Slack is a messaging app for teams that offers both free and paid plans. It has over 3 million users and 930,000 paid accounts, with weekly growth rates of 3-5%. Though not currently profitable, Slack has been valued at $3.8 billion and raised $540 million in total funding. Slack's success is attributed to its bots, integrations with other apps, and fun, playful interface that makes it enjoyable for teams to use. Its main competitors are Skype Teams and HipChat, though Slack differs in features and popularity. The document predicts continued strong growth for Slack as it launches new paid plans that are already popular with large organizations.
2. Products
● Slack: A messaging app for teams
○ Slack For Teams
■ Free
■ Standard
■ Plus
○ Slack for Enterprise
■ Coming soon
3. Financial Info
● Slack isn’t profitable
○ ...yet
● Valued at $3.8 Billion (As of April 2016)
○ Raised $200 Million in last funding round
○ Total funding $540 Million
4. Business Model
● Slack offers both free and paid plans
○ Standard $6.67/mo/per active user: Unlimited archiving, app integration, guest member
access, group calls, 10GB storage per member
○ Plus $12.50/mo/per active user: Single Sign On, compliance exports of messages, 24/7
support, 20GB storage per member
○ Enterprise (TBD)- Unlimited Plus teams with shared channels, uniform team directory, org
wide messaging and search, admin tools, dedicated support teams
● Does not charge for inactive team members
5. History of Company
● Founded as Tiny Speck, working on a video game called Glitch
● Launched Slack (formerly the company’s internal communications tool) in
2013, valued at $1B after first year (wow)
● Acquired ScreenHero in 2015
● Now has 3mil users, 930k paid accounts, 3-5% weekly growth rate
6. Secret Sauce
● Slackbot + Bots in general
○ Slackbot has personality
○ Bots can help your team with a lot of things
● Integrations
○ There’s basically one for everything
● It’s fun to use
○ Playful/exciting color scheme
○ Members on the team can customize Slack
○ Fun animations
7. Competition
● Skype Teams
○ It brings in threaded replies
○ Similar UI
○ Unreleased
● HipChat
○ Less robust, less integrations, no API
○ Cheaper paid plans
○ Unlimited integrations with free plan, native Atlassian
integration
○ More difficult to miss messages
■ People who have used both complain that they
often lose slack notifications but they always
get HipChat ones
8. Predictions
● Slack is going to keep doing well
● It has more money than it needs and it’s launching a new paid plan
○ It’s paid plans are already used by huge businesses like NASA JPL, CNN, eBay, etc
○ Even student organizations are using paid plans
○ Companies are hopping on to try to compete
