Going to irccloud.com, creating an account, and connecting is "implementing it yourself" how again? And IRCCloud has all that in a single solution.
Even if you want to self-host, there are solutions — get any server, run
docker run \
-v /path/to/folder/where/you/want/to/store/the/config:/config \
k8r.eu/justjanne/quassel-docker:v0.13.1
and connect with quassel or quasseldroid to that server (the setup wizard guides you through everything else). It's about as simple as it can get for selfhosted. (Quassel gets you message retention and search immediately, and the other features are already being worked on).
Well, irccloud.com must be doing something wrong if they're using a pre-existing protocol, have solved its problems and yet Slack is the company worth billions.
That’s the part where VC money comes in. 99% of the VC funded companies worth billions weren’t the first, or the best — they just managed to get VC money and out-spent everyone else on advertising, or used the money to give away their product until they were the largest.
Uber is still making losses in almost all markets it’s active in. Slack is making a 380'000 $ loss per day. Amazon hasn’t made a profit a single time in their entire history.
The Silicon Valley model of "let’s gain a monopoly by giving away a product and outspending everyone on advertising, then monetizing it" doesn’t reward the best product. Never has, never will.
And companies grown the traditional, honest way, making actual profits of course can’t compete with that. If I opened up a supermarket giving away everything for free, of course I’d have more customers than the supermarkets who have to make money.
That's what normal people see when they read your message.