Why email startups fail

There's a slight difference, real customers care if the software feels slow, not if its using Electron or React. You might argue that they're one in the same, and I wouldn't disagree, but they don't know that (or arguably care about that), and so don't know what to look for and what to avoid. By the time they realise the software they're using is slow, they're often too embedded in it to quit for that reason alone.

The real question is; has your girlfriend stopped using teams since finding out how slow it is?

The argument was the slowness, not the name of the technology. He only mentioned named it because _we_ all know the relationship.

> The real question is; has your girlfriend stopped using teams since finding out how slow it is?

Don't know about his girlfriend, but two companies I was at did (one stopped with MS Teams, one with Slack).

> The real question is; has your girlfriend stopped using teams since finding out how slow it is?

That is the neat part. Teams, Slack and some other applications within that realm aren't actually something that we're choosing to use. It usually is something that is imposed onto us by the organization you're working for. With discord the effect is different, but the consequence is the same. Network effects basically force you to be on Discord.

At least in my department, Microsoft Teams is universally hated by everyone (that's only n=60). But we don't really have a choice in using it and we never had a say in the matter when the software was bought. With teams especially, it's basically an open secret that Teams is frequently only bought because its basically packaged in with an Microsoft 363 subscription.

And because of how software like this is imposed, I don't think the size of the user base serves as a good proxy to judge how well liked a piece of software is, at least in the enterprise space. For B2C apps, the effect may be less strong to non existent, but I would argue that the network effects of some apps can act as a similarly strong force.

> With teams especially, it's basically an open secret that Teams is frequently only bought because its basically packaged in with an Microsoft 363 subscription.

In our case, we see Salesforce as our biggest competitor, so we did not want our corporate history on Slack (I don't think that's particularly a high risk issue, but our leadership does, so... Teams it is.)

> The argument was the slowness, not the name of the technology

I disagree. The crux of his argument was slowness, sure, but that's not why these applications fail because as I said, unless you know what to look for (Electron and React being the two main offenders), by the time you've found out that the application is slow, you're "locked in". Leaving these kinds of software after you've got setup with them is a lot more effort than starting with them. Email arguably more than any other, but messaging apps like Teams and Discord also suffer from this network effect.

That's very true, I suppose my point was less that these kinds of software are well liked, but more so that the effort of leaving them outweighs the gains in the performance alone for a lot of users. But you're right, the argument doesn't really hold up for Teams because you rarely have a choice in the matter. Discord there is some choice, you can organise your friends and groups to leave, but its a monumental effort.