[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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-10-12 21:00 UTC)