Received some DM questions w respect to $WORK & whether EU lawsuit against $msft changes my thesis.

Here are my quick thoughts.....

1st I've shorted plenty of strong tech companies over the years on competitive threat thesis so I'm no stranger to the bear argument here.

In fact, at listing I was short $work & those who read the $dbx/ $work thesis I shared then know I was uber bearish due 2 $msft & mattermost

My views were actually a very Dropbox 2.0 IPO argument and ironically built off a bull case on $work that had been laid out in bear thesis on $dbx by Social Capital's Alex Danco in 2015. https://alexdanco.com/2015/08/24/dropbox-the-first-dead-decacorn/

What changed my view?
- I'd been short $pd from IPO on a competitive threat thesis and starting Dec my checks there in larg entp started to lead me to believe I was wrong
-Slack came up in those checks on incident response a lot
-I noticed some changes that were tough to ignore

UBER Selecting Slack stood out
-Everyone loves discussing Uber's tech stack as its microservices poster child.
-At Slack IPO, UBER's chat journey was important part of bear thesis
-Uber had used Hipchat back in 2016 over Slack based on argument Slack couldn't scale effectively

-2017 Uber started pivoting to uCHAT; a self-hosted chat built on Mattermost. Uber had done same in on-call with Linkdin IRIS.
-Mattermost also claimed Amzn & several other security focused enterprises as customers.
- 4 me w TEAMS on one end & MMOST other Slack was in 2 front war

-Uber eventually moved to PD oncall and recently moved to Slack for chat
- Their move in post TEAMS world majorly cemented bull view i'd started 2 develop during pd checks
- That view has not changed as far as my own research goes

How does lawsuit impact views?
-Investing is no vacuum so one shud never dismiss anything.
-Concern here wud be that slack approach w TEAMS so far has been to throw pebbles at msft and playfully taunt them & existential threat
-EU complaint wud seem to indicate that just changed

- I think @stewart did a good job yesterday of addressing key points as to why that's not case
-Notably scale limitations of TEAMS & Slack retention w largest ent customers of 100%
- MSFT response also supports argument around video

So what gives?

-This is chess not checker is probably best way to sum this move up.
-As a slack long I'd be a fool not to realize TEAMS has inertia on its side & that is where appeal risk/reward is in this thesis
-View that Slack wins when it competes is key & in focus w lawsuit

Lawsuit accomplishes some key things
- Puts MSFT on defensive w respect to TEAMS bundling
- Reminds customers adopting chat under covid to consider investment choice/cost that actually being made when you go w free option w/o trying mkt leader

But.......

-This is reminder that COVID has in fact ironically helped TEAMS by making slack's onboard work a bit harder
-The 'it's good enough' 'it's just chat' dilemma still not fully dead except to those who have experienced both

So, Slack needs to lead with marketing message....
-Consmr of Entp App means New Mkt Strategy critical
- I don't want to work for an employer that doesn't have $6 a month to spend on me having best collab tool
- Older IT decision makers need to view TEAM's choice as career risk

Conclusion
-The argument that mkt is big enough for multiple players is true but it's not why I own this. I don't pay high multiples for non-best in class leaders in tech.
-Slack is still winning against FREE & that is what shareholders shud focus on