddle feature is actually so nice. We use it
| more often than the dedicated MS Teams our org pays for
| (sadly).
| killingtime74 wrote:
| We used it for a bit then stopped after discovering the
| screen share resolution is super low
| switch007 wrote:
| Anecdote: It's so well hidden or underpromoted that
| exactly 1 colleague has sent me a video recorded via
| Slack in its feature's existence. (employee count: mid
| 000's)
| tqi wrote:
| Personally, I'm not 100% sure those videos are a net
| benefit for teams. It definitely reduces the effort
| required by the person creating the video, but comes at
| the expense of requiring more effort from the people
| consuming the content. While there are certainly cases
| where showing is easier than telling, more often I find
| the quick videos are more verbose and less well organized
| than a doc or a message. "I didn't have time to write a
| short letter, so I [recorded a video] instead."
|
| Who knows, maybe the counterfactual isn't "wrote a
| concise doc," but rather "didn't share the information at
| all," in which case I suppose Loom et al is a positive.
| simlevesque wrote:
| > but comes at the expense of requiring more effort from
| the people consuming the content.
|
| Before that you got an issue saying "There's a bug on the
| notification list" and you needed to figure out how to
| reproduce it. Now you get a video showing exactly how to
| reproduce it.
|
| It's a life changer and the opposite of what you
| describe.
| tqi wrote:
| Like I said, there are definitely cases where showing is
| easier than telling, and bug reports often fall into that
| category. But as an alternative to more durable documents
| (design explorations, PRDs, etc), I often find that docs
| are more thoughtfully organized.
| throwanem wrote:
| I would be very surprised to see anyone try to put a Loom
| in place of a PRD or RFC!
| throwanem wrote:
| > requiring more effort from the people consuming the
| content
|
| This hasn't been my experience; if anything, quite the
| opposite, in that it's enabled my team to contribute much
| _more_ actively to design. The effort of providing
| actionable feedback is admittedly slightly higher, but
| that 's not a bad thing; needing to (and having time to!)
| write up feedback seems to yield more actionable results
| than doing it verbally in the moment, and for things that
| do really need talking through we have several sync
| touchpoints during the week with our embedded designer.
|
| Of course, in contexts where no such touchpoints exist or
| where design and eng generally don't have a close
| relationship, I could see Loom being difficult - but I'm
| not sure I'd blame that first on the tool; if Design and
| Eng communicate only by throwing things over a transom at
| one another, I think the tool much more likely exposes
| problems you already had and didn't know about.
| duped wrote:
| I've been using Peek for this for years and never thought it
| was a billion dollar feature
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Command+shift+5 is built into OSX
|
| I find the loom extension redundant and glitch prone
| chenster wrote:
| Loom gives a much better UX and easy to use and more
| important ability to share. They probably have a huge user
| base that other businesses interested in acquire.
| tshaddox wrote:
| On MacOS Loom is extremely buggy and, even when it works, is
| way worse than MacOS' built-in screen recording.
| paiute wrote:
| Loom is gold on windows.
| jmuguy wrote:
| They seem to be glossing over the fact that Loom doesn't just
| record the screen - it immediately gives you a link to that
| recording.
| JCharante wrote:
| So ShareX?
| smaddock wrote:
| ShareX uploads videos in a pipeline: record, optimize,
| then upload.
|
| Loom does this while the video is being recorded to give
| you the link as fast as possible.
| seanhunter wrote:
| And that's worth a billion dollars?
| flashgordon wrote:
| Actually the bigger q is where is Loom's moat? I've used loom
| too and I agree that being able take a video and do "mini
| editing" is useful but I guess I wouldn't pay for it given
| cmd-optiom-5 on osx. But still the real thing is where is the
| moat? I ask this because until recently I hadn't given much
| thought to "having paid users who will feel stupid to move
| off" was not a big deal but clearly it is?
|
| To play devil's advocate though from a numbers point I think
| loom has about 20m users so this is $5 per user. But if acq
| is for a billion then I'd assume their actual revenue is
| something like 100m. So $5 /user/year. I guess in that sense
| once a user has paid that low price they are not thinking of
| moving off for a year so it is plenty of upsell opportunities
| for atlassian. Ofcourse depending on usage just the video
| hosting could cost them more than $5/user/ year? Interesting
| stuff!
| sb8244 wrote:
| Maybe going outside of engineering?
|
| I use both loom and cmd opt 5, but my CS and sales team
| would not be able to effectively use cmd5 (editing,
| hosting, comments, etc.)
|
| The moat for us is that it just works and is cheap enough
| that moving off is literally not worth my time.
| foobarian wrote:
| Sadly these days it seems that having good taste and not
| having embarked on the enshittification train itself is a
| pretty great moat.
| flashgordon wrote:
| This is fair. I think I was giving less credit to looms
| packaging of a "complete" feature. Almost like their work
| is "done".
| solardev wrote:
| If I remember correctly, they also host the edited videos
| and the recipient gets a link to their hosted version.
|
| That's the reason I didn't sign up (I wanted to send the
| video over Slack directly), but it does functionally add a
| moat where all your videos are on their servers, like
| YouTube.
| swalling wrote:
| Loom does not have a moat, which is why they were purchased
| by a platform that does have one.
|
| It's a very well-done feature, but there are increasingly
| other platforms (Slack, Dropbox) that offer features 80% as
| good for free.
| kunalgupta wrote:
| It is not a very well done feature. It is among the most
| deterministic pieces of software I have ever used.
| Tella.tv and Screen Studio are well done pieces of
| software, but not Loom
| ericjmorey wrote:
| How is deterministic bad in this scenario? What
| specifically is bad about Loom in your experience?
| flashgordon wrote:
| In this day and age you'd be surprised how "valuable"
| deterministic is. Imagine I go to a LinkedIn feed and
| just see the same feed on refreshes instead of engagement
| driving randomness?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| I understand that stuff like Loom exists and people use it.
| But people are saying it makes no sense, not that it doesn't
| happen.
|
| > also forcing junior engineers to do this for a PR
| guarantees the feature works/is a form of QA... life saver
| being able to share a quick video of some code and the bug
| youre getting
|
| Developers who don't know if what they write works or who
| can't express a bug in words... they're in trouble. You don't
| need experience for that. Non-developers / non-pros doing QA
| is symptomatic of greater problems.
|
| > life saver being able to share a quick video
|
| Who is supposed to be watching these videos? In your honest,
| no-BS assessment, when you're staring at these Zooms you
| might be doing professionally with like 9 people and only 1
| of them is an engineer, and he's offshore: like isn't that
| the problem?
| rmbyrro wrote:
| This is news to me
|
| I don't recall having the need to use video to express
| anything that comes to code.
|
| Perhaps user interface stuff, yes. But code? Can't
| remember...
| unixhero wrote:
| People really don't like Atlassian around these parts
| krooj wrote:
| I guarantee you the snark originates from a hatred of JIRA.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Nah, Loom is a really valuable tool. I cannot count the number
| of meetings I've been able to skip because I could just send a
| video out for comments. It's also much better than screenshots
| for providing context to Jira tickets and bug reports.
| heisgone wrote:
| Maybe the problem is need of fixing is "too many meetings".
| karaterobot wrote:
| Yep, and Loom is a good tool for that. That's why it's been
| so useful.
| diogenes4 wrote:
| YMMV of course but it is straightforwardly useful in my
| experience.
| tristor wrote:
| Loom is the best option currently in the market for doing
| screencast recordings and demo recordings. I use it
| extensively, and started out using other alternatives like
| complex configurations in OBS. Loom is not only a superior UX,
| but the built-in web editor works perfectly without requiring
| the heavy weight of installing, learning, and using (and often
| paying for) a more pro-grade video editor for doing simple
| tasks.
|
| This may be because I'm a PM now, because I didn't do this type
| of thing as an engineer, but I have grown a huge appreciation
| for visual tools because "a picture is worth a thousand words".
| If I can show somebody the behavior that I am talking about,
| actually get a record of a bug happening, or build a demo that
| doesn't feel like a slide deck and is showing actual product
| experience, it has a deeper visceral impact on customers and
| engineers, and speeds up resolution time or identifying
| directionality of design.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I don't use it but I have a family member who uses it
| extensively and has a love-hate relationship with it (perfect
| for it to be owned by Atlassian). It's a great tool _when it
| works_ and they've told me they would switch in an instant if
| there was something better. I guess it crashes and loses data
| for them semi-regularly, sometimes they have to contact support
| to find something the web/app lost.
|
| Personally I use, and love, CleanShotX but I don't need to
| record my face and I'm not even sure if you can draw on the
| videos you create like you can in Loom. I use it mostly for
| annotating pictures. And before "macOS has this built in", yes
| they do and what they provide is way better than nothing but it
| doesn't hold a candle to CleanShotX. It's way clunkier and hard
| to make edits once you've added something to the screenshot,
| CleanShotX is a breeze and being able to record video as a gif
| is awesome for bug tickets or documentation.
| toddmorey wrote:
| This is a bummer. I really liked Loom. I was surprised to find
| some really neat video tools now by Prezi. Who else is doing good
| stuff around quick async collaboration?
| gangstead wrote:
| It's kind of silly but at my work we're using Gather. Walking
| your little pixel art character around the "office" is silly at
| first, but it's really lowered the friction to short video
| interactions. It's way less friction than sending someone a
| link and waiting around for them to join a meeting.
| jeremy_k wrote:
| We use Gather too; it's amazing for real time collaboration.
| I use Loom to summarize work and send updates to a larger
| audience in an async fashion.
| ValentinTrinque wrote:
| Doist Inc. with Twist (https://twist.com). A sane replacement
| for slack that focus on making your life easier, and get actual
| job done by levering the concept of "threads" to make them
| first-class citizens that bridge the gap between instant chat
| where direct communication is needed and task manager where you
| need to declare a discussion to be open or closed.
|
| They side with the "Deep Work" philoshopy, and encourage
| (written) async collaboration.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Twist is much nicer than Slack in my opinion. The signal to
| noise ratio tends to be much better, and I find myself
| distracted by it far less because information I need is much
| easier to find when I need it.
| dbish wrote:
| We just started a beta of a product that is a drop in loom
| replacement and "smarter" in that we completely index not just
| what you said but what you showed on screen (OCR) and what you
| did (captured actions) to make everything easier to find,
| easier to get quick answers from (built in chat assistant who
| "watched" the video already) and auto generate things like docs
| out of it. Looking for beta users and feedback on feature
| requests, check out a post about it here:
| https://www.augmend.com/blogiverse/augshare-0-2 or drop me a
| note diamond@augmend.com
| simantel wrote:
| My side project, Teaminal, lets you do agile meetings like
| standup, sprint planning, and retro asynchronously. Stuff like
| status updates or planning poker aboslutely doesn't need to be
| done on a call.
|
| Link: https://www.teaminal.com
| alalani1 wrote:
| I use Tella.tv which is effectively a Loom replacement but
| their desktop mac app hasn't ever crashed on me
| tomatohs wrote:
| We are building "Loom for devs" at https://dashcam.io
| earthling8118 wrote:
| Windows and Mac only, this is dead on arrival for me
| antidnan wrote:
| I know screen recording tools are widely used in the engineering
| world... I always thought they were more impressive for how much
| they culturally normalized screen recording in the rest of the
| corporate world.
|
| Separately, I'm a big fan of cleanshotX.
| passion__desire wrote:
| Isn't there a Mac app which can record your programming
| presentation or demo video and turn into slides using AI? That
| feature could be next step for Loom acquisition.
| dbish wrote:
| We're a new startup that has recording -> docs, not slides
| yet, but it's easy enough to go that direction. We just
| started a beta of a product that is a drop in loom
| replacement and "smarter" in that we both generate doc
| artifacts and completely index not just what you said but
| what you showed on screen (OCR) and what you did (captured
| actions) to make everything easier to find, easier to get
| quick answers from (built in chat assistant who "watched" the
| video already), etc. Taking on new beta users and feedback on
| feature requests, check out a post about it here:
| https://www.augmend.com/blogiverse/augshare-0-2 or drop me a
| note diamond@augmend.com
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Glad for the founders, but I cannot help but think this is such
| an overpriced acquisition for a glorified screen capture tool and
| ecosystem.
|
| Now you can attach videos to jira tickets, seems a bit overkill.
| objclxt wrote:
| It's a bargain compared to their Series C valuation in 2021 of
| $1.5 billion.
| kylecordes wrote:
| Ouch. I wonder how much of the exit value got absorbed by
| their preference stack.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Not really a discount if you arguably don't need to buy it in
| the first place! That valuation to begin with is ridiculous
| with their DAU.
| binarymax wrote:
| At 25M users it's about $40 per user, and Atlassian needs some
| kind of screencast data to bolster their future in training
| project management models. Also, they can afford it, so it's a
| good time to get into the market.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Hopefully they aren't paying for all those ghost users from
| the pandemic hype. Could be a good acquisition but Atlassian
| somewhat known for just buying useless crap.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Waiting for a future, where you cannot simply look at a ticket,
| but have to skip through a video over and over again, just like
| with voice messages that people send on messengers. Instead of
| having to think about clear writing in tickets, one has a vague
| not well defined speech in a video. Then maybe they will add
| automatic transcription and again people will think "Now it's
| all fine!", which of course it won't be.
| willio58 wrote:
| Anyone have a good alternative to loom? It's honestly a great
| tool but I foresee the 20 free videos going away with this
| eventually
| chenster wrote:
| To name a few, RecordIt (gif only), Camtasia, Snagit
| dbish wrote:
| We just started a beta of a product that is a drop in loom
| replacement and "smarter" in that we completely index not just
| what you said but what you showed on screen (OCR) and what you
| did (captured actions) to make everything easier to find,
| easier to get quick answers from (built in chat assistant who
| "watched" the video already) and auto generate things like docs
| out of it. Looking for beta users and feedback on feature
| requests, check out a post about it here:
| https://www.augmend.com/blogiverse/augshare-0-2 or drop me a
| note diamond@augmend.com
| tln wrote:
| I switched to scre.io
| nakodari wrote:
| You can try out Jumpshare (https://jumpshare.com). We are
| seeing many people move to our platform from Loom. I am the
| founder so feel free to ask anything.
| Zaheer wrote:
| Zappy from Zapier is free: https://zapier.com/zappy
| yesimahuman wrote:
| As a loom customer, color me very surprised. I did not expect it
| to have such a strong business since we generally just
| sporadically use it and it's a vitamin not a painkiller. Just
| goes to show how you can't accurately evaluate companies based on
| your own limited experience. Congrats to the team
| davinci123 wrote:
| Atlassian has a record of failed acquisitions: Bitbucket,
| HipChat, Trello, OpsGenie,.. and the list goes on. Add Loom to
| that list.
|
| In this market, when every single collab company is struggling,
| Atlassian goes and acquires a collab company when there are so
| many companies in the DevTools space or get your pick in AI.
| Spending a billion on a video sharing tool? Unsure what they were
| thinking and who all are advising the founders. I see the Aussie
| connection though..
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Can Atlassian just for once first go and stabilize their existing
| product lineup before trying to shoehorn yet another thing into
| their offering?
|
| I mean, it's _basic_ stuff that just isn 't possible on JIRA
| Cloud for example, like setting a global sender address for
| notification emails - something perfectly possible on on-premise
| installations, but on Cloud you have to do that for each project
| and you can't even set it up as a default for new projects.
|
| Or maybe what about a first-party Terraform provider. Or a
| support that's actually worth the name instead of underpaid
| callcenter employees that seem to have to strictly follow some
| sort of script instead of actually being allowed to use their
| brains or to properly read what customers write them.
|
| That billion $ they just dumped out on this acquisition could
| have been invested into their existing products.
| jordigg wrote:
| Loom is an excellent piece of software, but from my perspective
| in IT I've never been able to justify it's ROI.
|
| I've been always pushing for it to go away as soon as had to
| start looking at SaaS spend. Looking at the analytics only a few
| power users really made use of it while the biggest majority of
| users never used to record or maybe only recorded 1-2 videos a
| quarter. It was too expensive and video is very expensive to run
| on the cloud.
|
| Zoom released a competitor recently and that must be killing
| them. Other companies are also offering cheaper alternatives and
| egress traffic for video-centric businesses is crazy expensive.
|
| They had layoffs not so long ago, like many companies, and during
| my last negotiations with them they were very aggressive with
| pricing. Aggressive to the point of their executive team asking
| what amount we wanted to pay, and they actually committed to the
| price we offered...
|
| Glassdoor reviews and Blind comments weren't good at that time
| either, but that is true for most companies. I think they
| couldn't keep the revenue curve up-to-the-right to offer a decent
| return to their investors and it was turning more into an OK
| business. Time to sell, stay there for a year and move on to
| start their next thing. For Atlassian is a relevant acquisition,
| especially as they are also focusing more into chasing freshdesk
| or zendesk as a customer support platform.
|
| I wish them the best, as I said, the product itself was very well
| designed and engineered compared to any other alternatives out
| there. I think they missed to make it relevant and a must have
| for companies, maybe focusing more to sale to sales and customer
| experience/support teams which tend to have big budgets compared
| to other teams.
| habosa wrote:
| Loom is probably the simplest billion-dollar piece of software,
| but it's also excellent software and I am happy they're getting
| paid.
|
| Screen recording before Loom was a pain. You had to open up some
| program, start it, save the file, upload the file somewhere, and
| share it. And if you had to edit the recording at all ...
| probably start over.
|
| With Loom it's all one click and it's ready to share the instant
| you hit the Stop button. At my company we make and share dozens
| of Looms per day and it's a key part of maintaining a remote
| culture.
| segasuperstar wrote:
| My immediate reaction was that value-wise it was a joke, how
| can they be worth $1 billion?
|
| I agree with what you're saying here though, one click, ACL
| controlled and simple to use videos.
|
| Concur with the enablement of the remote culture. I would have
| thought Atlassian could clone that so simply.
|
| The Loom software is super buggy though, I have to open their
| site or extension or desktop app multiple times before it
| starts working, but when it does work the editing is just about
| OK. I have thought about using Google Meet to record my
| desktop, I've heard the editor in that is pretty good, and you
| can stop, start, trim/edit & share in Google Drive or share
| further with a link.
| diogenes4 wrote:
| > I have thought about using Google Meet to record my
| desktop, I've heard the editor in that is pretty good, and
| you can stop, start, trim/edit & share in Google Drive or
| share further with a link.
|
| Surely loom can't be any worse than google chrome
| Atotalnoob wrote:
| They are worth $1 billion due to their customer base.
| tootie wrote:
| I think the concern is more that they have such a small
| moat. Their product seems too easy to copy. But given that
| they are first to market, did a very a good job with what
| they offer and have acquired a lot of customers, that is
| all worth a lot of money. Is "a lot" $1B? Hard to say.
| jschumacher wrote:
| Once you host your videos with Loom and link them
| everywhere, the moat ain't that small anymore. Also,
| their AI features are excellent.
|
| But certainly agree that more competition entered the
| space in the last couple of years.
| kbos87 wrote:
| The brand also becomes a reinforcing moat in an
| interesting way when you become a household name. When
| your employees think to themselves "I want to send a
| quick video update to team X" and they instantly default
| to downloading Loom, IT's decision for which vendor to
| buy a solution like this from is practically made for
| them.
| baq wrote:
| People pay for it. It's probably something like 30x revenue
| or whatever growth valuation but still the point stands: it's
| good enough to have quite a few paying customers.
| nikanj wrote:
| > The Loom software is super buggy though
|
| Perfect fit for Atlassian's portfolio then
| woleium wrote:
| That's exactly what I thought too, lol.
| Spivak wrote:
| How does it compete with macOS screenshot in recording mode?
| Because that sounds basically the same flow just drag/dropping
| the output file into Slack.
| baq wrote:
| Click button, record video, paste link into slack/github vs
| click button, record video, figure out what to do with the
| useless huge file; also annotations and whatever ai they
| managed to put in there to summarize the transcript
| Spivak wrote:
| Huh? Click button, record video, "file" appears in the
| bottom corner of the screen, drag that into Slack or the
| Github editor, done. I would be worried about the links
| expiring, is Loom really hosting arbitrary unlimited sized
| video content _forever_ for $12 /mo? Damn, it's a good
| thing they got bought.
| tempsy wrote:
| They raised $200M and last raised at $1.5B.
|
| Depending on liquidation preference clauses I don't think any
| employee outside the founders will make much from this sale.
| runako wrote:
| Would you mind sharing the ballpark arithmetic that leads to
| this conclusion?
| lmeyerov wrote:
| most of the employees came in at later rounds, so play it
| out. ex: They'd get say $100K in options on paper, but the
| pitch would be the company is high-growth, so expectation
| of 2X, 10X, 20X, etc over next few years. That $100K is
| really $200K next year, $2M the year after, etc.
|
| Except they sold the company at a ~flat multiple over the
| valuation. If employees got RSUs, then at least they made
| say $65K after short-term capital gains (30%+). But if as
| options... no growth over the latest valuation's strike
| price, so nothing. $65K is not $200K and certainly not
| $2M.. and $0 is even worse.
|
| FWIW, I'm a happy customer, am happy for the founders, and
| hope the new features keep rolling out through the
| acquisition -- our usage of Loom grows every month! The
| issue here is not the founders, but HR & VC. This is why
| joining companies with high valuations is a big risk as the
| VC's have already set inflated prices that ate your
| potential payout -- you earn on growth over the strike
| price at time of joining -- and these high markup companies
| have a lot of revenue to grow into.
| nlavezzo wrote:
| That's not how option pricing works. This is a private
| company, and it was raising money using preferred shares.
| The employee shares underlying the options would have
| been common stock.
|
| At least once a year the company would be required to do
| a 409a valuation to set the FMV for those underlying
| common shares and thus the strike price for any options
| in the next year or less. The 409a valuation for common
| shares is pretty much always going to be significantly
| discounted vs preferred for a variety of reasons like
| lack of liquidation preference, lack of liquidity, etc.
| These discounts are often 50% plus, but the shares likely
| have a 1:1 economic value to other share classes in a
| sale, except the most recent preferred that get to use
| their preference.
|
| Anyways the reality is going to be determined by each
| company's details, but option strike prices at private
| companies are generally much lower than the current going
| price for preferred due to the discounts provided by the
| 409a valuation.
| toomanyrichers wrote:
| Yes. For instance, at an early stage company I co-
| founded, we saw 409A of 10% of the most recent priced
| round.
| Aurornis wrote:
| They raised $200M and sold for $1B.
|
| Options from the last raise would be under water, but they
| operated for years before that raise. There are likely a lot
| of employees doing reasonably well.
| abofh wrote:
| The amount they raised is meaningless to an option holder,
| only the valuation. If the employee joined at the 1.5B
| valuation, they got nothing
| sushid wrote:
| Not nothing, just a fat haircut of ~40%, right?
| shuckles wrote:
| Nothing is the best case (if they didn't exercise
| options). You're right: some lost money on the
| transaction if they did exercise, outside special
| consideration.
| theogravity wrote:
| In some cases, they probably have lost money if they
| early exercised at that valuation.
| mattpratt wrote:
| They wouldn't have exercised at that valuation. The
| options would be priced based on the 409a, which would be
| much much less than 1.5B.
| theogravity wrote:
| Depends on when the 409a was performed and when the
| exercise happened. When the startup I work at got our
| Series A, a new 409a was done and increased the share
| price by roughly the same multiple of the new valuation,
| and now I have a wide spread for AMT should I exercise my
| options because of the new 409a.
|
| So it's possible for employees to have joined after the
| new 409a when it was valued at 1.5bln and early exercised
| against that value.
| sida wrote:
| I don't think you can just say that bout the last raise.
|
| Depends on the exercise price. Exercise price is lower than
| the preferred price that the investor paid. Due to the fact
| that investors get preferred shares.
|
| 409a can often be 20% of the preferred valuation.
| notwhereyouare wrote:
| >it's a key part of maintaining a remote culture.
|
| is it? We don't do this at my company and I feel we have a good
| culture
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Why Loom though? There are alternatives like Awesome Screenshot
| that don't have a garbage Chrome-only dev/support target.
| fortyseven wrote:
| That's silly, it's only like 9.99 on Steam. ;)
| chungy wrote:
| $5.99 on GOG. That was my first thought as well. Hadn't heard
| of the Loom described in TFA before.
| technics256 wrote:
| If you have a mac, Cleanshot X I find is better across the board
|
| cleanshot.com
| terpimost wrote:
| I wish they would have web/windows/linux version
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Absolutely brilliant software. I use it absolutely constantly
| at work, brilliant UX and it fits into macOS so well.
|
| Have yet to find anything remotely close in terms of quality
| for screen capture / annotation / recording.
| zoogeny wrote:
| I applied to Loom several years ago while they were still tiny.
| The CEO sent me a Loom thanking me for applying and asking me to
| send him back a Loom describing why I was excited to work for his
| company. Something about that rubbed me the wrong way at the
| time. I didn't reply and dipped out of the interview process.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I like that. Much faster than writing a cover letter or
| application email and shows you understand what they make. I
| take it you weren't that interested in their product.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| That's fine. Your options would have only been worth
|
| _Checks notes_
|
| Millions of dollars.
| woeirua wrote:
| Nope. Loom was last valued at $1.5 billion in 2021, so with
| this acquisition a lot of people's options undoubtedly got
| totally wiped out due to liquidation preferences.
| y_gy wrote:
| This comment misunderstands how liq pref works. Liq pref is
| about the _amount of money invested_ ($175M), not about the
| valuation. At a $975M exit and a par-for-the-course liq
| pref of 1.0, it is very likely that all shareholders will
| have made money on the exit.
| woeirua wrote:
| TIL. Thanks for pointing that out!
| claytonjy wrote:
| Shareholders who got in before that last round, that is.
| Employees who joined in the last few years will likely
| have underwater options unless Loom internally repriced
| already-granted options.
| sushid wrote:
| Why are they underwater? The "value" of their options
| would have been the preferred share - common share price.
| So it would have been a fat haircut but likely still
| netted them some number > common share price, no?
| wferrell wrote:
| Are you counting employees that joined after the 1.5B
| valuation?
|
| I am sure they made money but not what was expected
| (exiting above 1.5B).
|
| How are you determining par for the course liq preference
| of 1.0? Where does that data come from? I ask genuinely
| as the small sample of companies I know of personally
| have liq preferences greater than 1.
| depereo wrote:
| if they had options, i.e the ability to purchase stock
| at, say, $10, but the company was sold with that stock
| being worth $9 only, then exercising those options would
| _lose_ them money.
| latchkey wrote:
| Wow, what a great filter the CEO came up with. If someone
| doesn't want to use the product, they probably won't make a
| good fit to work there.
| malfist wrote:
| You don't have to drink the koolaide to be a productive
| member of the team.
|
| Drinking the koolaide doesn't mean you'll be a productive
| member of the team.
|
| Pretty pointless of a filter
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| Maybe in a big company, but actually I completely disagree
| with this in the context of a small startup. In that
| context, having a tight team of people who are highly
| passionate about the product is _essential_.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I think the point is the CEO was aware of the old advice
| "make what you'd want to use", and just decided to roll
| with that advice in mind.
| paxys wrote:
| Using the product your company makes in the way it is
| intended to be used isn't "drinking the koolaid". If you
| aren't comfortable doing that then you really shouldn't be
| working there.
| latchkey wrote:
| Did you mean to say the same thing two different ways?
|
| > _koolaide_
|
| In reference to the product, it is Kool-Aid.
| paxys wrote:
| Why even apply to a company if you don't want to use their
| product?
| zoogeny wrote:
| I thought (and still think) their product is a great idea.
|
| Some people here seem to think my objection was being asked
| to use the product. It was actually the content of the
| message I was asked to send that bothered me. It wasn't
| "explain how your experience would be useful in this role",
| or "explain your feelings on the technical aspects of this
| product". It was something closer to "show me how excited you
| are to work here".
|
| I don't know why but at the time it felt like being asked to
| grovel. My stupid pride, I guess.
| paxys wrote:
| Well _were_ you excited to work there? For a startup that
| usually matters as much or more than technical skills and
| experience. If the founders are giving you a significant
| chunk of equity in their company then they want to make
| sure you are in it for the right reasons, and won 't bounce
| as soon as you reach your vesting cliff.
|
| If you think answering this simple question is a hit on
| your pride then yeah, you were probably not a good fit.
| zoogeny wrote:
| It is hard to remember how I felt about the company
| before (as opposed to the product idea). To be even more
| clear, the request was explicit. Like "we are super
| passionate about this product here and want people who
| are just as passionate, send us a video showing how
| excited you are".
|
| I'm sure some others can't understand and I view it as a
| mistake. 2 minutes of performative "I can' wait to be a
| full stack engineer!" or "we're really going to change he
| world!" energy might have netted me some big payout? If I
| passed the interview? Who knows.
|
| It's one thing to have genuine passion for working hard,
| doing a great job, making a great product. There is
| something else in being asked to make a video performance
| of that.
|
| It's something like how I hate leet code. It is almost
| just a hoop you jump through to prove you are willing to
| jump through hoops. But I suppose it does provide many
| companies with a lot of value. And some of those
| companies end up exiting high. Maybe if I was less
| prideful I could have taken more advantage.
| tqi wrote:
| I don't feel like it's necessary to take sides on this one
| - seems like Loom gave you some signal on what company
| culture looked like on the inside, and you decided it
| wasn't a good match. Seems like a positive
| interaction/outcome for both parties?
| nugget wrote:
| In my experience as a founder, excitement to work in a
| particular area is way more important than
| experience/skills. Ideally you have both. But lack of
| enthusiasm for a product, especially a niche product, kills
| a culture.
| notJim wrote:
| At a startup, you need people who are excited to make the
| product a success, not just someone who's gonna churn
| through tickets and tick off boxes. They were probably
| looking to see if you were going to commit at that level.
| Totally get why this rubs some people the wrong way, but
| probably just means it's not a good fit.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I'm sure they didn't mean to give you that impression.
| That's a good lesson for people making these requests. If
| the CEO had worded it more evenly ("send me a Loom about
| what interests you in working for Loom") you might've sent
| one in, and the people who wanted to demonstrate sheer
| enthusiasm to maximally fulfill the request still would've.
|
| (Also, I still think you didn't much like the product... :)
| )
| rchaud wrote:
| Because I don't want to be deluged with marketing emails
| after signing up for yet another SaaS.
| dimgl wrote:
| This is hysterical. Looks like the CEO was spot-on.
| chenster wrote:
| This reminds Buffer how simple the idea was and how well they
| executed it. A good product doesn't have to be complex.
| simplyluke wrote:
| Interesting if not surprising to see the criticisms here. We use
| loom extensively at work and as a remote employee it's one of my
| favorite collaboration tools. Sending a video explaining a
| problem while I walk through code is often much easier than
| getting on a zoom call, and Loom is absolutely easier and more
| feature-filled than other forms of screen capture.
| zegerjan wrote:
| Whats wrong with the Slack version? It's on-par UX for me for
| recording, and wins just because it's already in Slack?
| heisgone wrote:
| The issue that I have is that everyone that praise Loom are
| talking about how they enjoy using it to create videos. I don't
| hear anyone saying they enjoy consuming them. Do you?
| earthling8118 wrote:
| I can give you the opposite opinion. I hate loom. I've never
| made a video with it. I've only had the displeasure of
| meeting a few people who used it for everything. It isn't fun
| to use. I'd rather have a block of text and maybe some
| screenshots l.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Future will tell, whether Loom becomes enshittified, like
| basically everything else Atlassian touches or produced. Lets see
| how much usability will be impacted by putting it behind
| attrocious Atlassian logins and adding new unwanted features and
| integrations to it.
| conqrr wrote:
| It's almost a guarantee in SaaS. Look at Salesforce with
| Heroku, Tableau and Slack.
| conqrr wrote:
| At some point, companies become big enough that innovation is a
| risk (Innovater's dilemma). Atlassian is likely at this stage.
| Ofcourse, loom's tech is nothing impressive, one could argue that
| only a small segment of enterprise Loom customers would be
| willing to convert to Atlassian ecosystem. Nonetheless, the show
| must go on and Atlassian has to choose action instead of inaction
| to please the stock market. Good exit for loom though!
| faramarz wrote:
| I think it's more likely that Atlassian gives it away for free
| to its client base .. groups like Linear are coming after them
| and tools like Loom make a material difference in getting
| quality work out the door. we use it for outward facing and
| training material, but the royal honey is when you can async-
| align on product initiatives down to the pixel. Video is a
| powerful story telling tool in today's remote world.
|
| Figma on the other hand will have to sway towards Atlassian
| territory to add value to the tech bit of the pipeline. the dev
| mode has made it clear they are headed that way, on their own
| terms.
|
| I just wish that more founders prioritize enterprise customers
| and clear the way to onboard by investing in compliance (SOC-2)
| reporting early! it's a total showstopper and that's
| unfortunate for all sides.
| dalex00 wrote:
| Atlassian gives not much out for free the new whiteboard
| feature in confluence will also be monetizes like everything.
|
| E.g. automations for their products will cost soon meaning
| you need to upgrade your product to next tier. After we
| implemented everywhere...
| eastbound wrote:
| Atlassian is not afraid of innovating, they can't. They just
| hired the worst developers again and again. Good students go to
| Canva, dropouts go to Atlassian.
|
| Talk to partners. Everyone is pulling their hair at the new
| APIs. It's _architecturally_ bad, inside their systems. Even
| the architects are outputting crap! The best programmers of the
| company!
|
| I've move my data outside Atlassian to prevent loss...
| heisgone wrote:
| In 25 years, Atlassian is by far the worse platform I had to
| write code for. Worse than Oracle. You smell the pile of turd
| you are sitting on at every corner. For obvious reason, they
| embraced the corporate agile movement and can't coordonate
| anything. Their software is a patchwork of nonsense.
| pibefision wrote:
| Microsoft implemented the same functionality in Office365 (it's
| called Stream). I think it's a great exit to sell to Atlassian.
| baq wrote:
| Timely, too; in a year everyone will have something like this
| vxNsr wrote:
| I don't see where to use it or how, doesn't appear to allow you
| to record your screen...
| paxys wrote:
| I like Loom, but once Slack launched clips and huddles there was
| really no reason to continue using it (nearly 100% of our usage
| was recording a video clip and posting it to Slack). Wonder what
| Atlassian has in store for the product.
| a13o wrote:
| The 5 minute cap, and difficulty getting a slack video URL to
| paste into code review tool or bug tracking tool, is what led
| us away from Slack videos.
|
| If Slack stepped it up, it'd probably come down to who has the
| better bundle price.
| itomato wrote:
| Is this another Bitbucket in the making?
| Legion wrote:
| Ask me about LOOM
| mayormcmatt wrote:
| So, tell me about LOOM.
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| There it is.
| sidcool wrote:
| Nobody likes Atlassian products but everyone uses them.
| throwaway2990 wrote:
| Another product for atlassian to trash!!! Awesome!
| Spunkie wrote:
| I consult with a very large variety of businesses and literally
| my only interaction with loom in the wild is when a few LMS I'm
| in started randomly started replacing youtube embeds with loom
| embeds.
|
| Everyone hates it though because the loom embed player is hot
| garbage and actively distracts from the experience. I've heard
| much the same from most of my colleagues also going through the
| LMS courses.
|
| $1B seems a crazy price, but I guess overpriced garbage is right
| up Atlassians street.
| mkjonesuk wrote:
| I use and love Loom. I am not happy about this. Their acquisition
| of Trello was very painful and our company stopped using it
| because of this.
|
| What alternatives to Loom Pro/Team would people recommend?
| tqi wrote:
| If this[1] is accurate (a big if) 2023 rev is 35M, which would
| make this a ~30X multiple!?
|
| [1] https://getlatka.com/companies/loom
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| The natural cycle of enshittification of SaaS products continues
| m3kw9 wrote:
| If you have a mac, buy Compressor app from Apple set up Folder
| watch, use Zoom to start an empty video meeting to show video of
| yourself, minimize(shift cmd m) and float(cmd alt f) the zoom
| window, then use MacOS screen record(cmd shift 5) to record.
|
| I can get this screen grab setup up running in 10 seconds. You
| don't need Loom for most cases
| codemac wrote:
| You can use quicktime to show your webcam + cmd-shift-5 as
| well.
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