Atlassian Acquires Loom(atlassian.com)
atlassian.com
Atlassian Acquires Loom
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/announcements/atlassian-acquires-loom
407 comments
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.
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.
> My immediate reaction was that value-wise it was a joke, how can they be worth $1 billion?
It's probably way more about the in to the large install base of users to start pushing other Atlassian suite products on.
"Hey there happy Atlassian (formarly Loom) customer, since you're now in our ecosystem where products go to die, may we interest you in a Jira or a Confluence? They come with a complementary week of consecutive downtime on the house!"
It's probably way more about the in to the large install base of users to start pushing other Atlassian suite products on.
"Hey there happy Atlassian (formarly Loom) customer, since you're now in our ecosystem where products go to die, may we interest you in a Jira or a Confluence? They come with a complementary week of consecutive downtime on the house!"
Don't forget forcing everyone to their SaaS offering only to be shown not to have a validated disaster recovery plan that resulted in almost 2 weeks (4/5-4/17) of consecutive downtime for many customers. Cherry on top was the 57 customers they screwed up the backup restore for and brought back older data. By the time they realized it they had to work with the customers to merge the newer backups with the changes they'd made since the initial restore.
They are worth $1 billion due to their customer base.
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.
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.
But certainly agree that more competition entered the space in the last couple of years.
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.
yeah ppl nowadays say "send me a Loom". It's a billion-dollar brand.
I had to uninstall the desktop app it was uploading 6MB chunks at random times for no reason I could figure out. I hope this is an opportunity to improve their local software but not holding my breath lol the Atlassian Godzilla.
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.
> 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
Surely loom can't be any worse than google chrome
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.
Depending on liquidation preference clauses I don't think any employee outside the founders will make much from this sale.
Would you mind sharing the ballpark arithmetic that leads to this conclusion?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nothing you said here is wrong, but it also doesn't explain how likely or not employees with those common shares will have made money. Having been on both sides of these transactions, I think it's likely that they made very little on their vested shares, but they likely will have been given new hire packages with Atlassian that will be worth something (RSUs vs options).
Why do I think they didn't make much from vested shares? Simple preference math. While I don't know Loom's cap table, or how each round was structured, I think we can all agree that they gave shares to investors that at least had 1X preference. Given that the sale happened at a substantial discount to their last round valuation, it's likely that preferences ate up most if not all of the proceeds of the deal. There may have been a sweetener of some sort offered to the leadership team, and that may have been distributed to all existing employees, but that would have been independent of the cap table (they're not going to give a package to departed employees that exercised options).
Why do I think they didn't make much from vested shares? Simple preference math. While I don't know Loom's cap table, or how each round was structured, I think we can all agree that they gave shares to investors that at least had 1X preference. Given that the sale happened at a substantial discount to their last round valuation, it's likely that preferences ate up most if not all of the proceeds of the deal. There may have been a sweetener of some sort offered to the leadership team, and that may have been distributed to all existing employees, but that would have been independent of the cap table (they're not going to give a package to departed employees that exercised options).
Most employees probably made some money, just not very much.
Early employees would be lucky to get options worth 10-20bps of the company, so assuming $800M was distributed to shareholders after accounting for 1x liquidation preference that might only be $800k-$1.6M before accounting for dilution for the very earliest employees, and a lot less for everyone else.
Early employees would be lucky to get options worth 10-20bps of the company, so assuming $800M was distributed to shareholders after accounting for 1x liquidation preference that might only be $800k-$1.6M before accounting for dilution for the very earliest employees, and a lot less for everyone else.
Yes. For instance, at an early stage company I co-founded, we saw 409A of 10% of the most recent priced round.
yes, this is very much stage-specific
by the time of these $100M+ rounds for $1B unicorns to hire a lot of people, the 90% discount is long gone
by the time of these $100M+ rounds for $1B unicorns to hire a lot of people, the 90% discount is long gone
Totally, I am sad to say my companies have never reached a 100MM round, so I wouldn’t know.
It might not be a 90% discount but it still will be a >50% discount
for companies raising 9 figure later-stage rounds? that's not obvious to me
and relevant to this case, often the investor will do a higher valuation (artificially minting a unicorn etc) for optics/vanity reasons, which eats an additional 1+ years of future growth, eliminating the relevance of a discount here
and for folks who many not have followed terms above: investors get preferred shares, with rights over these discounted common shares. These include things like veto rights over acquisitions, first money out ("if $200M raised, no one else sees any $ until that $200M is paid back"), and for high-valuation unicorn rounds, often something like a participation multiple ("guaranteed extra $100M profit, so no one sees anything till $300M paid"), high interest rate on convertible debt portions, etc. So beyond the obvious dilution hit of new investors, there are a lot of these gotchas that trade a bigger bank account for heightened exit value risks to employees.
and relevant to this case, often the investor will do a higher valuation (artificially minting a unicorn etc) for optics/vanity reasons, which eats an additional 1+ years of future growth, eliminating the relevance of a discount here
and for folks who many not have followed terms above: investors get preferred shares, with rights over these discounted common shares. These include things like veto rights over acquisitions, first money out ("if $200M raised, no one else sees any $ until that $200M is paid back"), and for high-valuation unicorn rounds, often something like a participation multiple ("guaranteed extra $100M profit, so no one sees anything till $300M paid"), high interest rate on convertible debt portions, etc. So beyond the obvious dilution hit of new investors, there are a lot of these gotchas that trade a bigger bank account for heightened exit value risks to employees.
The people who come up with 409a prices have every incentive to make it as low as possible provided it is somewhat defensible to the IRS.
I assure you they can get more creative than saying that the last preferred price was at $X, therefore our hands are tied and the common must be close to that. They can take into consideration the preferred preferences, the current state of the business, the time since the last round, etc. For example, the 409a value can keep going down and down if the value of the business is (defensibly) going down and down, regardless of the last fundraising round.
I assure you they can get more creative than saying that the last preferred price was at $X, therefore our hands are tied and the common must be close to that. They can take into consideration the preferred preferences, the current state of the business, the time since the last round, etc. For example, the 409a value can keep going down and down if the value of the business is (defensibly) going down and down, regardless of the last fundraising round.
This is a thing I'd love to see data for - the strike price discount at time of acquisition for later-stage companies. These same companies in that megaround companies probably have stock on secondary markets, which might be a good proxy for some of this.
And totally agree wrt creative arguments being viable... Just not clear what ends up happening in practice. Ex: I can imagine a split between paper unicorns vs ones w revenue backing it up being closer to market, and those later ones often switching to RSUs. So genuine curiosity here.
And totally agree wrt creative arguments being viable... Just not clear what ends up happening in practice. Ex: I can imagine a split between paper unicorns vs ones w revenue backing it up being closer to market, and those later ones often switching to RSUs. So genuine curiosity here.
Wow - you are wrong.
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.
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.
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
In some cases, they probably have lost money if they early exercised at that valuation.
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.
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.
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.
I have a hard time actually visualizing this math. Let’s say you join a 1.5B valued company and get offered $100k in stock options, but at $20k. So an 80% discount.Assuming the company meets the revenue goals maybe 10 years in the future but otherwise no other growth beyond the valuation, is it worthwhile for the employee to exercise the options, not early? Presumably they would have to turn around and pay another $20k in taxes the year that they exercised
And then they'd have sold at the higher value, because the sale price is almost certainly higher than whatever the 409a price was.
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.
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.
Preferred vs common only matters when the company is sold at loss? The preferred shareholders get priority in terms of being made whole before the common shareholders.
In this case, since series C was 1.5bln and sold for $975m, then the preferred shares were bought during C would be made whole first (assuming the prior rounds were made whole first and there's enough left over for series C preferred) before those who exercised right after the valuation for common shares.
Edit: I forgot that preferred shares also come with liquidation preferences too, meaning that in a loss situation, later employees are highly unlikely to get something
In this case, since series C was 1.5bln and sold for $975m, then the preferred shares were bought during C would be made whole first (assuming the prior rounds were made whole first and there's enough left over for series C preferred) before those who exercised right after the valuation for common shares.
Edit: I forgot that preferred shares also come with liquidation preferences too, meaning that in a loss situation, later employees are highly unlikely to get something
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.
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
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.
With loom you can edit it quite easily. I currently use Kap (on MacOS). Tool quality it not as good as Loom. Needs more maintainers I guess.
For me, something like Loom without the online-first approach would be nice. It doesn't exist. I searched. Screenshot tools are a solved problem, screen capturing isn't.
For me, something like Loom without the online-first approach would be nice. It doesn't exist. I searched. Screenshot tools are a solved problem, screen capturing isn't.
After a screengrab with quicktime you just > edit > trim and then save as. Transcripting audio and summarizing would be nice creature comforts but I'm in the "billion dollars for what now?" camp.
it sounds like they're hosting it for 1 month for $12. You never know when the company will decide to delete old videos from non-subscribers.
macOS doesn’t record video well at all. QuickTime is the vehicle for it, often crashing, or not stopping the recording. It’s been like that for years. I don’t use Loom, but I’d never ever recommend trying to record your screen on macOS using QT.
>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
is it? We don't do this at my company and I feel we have a good culture
Loom is part of ours (our company is fully remote, no offices). One use-case is we use it to create demo videos of our work and attach it to our git pull requests so reviewers can see how to test our code changes. Others might be things like showing buggy app behavior.
Why Loom though? There are alternatives like Awesome Screenshot that don't have a garbage Chrome-only dev/support target.
I didn't even realize what Loom was until now. I love their product demo video on their home page. https://www.loom.com/
Brilliantly made.
And I'm completely sold on the value of this software. Screen recording is the best way to log software design defects.
Brilliantly made.
And I'm completely sold on the value of this software. Screen recording is the best way to log software design defects.
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)
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
If I want to found a VC-funded startup for which a successful exit is much more fair to the employees, how do I do that?
Will the investors insist that it all come out of the founders' percentage of the pie, or can I argue that the better-incentived employees mean a bigger and more likely pie, so VC terms shoudl be less grabby?
Will VCs react negatively to "being soft on" employees, even if it all comes out of founders' slice?
Do early employees get ISOs, other options, RSUs, or something else?
Will the investors insist that it all come out of the founders' percentage of the pie, or can I argue that the better-incentived employees mean a bigger and more likely pie, so VC terms shoudl be less grabby?
Will VCs react negatively to "being soft on" employees, even if it all comes out of founders' slice?
Do early employees get ISOs, other options, RSUs, or something else?
Pragmatically, read "Venture Deals" and "Founder vs Investor" before you start your company. Then hire a reputable law firm and imagine you're an employee rather than a founder, and setup the initial structure in an employee friendly way. When raising your first round, have some non-negotiables that carry the structure forward. You can DM me on Twitter/X if you want more specifics based on my experience.
Successful startup companies can and should compensate employees well with both cash and stock. It's only incompetence and greed that endangers this outcome. VC expectations are a red herring, only bad VCs are so short-sighted as to deprive a founder of one of the major tools of team-building (truly valuable company equity).
As a founder, there are forces you have to fight against from first principles using your moral compass via a thoughtful fundraising strategy, but it can be done.
Successful startup companies can and should compensate employees well with both cash and stock. It's only incompetence and greed that endangers this outcome. VC expectations are a red herring, only bad VCs are so short-sighted as to deprive a founder of one of the major tools of team-building (truly valuable company equity).
As a founder, there are forces you have to fight against from first principles using your moral compass via a thoughtful fundraising strategy, but it can be done.
> how do I do that?
The only good answer to this is 1) don't raise more VC money than you really need, and 2) don’t raise money at a valuation way above what your company is actually worth.
The problem in the scenario here is that they sold for below the valuation of their last funding round, and the size of their last funding round was ginormous.
When you raise hundreds of millions at a $1.5b valuation, you’re expected to sell above $1.5b at some point in the future. Any less and you didn’t live up to the opportunity that you pitched investors (and the financial outcomes for everyone deteriorates when you sell for way less than your valuation).
The only good answer to this is 1) don't raise more VC money than you really need, and 2) don’t raise money at a valuation way above what your company is actually worth.
The problem in the scenario here is that they sold for below the valuation of their last funding round, and the size of their last funding round was ginormous.
When you raise hundreds of millions at a $1.5b valuation, you’re expected to sell above $1.5b at some point in the future. Any less and you didn’t live up to the opportunity that you pitched investors (and the financial outcomes for everyone deteriorates when you sell for way less than your valuation).
Can I still attract VC, if I'm arguing for more modest valuations than competing lottery-ticket startups are?
Or do I have to look like much more a traditional fundamentals investment, than a semirandom lottery ticket (or growth scam to exit)?
Or do I have to look like much more a traditional fundamentals investment, than a semirandom lottery ticket (or growth scam to exit)?
Not an expert here, but I have worked at a couple startups. The answer I would give is probably not: VCs basically work on a premise like this: 1 in 25 investments will return 100x, 5 in 25 will make they're money back, and the rest are just a wash. The only way the make money is if the company is mega successful, so they're not really interested if that's not a possibility. That being said, not every person at a VC is going to be super greedy or anything like that, it's just the nature of the business model for venture capital.
I don't think VC money cares whether you are soft on the employees. They are there to buy as big a slice of a small pie before it gets big. Anything you keep for yourself or give to your employees is pie that could be theirs. If they show up and you've already promised half the pie away they'll pay less for what's left, or you won't be one of 100 slices in their pie portfolio. Maybe you can convince them the motivated employees will lead to more growth, but it's not the type of thing they are normally swayed by.
I think the end result is that it's probably not possible to pay employees with meaningful equity anymore so you'll have to go back to paying them the old fashioned way with money. I know I'm no longer willing to take RSU lotto tickets and a pay cut to work at a startup.
I think the end result is that it's probably not possible to pay employees with meaningful equity anymore so you'll have to go back to paying them the old fashioned way with money. I know I'm no longer willing to take RSU lotto tickets and a pay cut to work at a startup.
First find a VC fund that agrees with you
Let your lawyers deal with it.
A 1x liquidation preference (meaning investors get their money back before employees and other investors “below them in the capital stack” get anything) is most common. A 1.5x preference is less common. A 2x preference is rare in VC (more common in growth equity). Anything more than that is extremely rare, and a startup that was hot at the time (meaning multiple investors were competing to invest) would likely not give investors anything more. A 5x pref is unheard of. There are other types of preferences too - google “participating preferred stock” to learn more.
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.
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.
I'm listening to the audiobook of "Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist "
https://www.amazon.com.au/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capit...
It's worth listening to if you want to understand this stuff better.
Having just listened to this book, I would guess that this sale has not been a great outcome for the founder and employees.
https://www.amazon.com.au/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capit...
It's worth listening to if you want to understand this stuff better.
Having just listened to this book, I would guess that this sale has not been a great outcome for the founder and employees.
So someone spent $205m in 2021 and got $133m back in 2023? My guess is that Atlassian does a similar write down in a few years time. I hope the winners in this deal try to make the world a better place.
No, they likely had a liquidation preference so at least got their money back in 2023.
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 videosI 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.
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.
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.
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.
Jing was such a brilliant simple concept. For years I used to make it mandatory for my team to install it.
I can't fathom how Techsmith couldn't make that work (although maybe it was just too competitive with Camtasia)... Loom is basically the same thing but limited to a Chrome extension? Or am I missing something?
I can't fathom how Techsmith couldn't make that work (although maybe it was just too competitive with Camtasia)... Loom is basically the same thing but limited to a Chrome extension? Or am I missing something?
Jing is similar but loom does a lot more post processing and continues the expansion of the idea.
I used to recommend to clients to pre-install the free Jing on all of their pcs, was awesome.
I used to recommend to clients to pre-install the free Jing on all of their pcs, was awesome.
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.
>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.
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.
The free version of Jing used to have a 5 minute limit and it was the perfect constraint to ensure short or multiple videos
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.
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.
Also the first person to invent Ctrl+F for video will be a billionaire.
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.
> 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.
At least YouTube (desktop web) lets you open the (often auto-generated) captions as a transcript on the side.
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?
YouTube has transcripts of varying quality, and tools like kagi's universal summarizer can handle videos as well
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.
Also has captioning, transcripts and summarization.
For when a bug doesn’t seem possible, video remains invaluable.
> 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.
This sentiment is one of the reasons why so much documentation is not good.
Writing good, usable, technical documentation is HARD.
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.
My experience with enterprise customers is that recording a video is much more effort than typing "the thingy won't foo the bar" ...
That’s mainly because creating and submitting videos is hard with current tools.
It’s super common and reasonable if it saves days and dozens of emails just to replicate
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.
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.
I am going to assume that the userbase of Loom doesn't need to pad videos to 10 Minutes because the algorhithm only suggests videos that have enough space for ads, and I've never heard "Make sure to like and subscribe" and "You can edit your privacy settings here. Speaking of Privacy, did you know that your ISP can read all your stuff? Sign up for a free month of BarfVPN using my link" in any of the videos attached to pull requests or bug reports.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe a unified tool with a better integration will allow better bug reports, but pep talks by management at scale? No, thanks.
Is it easy to do on macOS if system sound is needed to demonstrate the bug?
There are dummy drivers which bypass that limitation when required. I didn't install them, since I never needed sound to demonstrate something.
Ok thanks. Still not as trivially easy as it should be then :(
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/
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/
I tried Loopback as a paid user, and it wasn't nearly as stable/reliable as you would reasonably hope if you're an ex-Windows user converting to MacOS.
It still boggles my mind that there is no "Stereo mix" built-in.
It still boggles my mind that there is no "Stereo mix" built-in.
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.
There is no good reason it’s not possible in Quicktime to record the system audio along with the screen.
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.
You can't record system audio without extra software and configuration that is not trivial to set up. It's not an option for the average user.
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.
That said there is a niche of user testing video capture and so on, but that is not what this is.
We actually do some of that with Loom, mainly recording app bugs for others to repro, or demoing new features so code reviewers know how to test the feature. The videos are often short, less than 2 mins.
I would love to have this, as someone that has to use Jira. Instead we have to extensively talk to QA (not too bad) or BAs/POs (usually bad) to figure out what someone's problem is.
Managers and leadership.
Those are Atlssian’s customers.
Those are Atlssian’s customers.
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.
And yet they still haven’t implemented CD burning. >:-(
I do all of these things with loom today and love it.
> 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?
I already use windows game mode for screen captures. Why would I need a separate application for that?
I used to do that but you can record screen video with the Snipping Tool now. Works fine, mp4 file as output.
Where I’ve worked Game Mode was disabled by GPO in enterprise environments.
Generation TikTok?
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.
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.
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
Drinking the koolaide doesn't mean you'll be a productive member of the team.
Pretty pointless of a filter
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_.
I think you can be highly passionate about solving complex problems without being highly passionate about the product
The only real complex problem a start-up has to solve is making the product successful. Engineers that love "complex problems" with no love for the product / space it's in is usually a recipe for disaster.
I think it's completely reasonable for a CEO to have a different view, and when you're a tiny startup, it's very fair.
You can be, but I wouldn't hire that person. Why would I want an engineer who doesn't give a shit about the actual product they're responsible for?
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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.
I mean... you don't HAVE to, you're right. However, hiring for most engineering roles is a filtering problem rather than a sourcing problem. I'd rather hire a Javascript engineer who'll at least _pretend_ to be excited about the job than hire a Javascript engineer who is lukewarm to cold right out of the gate. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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.
At an early stage startup it’s absolutely critical.
Did you mean to say the same thing two different ways?
> koolaide
In reference to the product, it is Kool-Aid.
> koolaide
In reference to the product, it is Kool-Aid.
Also, to be extra pedantic (why not), it should be Flavor Aid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown#Deaths_in_Jonestown
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown#Deaths_in_Jonestown
Is using a product once as an interview task really that unreasonable?
It's not like he was asking you to adopt Loom into your life or to drink the koolaide.
It's not like he was asking you to adopt Loom into your life or to drink the koolaide.
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.
This is hysterical. Looks like the CEO was spot-on.
Why even apply to a company if you don't want to use their product?
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.
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.
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.
If you think answering this simple question is a hit on your pride then yeah, you were probably not a good fit.
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.
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.
FWIW I don’t think of it as pride as much as setting boundaries. You understood yours and it made you uncomfortable to cross it. I personally think that’s a good thing.
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?
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.
I'm excited for continuing to have a roof over my head, food in my belly, and maybe something extra for retirement...
I find that the expectation of "excitement" from your developers is truly absurd.
I find that the expectation of "excitement" from your developers is truly absurd.
Yeah… this is the biggest red flag for me.
Yes startups are all about building great products that users will love. But that love should be organic and authentic, not blind belief.
I suspect that this expectation is likely because most startups are actually bullshit products. Look at all the dumbass crypto startups and now the AI startups. Its become an institution that churns out crap so you need to be able to delude yourself into believing the nonsense to keep doing it repeatedly.
Yes startups are all about building great products that users will love. But that love should be organic and authentic, not blind belief.
I suspect that this expectation is likely because most startups are actually bullshit products. Look at all the dumbass crypto startups and now the AI startups. Its become an institution that churns out crap so you need to be able to delude yourself into believing the nonsense to keep doing it repeatedly.
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… :) )
(Also, I still think you didn’t much like the product… :) )
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.
Because I don't want to be deluged with marketing emails after signing up for yet another SaaS.
That's fine. Your options would have only been worth
Checks notes
Millions of dollars.
Checks notes
Millions of dollars.
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.
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.
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.
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?
The options are worth common share price - strike price. If the strike is higher they are worth zero
At exit the preferred shares become common, and the common shares increase in value accordingly. I've seen even series E companies that kept their common share price to under 20% of the preferred share price. If you started on day X with a common share price of 20% of the last preferred share price, and the company was acquired on day X + 1 at a discount, say 60% of the last preferred share price after factoring in liquidation preferences, then your profit from the options is still 2x the strike price.
Loom is an odd case because the timing of their last round was simply perfect. It was announced in May 2021, which means the terms would've been set in Jan or Feb, when Tiger and other firms were on a rampage and competition to get into rounds was at its height. That last $130m has to have been on very favorable terms, not just the valuation but e.g. no crazy liquidation preference. So, unless Loom's founders made some inexplicably bad deals, I'd expect even recent hires to still make a little money. Nobody should be getting zeroed out.
Loom is an odd case because the timing of their last round was simply perfect. It was announced in May 2021, which means the terms would've been set in Jan or Feb, when Tiger and other firms were on a rampage and competition to get into rounds was at its height. That last $130m has to have been on very favorable terms, not just the valuation but e.g. no crazy liquidation preference. So, unless Loom's founders made some inexplicably bad deals, I'd expect even recent hires to still make a little money. Nobody should be getting zeroed out.
As I mentioned in another comment -- no, their options will not be underwater, because the strike on their options is set by the 409A value, which will have been far less than 1.5B. It wouldn't be unusual to see a company that's got its preferred stock valued at 1.5B and its 409A at 400M.
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.
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.
Liq pref > 1 was extremely uncommon in the last 5 years.
Employees who joined after the 1.5B valuation will have made money because the strike on their options is set by the 409A, which will have been far, far less than 1.5B. Preferred stock price is not the same as 409A common price.
Employees who joined after the 1.5B valuation will have made money because the strike on their options is set by the 409A, which will have been far, far less than 1.5B. Preferred stock price is not the same as 409A common price.
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.
TIL. Thanks for pointing that out!
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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!
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.
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.
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...
E.g. automations for their products will cost soon meaning you need to upgrade your product to next tier. After we implemented everywhere...
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…
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…
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.
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.
Now you can attach videos to jira tickets, seems a bit overkill.
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.
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.
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.
It’s a bargain compared to their Series C valuation in 2021 of $1.5 billion.
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.
Ouch. I wonder how much of the exit value got absorbed by their preference stack.
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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 ;-)
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 ;-)
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.
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.
Jira-1369 was closed four years ago.
As one of jira’s bigger brain farts, it seems it’s was recreated and continued in a new ticket.
Open: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-1369
Closed: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-1369
The original JRA-1369 was opened in 2003. Addressed a little in 2019, but not the digests to solve it all. Odd since plug-ins have to. closing this is one way to improve optics I guess.
Ps, I don’t hate Jira. Wasn’t a huge fan and it took a few years to see the light of what it does that so few platforms do when it comes to being able to absorb complexity as it evolves.
Managing evolving complexity is a real thing, and the pain can be reduced by having more in one tool vs not. It’s a tough space, and I think Aha.Io is one tool suited to win their prize and grow into Jira’s space.
Their worst sin remains how many people are subjected to an out of the box install compared to one that is setup to your processes. Tweaking it makes such a difference.
Open: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-1369
Closed: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-1369
The original JRA-1369 was opened in 2003. Addressed a little in 2019, but not the digests to solve it all. Odd since plug-ins have to. closing this is one way to improve optics I guess.
Ps, I don’t hate Jira. Wasn’t a huge fan and it took a few years to see the light of what it does that so few platforms do when it comes to being able to absorb complexity as it evolves.
Managing evolving complexity is a real thing, and the pain can be reduced by having more in one tool vs not. It’s a tough space, and I think Aha.Io is one tool suited to win their prize and grow into Jira’s space.
Their worst sin remains how many people are subjected to an out of the box install compared to one that is setup to your processes. Tweaking it makes such a difference.
Ah you're right, it was just reopened.
> Their worst sin remains how many people are subjected to an out of the box install compared to one that is setup to your processes. Tweaking it makes such a difference.
This is true, I hated out of the box Jira, and I tolerated it after I tweaked it for our org. Honestly, it probably shouldn't even work out of the box. It should just start with a single ticket that describes how to configure it, that you can't close until you configure some ways to close tickets.
> Their worst sin remains how many people are subjected to an out of the box install compared to one that is setup to your processes. Tweaking it makes such a difference.
This is true, I hated out of the box Jira, and I tolerated it after I tweaked it for our org. Honestly, it probably shouldn't even work out of the box. It should just start with a single ticket that describes how to configure it, that you can't close until you configure some ways to close tickets.
Totally agree. I was on the out of the box side for too long.
It is a little too complicated to setup in the beginning but it has more first principles to learn before combining maybe due to the complexity it can handle.
It is a little too complicated to setup in the beginning but it has more first principles to learn before combining maybe due to the complexity it can handle.
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.
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.
If you have a mac, Cleanshot X I find is better across the board
cleanshot.com
cleanshot.com
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.
Have yet to find anything remotely close in terms of quality for screen capture / annotation / recording.
Such a clean app. Would probably use this if I haven’t mastered usage of Final Cut Pro.
yes it’s overkill, but it’s one less tool I have to learn.
I do like its ability to capture scrolling content. Would buy it just for that.
Also a plus: one time fee w/ optional upgrades. Definitely a plus
yes it’s overkill, but it’s one less tool I have to learn.
I do like its ability to capture scrolling content. Would buy it just for that.
Also a plus: one time fee w/ optional upgrades. Definitely a plus
I wish they would have web/windows/linux version
Sharex does all that and more, it's there for windows. I don't know the wine story for it though. It's a .net app
+1. One of these apps that makes leaving macOS impossible.
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.
> Loom works wherever you do.
> Get Loom for Free
> For Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android
Looks like Loom does not work wherever I do.
Also loom does not work at all offline, even the video recording…
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?
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.
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..
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..
I was not aware Trello is considered a failure.
BitBucket and Hipchat, for sure.
OpsGenie, until the really bad way they handled an outage last year, it was, sometimes begrudgingly, widely used, recommended sometimes even.
Trello, on the other hand, seems like what everyone wants to use but no organization seems to want to let people use. Everyone that uses Trello seemingly, likes it
BitBucket and Hipchat, for sure.
OpsGenie, until the really bad way they handled an outage last year, it was, sometimes begrudgingly, widely used, recommended sometimes even.
Trello, on the other hand, seems like what everyone wants to use but no organization seems to want to let people use. Everyone that uses Trello seemingly, likes it
They didn’t spend a billion for the tech, they spent it for the huge userbase already full of fledgling enterprise leads. It’s a lead generation acquisition. I do hope they don’t ruin the product, though.
This reminds Buffer how simple the idea was and how well they executed it. A good product doesn't have to be complex.
Microsoft implemented the same functionality in Office365 (it's called Stream). I think it's a great exit to sell to Atlassian.
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
I can get this screen grab setup up running in 10 seconds. You don’t need Loom for most cases
This is such an on-brand HN response. “You don’t need Loom, just do these [10 inconvenient steps] and it’s the same”.
How do you share and upload those videos? Where are they hosted? Can you set a CTA on the video? Get transcripts? Find who has viewed your video? Add a custom thumbnail? Get comments on your video? Set a description?
These are all baked-in things that Loom handles, not to mention one-click recording that doesn’t involve wiring together 3 different apps.
How do you share and upload those videos? Where are they hosted? Can you set a CTA on the video? Get transcripts? Find who has viewed your video? Add a custom thumbnail? Get comments on your video? Set a description?
These are all baked-in things that Loom handles, not to mention one-click recording that doesn’t involve wiring together 3 different apps.
Agreed, especially because Compressor is $50: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/compressor/id424390742
At that point, you may as well just buy CleanShot X for $30: https://cleanshot.com/
At that point, you may as well just buy CleanShot X for $30: https://cleanshot.com/
If you are good as cmd line, you can have some sort of job to monitor and use ffmpeg to auto compress/convert.
It’s actually one step if you just want screen recording shift cmd 5 at any time, going to loom you likely need 5-10 clicks to start one. I do agree loom provide auto saves, share but like I said if you have ssd space and don’t need to share instantly..
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Great trolling, almost got me for a second.
99% of people would get bored and frustrated by step 3 from what you listed.
99% of people would get bored and frustrated by step 3 from what you listed.
That’s why Loom is selling for a bill
Tried out Loom, installed the desktop tool, took up >50% of CPU at random times when not being used.
Nope, nope, nope.
Nope, nope, nope.
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.
Separately, I'm a big fan of cleanshotX.
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.
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 [email protected]
What’s the point in this acquisition? Why do enterprise projects need short form videos (aka Tik Tok)?
Atlassian products are already dog shit slow. Add in the number of plugins that admins add over the years plus processing and hosting of videos … It’s going to be a hot mess.
Would hate to be the person on the project that has diminished vision or completely blind. Screen readers don’t stand a chance against QA’s short form videos with no audio or description of the bug or feature.
Seems like bloat to me. Atlassian trying too hard to become the sole solution for project management.
Atlassian products are already dog shit slow. Add in the number of plugins that admins add over the years plus processing and hosting of videos … It’s going to be a hot mess.
Would hate to be the person on the project that has diminished vision or completely blind. Screen readers don’t stand a chance against QA’s short form videos with no audio or description of the bug or feature.
Seems like bloat to me. Atlassian trying too hard to become the sole solution for project management.
Text to speech models like Whisper are getting good enough that screen readers would stand a chance. The video itself is still more difficult to caption, but the things that would be shared in video are probably being shared with screenshots right now, so it would not be worse.
Don't know why Techcrunch almost literally shit on Loom in the article - https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/12/atlassian-to-acquire-forme...
They sold for almost 50% less than their last raise but selling a clip recorder product for US$ 1bn is still a big achievement and it is indeed a good software product.
Curious on the multiples they paid though. My guess => US$ 30 MM ARR @ 30x revenue multiple
They sold for almost 50% less than their last raise but selling a clip recorder product for US$ 1bn is still a big achievement and it is indeed a good software product.
Curious on the multiples they paid though. My guess => US$ 30 MM ARR @ 30x revenue multiple
I feel bad for the employees who joined at the previous valuation though.
Is this another Bitbucket in the making?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 [email protected]
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
Link: https://www.teaminal.com
I use Tella.tv which is effectively a Loom replacement but their desktop mac app hasn't ever crashed on me
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.
They side with the "Deep Work" philoshopy, and encourage (written) async collaboration.
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.
We are building "Loom for devs" at https://dashcam.io
Windows and Mac only, this is dead on arrival for me
I’m sure they will regret not capturing the ~1% of the desktop market using Linux
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.
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)
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?
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
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...)
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...)
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
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 [email protected]
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.
Zappy from Zapier is free: https://zapier.com/zappy
Screenstudio is incredible and a one time purchase
I switched to scre.io
To name a few, RecordIt (gif only), Camtasia, Snagit
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Great, more potential clients to sell Jira to :(
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.
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.
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Can they acquire Asana and merge it with Jira so that I can dislike one project management tool instead of two?
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)
(not associated with the company - just a happy customer who feels like they ought to be more widely known than they seem to be)
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.
Do you dislike the tools or dislike the process that gets created around the tools?
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.
I dislike the tools for the process they encourage.
Jirana or Asira? I'm drinking my morning Bawls with Guarana, reading Jirana!
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.
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.
If Slack stepped it up, it'd probably come down to who has the better bundle price.
> Slack launched clip
What?!!! I'm not sure how I haven't known about this. Been using Dropbox capture for basic stuff(obs for complicated).
What?!!! I'm not sure how I haven't known about this. Been using Dropbox capture for basic stuff(obs for complicated).
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
[1] https://getlatka.com/companies/loom
1. Those numbers on Latka, ZoomInfo, etc. are often educated guesses.
2. The graph on Latka shows that $35M figure as being from 2021.
3. The 2021 fundraising announcement[0] said they grew revenue 1100% YoY that year, so the 30x multiple might be warranted.
[0] https://a16z.com/announcement/investing-in-loom/
2. The graph on Latka shows that $35M figure as being from 2021.
3. The 2021 fundraising announcement[0] said they grew revenue 1100% YoY that year, so the 30x multiple might be warranted.
[0] https://a16z.com/announcement/investing-in-loom/
Maybe it's just me, but in the video, the founder doesn't seem all that excited about the acquisition. It's almost like he's having second thoughts, but it's too late to back out.
$1.5B for a screen recorder
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
JIRA already had attachments.
Win+G, drag & drop
Win+G, drag & drop
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.
That's what Atlassian is paying for. The ability to cross-sell.
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.
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.
5000 Dollars per customer. Interesting.
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.
Most recently there was a bombshell around being able to record a tab with some new security features making it much harder.
Reminds me of the infamous dropbox comment :)
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).
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).
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.
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?".
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?".
I thought it was a point and click game
Ask me about it!
Is it more than 20 bucks?
Of course not! No one should spend more than 20 bucks for a computer game!
So, tell me about LOOM
You mean the latest masterpiece of fantasy storytelling from Lucasfilm's™ Brian Moriarty™?
Why, it's an extraordinary adventure with an interface of magic, stunning, high-resolution, 3D landscapes, sophisticated score and musical effects. Not to mention the detailed animation and special effects, elegant point 'n' click control of characters, objects, and magic spells.
Beat the rush! Go out and buy Loom™ today!
Why, it's an extraordinary adventure with an interface of magic, stunning, high-resolution, 3D landscapes, sophisticated score and musical effects. Not to mention the detailed animation and special effects, elegant point 'n' click control of characters, objects, and magic spells.
Beat the rush! Go out and buy Loom™ today!
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37856974.
Wait until you find out how much Microsoft's flagship text editor is worth.
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...
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...
$1.5B for a screen recorder with customers
That’s just the first building block.
C'mon Atlassian, have the decency to throw another 25M their way...
Almost like buying a retail product for $9.99 :D
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?
What alternatives to Loom Pro/Team would people recommend?
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.
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.
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That's silly, it's only like 9.99 on Steam. ;)
$5.99 on GOG. That was my first thought as well. Hadn't heard of the Loom described in TFA before.
Nobody likes Atlassian products but everyone uses them.
I hope they don't take this private or make it an Atlassian bundle only thing, as Loom is excellent.
For a second, I thought they acquired the diet app and were planning to diversify into the diet business
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Command + Shift + 5
Just be sure to click Options -> (pick a mic) the first time
Now what happened to iMovie ... ?
Just be sure to click Options -> (pick a mic) the first time
Now what happened to iMovie ... ?
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
Another product for atlassian to trash!!! Awesome!
Ask me about LOOM
So, tell me about LOOM.
You mean the sensational platform for video messaging and screen recording from the geniuses at Loom™? Ah, it's a revolutionary experience that'll transform how you communicate in the business landscape! Boasting an intuitive interface that even your grandma can use, jaw-dropping video quality, and super-speedy sharing capabilities. We're talking about top-notch encryption, folks, not to mention screen and camera recording with pixel-perfect clarity! No more tedious emails or confusing Slack threads. Simplify your life! Beat the rush! Go out and buy Loom™ today!
There it is.
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.
It's almost a guarantee in SaaS. Look at Salesforce with Heroku, Tableau and Slack.
great exit, but rip
The natural cycle of enshittification of SaaS products continues
This make perfect sense. Atlassian is cornering the market of "features nobody ask for but make for good sales pitch to clueless managers".
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.
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.
I do love the idea of sharing a screen recording of features though.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
I would be very surprised to see anyone try to put a Loom in place of a PRD or RFC!
Oh sorry, I don't mean replacing the documents entirely. what I've seen is loom videos replacing sections of those documents (where in the past you would have expected screenshots + text to explain decisions or a design). To me, there may/may not be more total information, but the information density is much lower. I think my hierarchy as a reader is: document with good screenshots and text > doc with good loom video > doc with bad loom video > doc with no screenshots / bad text.
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.
It's not a full replacement, but it's the one you already have.
Slack's huddle feature is actually so nice. We use it more often than the dedicated MS Teams our org pays for (sadly).
We used it for a bit then stopped after discovering the screen share resolution is super low
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)
I had never even noticed that button before. thanks.
Cool, this is the answer I was looking for. Thank you so much!
Their video summarization and speed-ups are killer features.
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.
I'd guess that a big part of it is customer acquisition and then raising prices or ramping customers to other Atlassian products.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
It’s well-executed and convenient. That’s worth a lot.
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
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.[1]
[1] https://m.slashdot.org/story/21026
[1] https://m.slashdot.org/story/21026
To be fair, the person asking the question genuinely is interested in the answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37858345
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).
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).
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.
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.
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!
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.
There is always room for a smooth paid service compared to the rough free one. Android and Linux vs twice-more-expensive Apple.
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...
> 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.
Funny, I don't know anyone who did.
Surely those are the qualities Atlassian will want to change as quickly as possible, though.
It always destroys my laptop, MacBook Pro i5 from 2020. Desktop app, chrome extension, whatever, it absolutely chews up my CPU.
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!
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!
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.
It’s a very well-done feature, but there are increasingly other platforms (Slack, Dropbox) that offer features 80% as good for free.
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
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?
How is deterministic bad in this scenario? What specifically is bad about Loom in your experience?
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.
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.
This is fair. I think I was giving less credit to looms packaging of a "complete" feature. Almost like their work is "done".
Sadly these days it seems that having good taste and not having embarked on the enshittification train itself is a pretty great moat.
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.
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.
I've been using Peek for this for years and never thought it was a billion dollar feature
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?
> 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?
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...
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...
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.
So ShareX?
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.
Loom does this while the video is being recorded to give you the link as fast as possible.
And that's worth a billion dollars?
I guarantee you the snark originates from a hatred of JIRA.
People really don't like Atlassian around these parts
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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.
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.
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!
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.
Maybe the problem is need of fixing is "too many meetings".
Yep, and Loom is a good tool for that. That's why it's been so useful.
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.
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.
YMMV of course but it is straightforwardly useful in my experience.
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Absolutely agree
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.
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?
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.
Whats wrong with the Slack version? It's on-par UX for me for recording, and wins just because it's already in Slack?
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People really will buy anything hey
Why is this a good thing?
975M for what the company does seems awfully high imo. But nice exit all things considered for the Loom folks and their investors.
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
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
Neat.
Does cleanshot auto upload and process the video as well?
Does cleanshot auto upload and process the video as well?
Yeah, Loom nailed this feature. Streaming the upload while recording means the video is ready to share instantly, which is very slick. Great UX.
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.
Maybe it’s easier now to do but it definitely was faster than a native app locally uploading to the cloud as you record.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm not sure what your point is. Lots of apps, native or not, get acquired. What are we talking about here?
We are talking about why you are comparing an acquisition for 975M to a license purchase of $19?
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.