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Comment by SREinSF | Hacker News Reader

- Raising additional money can extend the runway before having to go public. Back in 2016 CEO Butterfield said minimum year and a half before considering going public https://www.geekwire.com/2016/slack-ceo-going-public-window-...

More recently (Mar '17) he expressed "I've said publicly before that we are trying to run the company so that we're ready to go public, not because we are going to necessarily." https://www.axios.com/slack-ceo-stewart-butterfield-23186588...

So if the VC money is there for the taking, why not?

- Additional capital will add to the war chest to fend of competitors such as Microsoft Teams, HipChat and Google Hangouts Chat. With the deep pockets of Microsoft and Google, more cash can aid in innovation, R&D, marketing, etc.

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> So if the VC money is there for the taking, why not?

- dilution - possible obligation to pay dividends - although probably not here, giving a board seat / some control

I think the basic question here is, how can Slack productively spend $250MM over the next couple of years--do they have a vision that exists in some proportion to that kind of capital? Slack is a nice platform, yet it's hard to imagine _hundreds_ of good developers toiling away on mobile apps, desktop apps, webhook integrations, etc.

> So if the VC money is there for the taking, why not?

Disclaimer: I am not a startup founder. I am not an investor. I have zero knowledge about how these things work besides from what I've read here. That being said, I thought the meta for raising money was (is?) that you don't raise money if you don't need it or don't anticipate you will need it?

I mean if you're Dropbox, you have massive infrastructure spending even in your early years that means as you get people to learn to embrace "the cloud" in early 2009, success is you have tons of users who use your product for free with a small fraction converting to a paid account and a smaller fraction using it at work (fancier paid account) I can understand the need to raise money. However, I thought raising money means the founders lose control of the majority of shares. My understanding is if you don't need the money, don't raise it because it is a liability. I can't imagine slack's infrastructure spending being anything near dropbox's (or maybe I am wrong?)

Now that I think about it again, I am sure I have made a mistake somewhere in my assumptions. I'd love to be corrected. Thanks

Edit: How did Snapchat and Uber founders manage to retain control even after many rounds of funding? Is that applicable here? Can I use the same thing if I ever become a founder?

> that you don't raise money if you don't need it or don't anticipate you will need it?

Slack anticipates they might need the money in the future.

Or, you raise when you don't need it, so that you don't get shitty terms, which you'd the get when/if you actually do need it!

Cash is oxygen. It gives startups time and options. Startups are fragile, so those are great things to have on hand.

The question is whether money can be raised at acceptable terms. Uber had a lot of leverage because everyone wanted to invest in Uber.

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