Inside Slack: From 2013 to Now Into a $1.2 billion business
Startup Type:
Headquarter: San Francisco, USA
Current Status: Acquired by Salesforce in 2021 (now a division of Salesforce)
Founders: Stewart Butterfield, Cal Henderson
Founded Year: 2013
Investors: Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, SoftBank Vision Fund
Funding Raised: $1.2 billion
What Is the business model of Slack?
Workplace collaboration software offering team messaging channels, with a freemium model (free basic use, paid subscriptions for advanced features)
How Slack got started?
Pivoted from a failing video game startup, Butterfield’s team built an internal chat tool during game development, then launched it as Slack in 2013 when the game didn’t take off
what growth strategy has Slack followed?
Grew virally through a bottom-up adoption in workplaces—small teams started using the free app and it spread company-wide—along with an ecosystem of third-party integrations to increase its utility
what are the top products/features of Slack
Slack team chat platform, Slack Connect for cross-company chat, Slackbot automations
what was the biggest challenge faced by Slack?
Fierce competition from Microsoft Teams, which bundled a similar chat tool with Office software, challenging Slack’s market share and growth