Slack Business Model



  1. Slack Business Model Example
  2. Slack Business Model Template
  3. Business Model Of Slack

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Slack is a freemium product, whose main paid features are the ability to search more than 10,000 archived messages and add unlimited apps and integrations. They claim support for an unlimited number of users. Iss video mein apko bataunga:- Slack kya he- Slack ka Business Model kya he- Slack ke peeche ki Failure story- Slack kaise fastest growing enterprise softwar.

What is the ebusiness model implemented by Slack? Step-by-step solution: Chapter: CHB1 CHB10 CHB11 CHB12 CHB2 CHB3 CHB4 CHB5 CHB6 CHB7 CHB8 CHB9 CH1 CH2 CH3 CH4 CH5 CH6 CH7 CH8 CH9 CH10 CH11 CH12 CH13 CH14 CH15 CH16 CH17 CH18 CH19 Problem: 1CQ 1MBD 1OCSQ 1RQ 2CQ 2MBD 2OCSQ 2RQ 3CQ 3MBD 3RQ 4CQ 4MBD 4RQ 5RQ 6RQ 7RQ 8RQ 9RQ 10RQ. Considering Slack’s current business model, its ambivalence to personal use cases makes some sense. Free users can access an archive of 10,000 messages, with no limit on time or number of users.

Slack is the collaboration hub that brings the right people, information and tools together to get work done. From FTSE 100 companies to corner shops, millions of people around the world use Slack to connect their teams, unify their systems and drive their business forwards.

With over 2,000 apps and a robust API, the Slack platform team works with partners and developers globally to build apps and integrations that streamline their client's works, automate mundane tasks and bring context into their clients' conversations in Slack.

Slack - Company Highlights

Startup NameSlack Technologies
Formerly CalledTiny Speck
HeadquartersSan Francisco, California, United States
IndustrySoftware
Founded2009
FoundersStewart Butterfield, Eric Costello, Cal Henderson, Serguei Mourachov
Area ServedWorldwide
Websitewww.slack.com

Slack - About and How it Works?
Slack - Recent News
Slack - Logo and its Meaning
Slack - Founder and History
Slack - Mission
Slack - Business Model
Slack - Revenue and Growth
Slack - Funding and Investors
Slack - Investments
Slack - Acquisitions
Slack - Competitors
Slack - Future Plans
Slack - FAQs

Slack - About and How it Works?

Slack Technologies is an American international software company that designs and develops a communication platform that provides real-time messaging, file sharing, archiving, and searching services for teams. Slack offers a team communication tool that consists of a set of open, documented application programming interface (APIs), developer tools, and an App Directory that lists apps that have met the guidelines.

Organizations on Slack use its platform to create internal applications and integrations, ranging from simple notifications to complex internal workflows. Third-party developers build integrations and applications that make it easier for their existing customers to engage with their products as well as find new customers.

Slack is a layer of the business technology, where people work together connect all their other software tools and services and find the information they need. Slack users communicate with one another by posting messages to a channel or sending direct messages to a person or a group of people. Slack’s core organizing principle is the channel, which brings the right people together to collaborate, share information, and get work done. Channels offer flexibility and can be organized by project, topic, team, or whatever makes sense for a specific task or situation.

Slack Business Model

Slack enables communication and collaboration among organizations via shared channels and guest accounts. Shared channels securely connect the Slack workspaces of different organizations, enabling the same level of communication and collaboration between enterprises that Slack brings to teams within an organization.

Slack - Recent News

As of December 2020, Slack announced strong third quarter fiscal year 2020 results :

  • Total revenue of $234.5 million up 39% year-over-year
  • Added 12,000 net new Paid Customers, up 140% year-over-year
  • Over 520,000 connected endpoints on Slack Connect, up 240% year-over-year
“We had a phenomenal quarter, headlined by continued acceleration in new paid customer growth, with 12,000 net paid customer additions, up 140% from the same quarter last year,” said Stewart Butterfield, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder at Slack. “The accelerating growth is partly driven by increased awareness and demand due to the work from home environment, but we believe the larger portion comes from continued product momentum which shows up in the new user experience and, especially, from Slack Connect driving viral growth. ”

Slack - Logo and its Meaning

Slack's logo resembles a hashtag, or octothorpe. The hashtag is an organizing element in the platform, signaling the beginning of the channels where teams can talk about individual projects.

Slack - Founder and History

Slack is famous for reaching a valuation of $1B after just eight months without spending a penny on traditional advertising or a Chief Marketing Officer. Slack was a runaway success because it had a multi-year head start on everybody else.

Slack founder Stewart Butterfield and his team set out to create something new and original for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) market. As it turns out, they revolutionized how the companies communicate at work instead.

Being the fastest-growing startup in history isn’t the only thing that makes Slack unique. Its product development process was unorthodox. Slack was actually born out of a gaming company called Tiny Speck. Butterfield and his team didn’t intentionally set out to create a SaaS product for the workplace. They built a tool for themselves. They only realized their tool’s commercial potential later on.

Business

Video game developers might not seem like the most logical group to make a sticky, engaging communications tool for today’s workplace, but Tiny Speck’s expertise in gaming was a major competitive advantage. Butterfield and his team already knew how to make repetitive tasks fun and engaging, as this is core to the gameplay experience of the MMORPG genre. Making work-based communication fun and engaging would be the secret sauce that made Slack so wildly successful.

Slack - Mission

Slack's mission statement says, ' We live by our mission, and improving people's working life starts with our own company. We're building a platform and products we believe in – as well as a strong, diverse team of curious, creative people who want to do the best work of their lives and support each other in the process. '

Slack - Business Model

Slack advertises that it is completely free to use for as long and with as many people as you want. So how does it make money?

Well, a percentage of organizations pay premiums for special features. Such features include access to an unlimited communication history, unlimited app integration, additional file storage, screen sharing, statistics, and more. With no apparent plans to run ads in the near future, Slack relies on a simple business model, charging monthly fees of $6.67 per user for the standard subscription and $12.50 per user for the plus subscription. It has also launched Enterprise Grid for larger organizations that have tens of thousands of users.

Slack - Revenue and Growth

For the full fiscal year 2020, Slack currently expects:
• Total revenue of $621 million to $623 million, representing year-over-year growth of 55% to 56%.
• Non-GAAP operating loss of $144 million to $142 million, including approximately $30 million of one-time direct listing related expenses.
• Non-GAAP net loss per share of $0.32 to $0.31, assuming weighted average shares outstanding of 399 million.
• Calculated Billings of $745 million to $760 million, representing year-over-year growth of 44% to 47%.
• Free Cash Flow net burn of $85 million to $80 million, including approximately $30 million of one-time direct listing-related expenses and $21 million of one-time direct listing related cash taxes related to RSU vesting.

Slack - Funding and Investors

Slack has raised a total of $1.4B in funding over 12 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jan 28, 2019 from a Secondary Market round. Slack is funded by 43 investors. Light Street Capital and General Atlantic are the most recent investors.

DateRoundAmountLead Investors
Jan 28, 2019Secondary Market--
Aug 21, 2018Series H$427MDragoneer Investment Group, General Atlantic
Sep 17, 2017Series G$412.7MSoftBank Vision Fund
May 1, 2017Secondary Market--
Apr 1, 2016Series F$208MThrive Capital
Apr 16, 2015Series E$172.7MSocial Capital
Oct 31, 2014Series D$110.8MGV, Kleiner Perkins
Apr 27, 2014Series C$42.8MSocial Capital
Apr 1, 2011Series B$10.7MAccel, Andreessen Horowitz
Apr 1, 2010Series A$5MAccel

Slack - Investments

Slack has made 29 investments. Their most recent investment was on Jul 21, 2020, when Crosschq raised $6.5M.

DateOrganization NameRoundAmount
Jul 21, 2020CrosschqSeed Round$6.5M
May 7, 2020ComptSeed Round$1.5M
Mar 18, 2020Meru HealthSeries A$8.1M
Sep 24, 2019SentrySeries C$40M
Apr 4, 2019HalpSeed Round$2.6M
Jan 30, 2018AstoundVenture Round$3.3M
May 22, 2017LoomSeed Round$3.2M
May 1, 2017ParabolConvertible Note$550K
Feb 9, 2017DemistoSeries B$20M

Slack - Acquisitions

Slack has acquired 7 organizations. Their most recent acquisition was Rimeto on Jul 8, 2020.

AcquireeDateRoundAbout Acquiree
RimetoJul 8, 2020-Rimeto is an enterprise directory that provides customers with detailed employee profiles and information.
Astro TechnologySep 24, 2018-Astro has been acquired by Slack! We’ve shut down our apps, but you can find us at Slack making email and channels work better together
HipChatJul 27, 2018-HipChat is a private group chat and IM network that provides real-time collaboration features for companies and teams.
StrideJul 27, 2018-Stride is a cloud-based team business communication and collaboration tool.
MissionsJul 17, 2018-Missions is an enterprise software startup
ScreenheroJan 28, 2015-Screenhero lets users screen share any application with anyone, no matter where they are.
SpacesSep 26, 2014-Program that allows remote workers collaborate on the same document simultaneously.

Slack - Competitors

Slack's main competitors include Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Skype, Flock, Telegram, Mattermost, Rocket Chat, Hangout Chat, Matter most, Ryver, CAFlowdok, etc.

Slack - Future Plans

“People deserve to do the best work of their lives,” Slack co-founder and chief executive officer Stewart Butterfield said in a video released alongside a live stream of its investor day event. “This desire of feeling aligned with your team, of removing confusion, of getting clarity; the desire for support in doing the best work of your life, that’s universal, that’s deeply human. It appeals to people with all kinds of roles, in all kinds of industries, at all scales of organization and all cultures.”

Slack currently boasts more than 10 million daily active users across more than 600,000 organizations — 88,000 on the paid plan and 550,000 on the free plan.

There are obviously a lot of privacy and security aspects to these Slack based communications, and Slack will provide granular options for IT admins to manage exactly what’s shared. Slack is also improving its channels’ user interface, so it’s very clear when you’re using a shared channel and who is participating in the channel.

There’s even some machine learning going on that will allow Slack to scan calendars across multiple organizations and help workers create meetings at appropriate times when everyone is free. Slack apps can also be shared across organizations, as long as both parties have them installed in their own Slack instance. Slack has a big incentive to gradually move businesses away from email.

“We believe that whoever is able to unlock that potential for people … is going to be the most important software company in the world. We aim to be that company,” he added.”

Slack - FAQs

What does slack technologies do?

Slack is the collaboration hub that brings the right people, information, and tools together to get work done.

When was Slack founded ?

Slack was founded in 2009.

Slack Business Model Example

Who founded Slack?

Slack was founded by Stewart Butterfield, Eric Costello, Cal Henderson, and Serguei Mourachov.

What was the former name of Slack?

Slack's former name was Tiny Speck.

Slack has more than 600,000 customers worldwide, but it only makes money from a fraction of them.

The San Francisco-based workplace communication startup revealed some of its financial information Friday, ahead of its direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange expected later this summer. While still unprofitable, Slack posted more than $400 million in revenue last year, up 82 percent from $220.5 million the year before. Only 15 percent of its customers paid for the service. Of those paying customers, 575 clients paid more than $100,000 each for their Slack subscriptions. That means less than 0.1 percent of Slack's total customer base accounted for 40 percent of the company's revenue, according to its offering prospectus.

Diagram

While those numbers might look like a company overly dependent on too few customers, some tech analysts see a unicorn on what is likely to be a predictable path to profitability.

Slack Business Model Template

The metrics show that Slack's business is maturing, says Rishi Jaluria, senior research analyst at D.A. Davidson. 'It's not a ridiculous amount of [customer] concentration, by any stretch,' he adds. 'If anything, I think this speaks to the fact that this is really becoming a proper enterprise software company.'

In other words, Slack is improving its ability to attract larger clients with bigger budgets and tens of thousands of users. Oracle, for example, has been a customer since January 2017, according to Slack's S-1 filing. While it started out with 30,000 users, the software titan now has more than 100,000 employees using Slack. (Oracle employs more than 137,000 people worldwide.)

Like other software-as-a-service businesses, Slack emphasizes how much its customers' spending grows annually--a metric the startup calls 'net dollar retention rate.' Last year, Slack says its net dollar retention rate was 143 percent, meaning subscribers ended up spending 43 percent more than they did at the beginning of the year--a 'pretty healthy' figure for a SaaS, according to Jaluria.

Business Model Of Slack

Slack's financials are also notable because of its high gross margins, he adds, a key metric among the crop of unprofitable unicorns hitting the public market. Slack's gross margins are 87 percent, according to its financial disclosures, or more than double that of other tech companies going public this year such as Uber and Lyft, which fall somewhere in the 35 and 40 percent range. 'The path to profitability is a lot easier when you have gross margins that are that high,' notes Jaluria.

Model

For NYU Stern professor Aswath Damodaran, who teaches corporate finance, Slack's small concentration of revenue-generating customers suggests the company could reach economies of scale even faster. 'It doesn't cost you as much to service a big user, on a proportional basis, than it does hundreds of small users,' he says. The key challenge for Slack, however, is to convince these big users to spend even more, he adds. The company is already spending massive amounts of cash--$233 million in 2018, more than half its annual revenue--on sales and marketing to attract new customers.

Slack's strategy follows one of Silicon Valley's more popular mantras: 'grow first, monetize later.' According to its S-1 filing, its 'freemium' service allows for 'rapid and efficient user adoption,' undeterred by friction of payment, which in turn 'helps prospective paid customers realize the value of Slack.' And it's working: Slack has grown its paying subscriber base from 37,000 two years ago to more than 88,000 today.

It is also not the only company using this strategy. For Zoom, another West Coast SaaS unicorn that went public earlier this month, a fraction of its customers account for almost a third of its revenue, according to SEC filings. Unlike Slack, the videoconferencing business is profitable, but it also spends less in research and development and it doesn't break down its total customers. Instead, Zoom says it has 'thousands of customers of all sizes across industry verticals and geographies,' including more than 50,000 paying customers with 10 or more employees. Last year, Zoom collected more than $330.5 million in revenue, with 30 percent coming from 344 accounts.

Slack is forgoing a traditional initial public offering; instead the company will directly list its existing shares on the market where investor demand -- not underwriting banks -- will determine prices. Slack will start trading under the ticker 'SK' later this summer.