Slack is the classic Silicon Valley accidental success. Born three years ago, with roots in a failed video game, the messaging software is now used by 5 million people.
The company behind it, Slack Technologies Inc, found success by combining something that Silicon Valley fetishizes — rich data on how people use a product — with something it often overlooks: How do people actually feel while using it?
This combination produced an unlikely hit that, when it became available in 2014, grew mostly by word-of-mouth.
Last year, the privately held company was valued at nearly US$4 billion.
Slack faces a significant new challenge. It has become big enough to draw a competitive response from giants like Microsoft Corp, but not big enough to have the roster of large corporate clients that it needs to compete with the giants.
Last fall, Microsoft announced a direct Slack rival called Teams, to be given free to all 85 million users of its Office 365.
At the same time, Facebook Inc made its work collaboration tool, Workplace, widely available free.
As a result, Slack must fend off some of technology’s largest and fiercest competitors if it wants to be more than a niche tool for small businesses and teams.
Microsoft offers ways for employees to collaborate, and while its offerings have not been viral hits, they have offered boring but important features that big companies demand, like strong data security and regulatory compliance controls.
There is no illusion within Slack that success is certain.
However, chief executive Stewart Butterfield said small tech companies with new ideas had long defeated larger rivals that tried to copy them.
One advantage Slack has is focus, Butterfield said.
Microsoft has Slack-like products, but the executives who run those businesses within Microsoft must “compete for budget and mind share and attention,” he said.
Most Slack users are on a free version. About 1.5 million pay Slack US$6.50 to US$12.50 per month for features like message storage and search.
The 800-person company is on track to generate more than US$200 million in revenue this year, but it is not profitable.
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