Isn't this a perfect case for why SAAS stocks have been puking all year?
I certainly don't think Zendesk's core business is threatened here, and I have no desire to replace Zendesk with a custom solution. But Zendesk's ability to upcharge, sell adjacent products, and pass on cost increases is hugely threatened. If PE was planning on a decade of consistent cost increases and more land, that dream seems materially threatened!
Sure, in the case of private equity rollups in HVAC and electric and plumbing you often get higher rates but professionalized systems including real contracts, phone answering, emailed invoices, real quotes, real terms, enforceable warranties. Many who have trusted vendors may view this as degradation because of the cost increase but for others (a new homeowner with a job), the professionalization is a positive.
For software like Zendesk that was already thoroughly professionalized, I agree, it's hard to think of positive attributes to a PE buyout!
When the IT department is also the developer of the software, instructors will demand their feature be included in the software: they need a gradebook column that counts as extra credit, missing work, a dropped score, and 40% of the final grade simultaneously, but only for students who email after midnight during finals week.
IT department will then build the feature as instructors are high-status and IT is low-status, and they aim to please. The software will collect hundreds of these over time. The institution will accumulate more developers, QA, a11y testers, PMs, instructional design consultants, and more PMs to deal with the instructors. The institution will then move to SAAS solution where the instructor is forced to join Canvas Jira and submit their feature request. A product manager at Canvas will then post to Jira and say thanks for your feature request, we will consider it. Game over.
Europe will financialize everything just slower and with more regulation. Branded credit cards are coming. See Brussels Airlines and Mastercard
A well optimized domestic USA airline makes money from credit cards, points, trip insurance, upsells, and segments the consumer into a dozen bins based on what they’re willing to spend for a couple more inches of leg room.
What is the simple explanation for the terrible support by Firefox and Safari? I figured this was relatively low-hanging fruit, widely used, a big boost for performance (date pickers often load 100s of locales and translations), and a giant move towards sanity for web app developers.
I would love to hear from a Vanguard employee on their tech challenges, e.g., why is the client web interface significantly worse than competitors? Or is it purposeful? E.g., slow down, trade less?!
If you have knowledge that people want to inject money into your startup (and thus raising the value), then stuffing shares into a Roth IRA before a raise (that you know will happen) would surely be skirting the idea of fair-market value.
I certainly don't think Zendesk's core business is threatened here, and I have no desire to replace Zendesk with a custom solution. But Zendesk's ability to upcharge, sell adjacent products, and pass on cost increases is hugely threatened. If PE was planning on a decade of consistent cost increases and more land, that dream seems materially threatened!