Slack Technologies – A Company That Provides The Best Platform For Real-Time Work Collaboration.
Slack Technologies is popular for its widely used platform, Slack which provides a platform for business communication and work organization. The software is available on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. Earlier in 2021, Salesforce announced that it would acquire Slack and the deal was closed for $27 billion approximately. The founders of Slack Technologies are Stewart Butterfield (present CEO), Eric Costello, Cal Henderson, and Serguei Mourachov.
Slack Technologies was founded in 2009 and currently, its headquarters is based in San Francisco, California. There are approximately 1,660 employees in the company and it has several offices across the world including India, Paris, London, Melbourne, Tokyo, etc. Slack is a publicly-traded company and got listed on New York Stock Exchange in 2019.
Origin Of Slack Technologies
Slack Technologies has become very popular especially because it reached a $1 billion valuations within less than a year. When Stewart Butterfield and his team created Slack they didn’t have in mind to create a platform for workspace communication. They initially wanted to create something new for the massively multiplayer online role-playing gaming market. But, instead, they end up building a platform that today is used by some biggest multinational conglomerates across the globe.
Early Days
The story of Slack Technologies started in 2009 when they received angel funding of $1.5 million followed by Series A funding of $5 million. The main investors were Accel and Andreessen Horowitz. Back then, the company was known as Tiny Speck and it rolled out a computer game called Glitch as its first product. This game was launched in September 2011 but it was soon “unlaunched” for improving the gameplay. But, after withdrawing it from the market, Stewart Butterfield and other members of the team decided to close it down. The game was unable to attract a substantial audience that was required for its survival.
In 2013, the company started developing Slack as a commercial product which they developed earlier to ease the workflow among the employees. Initially, they didn’t understand the massive commercial potential of the platform but by the end of 2013, it rolled out and gained huge popularity. It raised $17 million in funding from the two existing investors and Social Capital. In 2014, the company renamed itself Slack Technologies and Slack was an acronym for Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge. So, the tool that was developed for easing the work of team members while developing Glitch, turned into a billion-dollar asset.
Growth And Funding
The company received a huge amount of funding after it was launched in 2013. In 2014, it raised $42.75 million and $120 million in two different funding rounds. By the end of the year, the valuation of Slack Technologies became $1.2 billion. In 2015, Slack acquired a company called Screenhero that specialized in voice, screen, and video recording. Earlier that year, Slack signed an agreement with its investors to raise $160 million in a funding round. So, there were new investors onboard including Index Ventures, DST Global, and a few more. Next year, a few more investors joined in and Slack raised another $200 million.
In 2016, Slack made it into the first position on the Forbes Cloud 100 list. Investors found the growth of Slack very promising and thus the company also attracted the Vision Fund of SoftBank that invested more than $100 million in Slack. By the end of 2017, Slack’s valuation crossed $5 billion. In 2019, Slack became a public company through a direct listing and started in June 2019. With the acquisition of Slack earlier in 2021, Salesforce became its parent company.
Stewart Butterfield – CEO Of Slack Technologies
Stewart Butterfield is a famous Canadian billionaire who apart from co-founding Slack also created Flickr. Stewart belonged to a very poor household as he grew up without electricity for many years. His family moved to Victoria when he was a child and went to the University of Victoria. When Stewart was a teenager he made money by designing websites. He founded a couple of startups before founding the Tiny Speck that later became Slack Technologies.
Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more
