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It's an absolutely crazy valuation for the product / industry. Ultimately they're competing with free & good enough. What's their moat?

cemerick 3y ago
As long as they're approximately the only "enterprise" option, that's a moat all by itself. No comment on the valuation, but it makes for a very resilient business.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- smt88 3y ago
  What makes them an enterprise option? Why does an enterprise need Postman at all? The collaboration features aren't useful on any size team.
  - cemerick 3y ago
    Well, they have the organizational maturity to accommodate enterprise customers, and in contrast to much of this subthread, they don't say things like "just use curl".
    - smt88 3y ago
      In what way do enterprise customers need accommodation? If they all used Insomnia or Firecamp, what would be different?
YetAnotherNick 3y ago
> What's their moat? I find this question really annoying. Almost all tech companies have no moat except for maybe brand and network moat which postman also kinda has. What's Apple's moat? Or Google's?
- vishnugupta 3y ago
  Apple probably has half a dozen layers of moats one of which is their M line of processors.
- asfasfo 3y ago
  Google has a search index. Apple has hardware & manufacturing IP.
  - YetAnotherNick 3y ago
    How is search index a moat? It's hard to build, yes, but there is no moat here and anyone can build it as long as they have infra, talent and money. Also for Apple while I am not sure, but looking at the Android phones there is hardly any feature of Apple which hasn't been covered by some Android phone, so I don't think IP is an issue. It's just that overall quality is much more consistent for Apple across generations that it has built a good brand.
    - finitestateuni 3y ago
      I don’t think you understand how moat is used in this context. A moat isn’t impossible to cross, just harder to cross than a lawn. Also, I don’t think you can saw two features are the same unless the quality is the same. Two sms apps are not equal if one of them occasionally fails to send/receive messages.
      - YetAnotherNick 3y ago
        If you include quality as moat, by that definition postman has the moat of better quality, higher brand reputation and having more money.
        finitestateuni 3y ago
        I agree that postman has a moat. I think it’s important to say that every company has a moat in that they’re organized, located somewhere, and have customers. The size of the moat varies. We can treat a moat as a scalar value of dollars to cross. Every company also has a valuation, either through public markets, private markets, or discounted cash flows. A house cleaning company has a moat of trained cleaners, existing client generation process, goodwill of existing clients, etc. If the value of their discounted cash flows exceed the cost of crossing their moat, they are vulnerable. The argument is that crossing postman’s moat would cost much less than their private valuation, and their future roadmap is unlikely to build a moat that is significantly harder to cross.
drewcoo 3y ago
They're trying to get people to host/share their Postman data inside Postman's walled garden so that they're stickier. And they're competing with free and good enough but they're making a suite out of the tools and slapping a GUI on it. They're owning making it all work similarly and owning the training for their tools and if you pick them for all they do, it will be consistent. How many companies use Atlassian suite even though it really just bundles a bunch of functionality that was already free and good enough? (ROT13 spoiler: nyzbfg nyy bs gurz!)

cemerick 3y ago

As long as they're approximately the only "enterprise" option, that's a moat all by itself. No comment on the valuation, but it makes for a very resilient business.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
smt88 3y ago
What makes them an enterprise option? Why does an enterprise need Postman at all? The collaboration features aren't useful on any size team.
- cemerick 3y ago
  Well, they have the organizational maturity to accommodate enterprise customers, and in contrast to much of this subthread, they don't say things like "just use curl".
  - smt88 3y ago
    In what way do enterprise customers need accommodation? If they all used Insomnia or Firecamp, what would be different?

YetAnotherNick 3y ago

> What's their moat? I find this question really annoying. Almost all tech companies have no moat except for maybe brand and network moat which postman also kinda has. What's Apple's moat? Or Google's?

vishnugupta 3y ago
Apple probably has half a dozen layers of moats one of which is their M line of processors.
asfasfo 3y ago
Google has a search index. Apple has hardware & manufacturing IP.
- YetAnotherNick 3y ago
  How is search index a moat? It's hard to build, yes, but there is no moat here and anyone can build it as long as they have infra, talent and money. Also for Apple while I am not sure, but looking at the Android phones there is hardly any feature of Apple which hasn't been covered by some Android phone, so I don't think IP is an issue. It's just that overall quality is much more consistent for Apple across generations that it has built a good brand.
  - finitestateuni 3y ago
    I don’t think you understand how moat is used in this context. A moat isn’t impossible to cross, just harder to cross than a lawn. Also, I don’t think you can saw two features are the same unless the quality is the same. Two sms apps are not equal if one of them occasionally fails to send/receive messages.
    - YetAnotherNick 3y ago
      If you include quality as moat, by that definition postman has the moat of better quality, higher brand reputation and having more money.
      - finitestateuni 3y ago
        I agree that postman has a moat. I think it’s important to say that every company has a moat in that they’re organized, located somewhere, and have customers. The size of the moat varies. We can treat a moat as a scalar value of dollars to cross. Every company also has a valuation, either through public markets, private markets, or discounted cash flows. A house cleaning company has a moat of trained cleaners, existing client generation process, goodwill of existing clients, etc. If the value of their discounted cash flows exceed the cost of crossing their moat, they are vulnerable. The argument is that crossing postman’s moat would cost much less than their private valuation, and their future roadmap is unlikely to build a moat that is significantly harder to cross.

drewcoo 3y ago

They're trying to get people to host/share their Postman data inside Postman's walled garden so that they're stickier. And they're competing with free and good enough but they're making a suite out of the tools and slapping a GUI on it. They're owning making it all work similarly and owning the training for their tools and if you pick them for all they do, it will be consistent. How many companies use Atlassian suite even though it really just bundles a bunch of functionality that was already free and good enough? (ROT13 spoiler: nyzbfg nyy bs gurz!)