What should Snowflake do about Slack-style stagnation in horizontal apps?

Direct Answer

Snowflake should kill Cortex Apps as-is, consolidate Marketplace into 5-7 vertical industry bundles (Financial Services, Healthcare, Retail, Manufacturing, CPG, Tech, SaaS), and weaponize Snowsight as a standalone UI-intelligence layer that competes with AI-native data apps like Hex and Glean.

Four Moves:

1. Kill Cortex Apps — low-signal, diffuse. Redirect $50M/year into embedding Cortex-as-inference into Snowsight, Marketplace search, and partner APIs.
2. Verticalize Marketplace — stop horizontal; rebrand as Snowflake Vertical Industry Cloud (Finance, Healthcare, Retail, Mfg, etc.); reduce 3,000+ apps to 300-500 curated per vertical.
3. Snowsight → Data Intelligence UI — ship semantic SQL generation, automated dashboard scaffolding, and breach-risk detection; license as standalone to Databricks/Starburst customers (revenue)
4. OEM Cortex into Hex, Glean, Dust — don't build; embed. Licensing deal = defensible surface without owning the app layer.

Where Stagnation Risk Comes From

• Slack at Salesforce trap: broad app surface (3,000+ Marketplace apps) with no killer app; competitors (Hex, Glean, Dust, Anthropic Artifacts) steal use-case gravity
• AI disruption timeline: AI-native data apps (web-native, LLM-first) move faster than Snowflake's release cycle; Marketplace apps built on SQL/Python are commoditized
• Cortex Apps paradox: users want no-code + intelligence; Cortex Apps are low-code + Snowflake-locked; Hex and Glean ship universal (Postgres, BigQuery, Redshift)
• Snowsight debt: horizontal UI surface competing against category-specific tools (Looker for BI, dbt Cloud for transformation, Hex for analytics); no defensible position
• Marketplace economics: Snowflake takes 20-30% rev-share; vendors earn $50K-500K/year max; not worth dev investment; churn = stagnation

What Snowflake Should Actually Do

1. Ship "Snowflake for [Industry] Finance" — pre-wired schemas (GL, AP/AR, FP&A), pre-trained Cortex models (variance analysis, cash-flow forecasting), curated Marketplace apps (6Cloud, Coalesce, dbt Labs)
2. License Cortex API to Hex, Glean, Dust, Anthropic — embedding deal; Cortex becomes the inference backbone for every data app, not a competitor
3. Snowsight Lite standalone offering — browser-only, serverless, connect to Snowflake OR Postgres/BigQuery; monetize as $50-100/user/month SaaS layer (defensible vs. homegrown Grafana)
4. Sunset Cortex Apps by Q4 2026 — freeze feature work; migrate users to Marketplace vertical bundles + Snowsight + partner OEM deals
5. Marketplace tiering: launch Certified (10-15 per vertical, highest revenue share 40%), Approved (100-200, 25% share), and Community (rest, 15% share); ruthless gatekeeping
6. Hire 3-5 vertical GM/PM teams — Finance, Healthcare, Retail, Mfg, CPG; own go-to-market, not horizontal product
7. Announce Snowflake-Hex partnership — Hex as default analytics layer for Snowflake; removes ambiguity, kills internal Cortex Apps
8. Invest in schema inference + auto-modeling — what users actually need; Snowsight auto-generates dashboards from raw tables + Cortex semantic understanding

Bottom Line

Snowflake is walking Slack's path: horizontal platform, 3,000+ apps, no killer app. Kill Cortex Apps, verticalize Marketplace into 5-7 industry clouds, weaponize Snowsight as standalone UI-intelligence layer, and OEM Cortex to Hex/Glean/Dust. Defensible moat = vertical stickiness + inference licensing + UI network effects. Horizontal = slow death.