Your comment reminds me of the infamous dropbox comment "I can just build an FTP server in a weekend" (paraphrasing).
Hint: Software is just one piece of a business even a SAAS business. A billion dollar business requires many other things to work.
Hint: Software is just one piece of a business even a SAAS business. A billion dollar business requires many other things to work.
The Dropbox comment was missing the utility of a turnkey solution. It was like "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.": techies missing the value of complicating things in order to produce a product that Just Works.
This comment isn't doing that, it's questioning the resources that it took places like Calendly as it exists. Calendly has a moat in the fact that it has a massive network effect... but it's natural to question what exactly about that moat qualifies a billion dollar valuation, and the answer is extremely little.
If Dropbox had been something you could build as it existed in a weekend it'd be one thing, but you couldn't. You could build something that had the same technical function, but none of the user experience. Calendly isn't that.
I am no shill for Calendly but a happy user and as far as I know, they are doing 100M in ARR. It is a lot more than "I can code this app in a weekend". Whether this justifies a billion dollar valuation is a separate discussion but for sure it is not that easy to do what Calendly is doing.
Easy is not same as simple btw.
And it's the whole business: Not just 100M in ARR, but 100M in ARR with what burn rate and what exit that won't just be dumping a steaming pile on the public market as has flown in years past.
Maybe you're just missing the forest for the trees when these questions come up now too: We're not in 2019 anymore. It used to be that every startup with a faint pulse could justify any valuation by throwing up revenue numbers and see a successful exit at some point. Now money is tightening up and people are starting to question fundamentals again.
The comment you replied to is essentially saying: This is a sign of the times, 3B dollar valuation, ~100M ARR, likely an insane burn rate that that ARR doesn't even begin to touch
I don't know how that's even a controversial take unless your argument is "well we've seen even worse do fine" (because yeah, it did well fine in the past climate of free money)