Slack Raises $160M Series E at $2.8B Valuation

Post by ktsmith » Thu, Apr 16, 2015, 9:28 PM UTC

mattzito wrote: post #46

SandB0x wrote: post #24

Do platforms like Slack really offer a great benefit to a business? Maybe I'm being cynical, but it seems that if you had a dysfunctional organisation then this is not a silver bullet, and if you had a well functioning organisation you would manage just fine with old fashioned tools like email and Dropbox. > Support for private groups and 1:1 direct messaging gives you complete flexibility. Private things stay privat…

We're big users of Slack at my current employer, and we love it. But, no, it is not a silver bullet. The couple of things that I really like about it: - it's good for collaborative working or editing - got a fire going? about to push code live? Get all the relevant parties in a chat room and talk through it, and then destroy it afterwards - the integrations - for automated systems, slack messages are far less disrupt…

Post by feverishaaron » Thu, Apr 16, 2015, 10:51 PM UTC

napoleond wrote: post #70

feverishaaron wrote: post #54

For those that are confused about the value of Slack – It's not just about text chat. It's about comprehensive search and combatting organizational forgetfulness and knowledge drain. If we put it on Slack, it's archived "forever" and a team member a few years from now can start with a Slack search before re-inventing the wheel. This is especially evident with the integrations. If just the relevant slice of data is fe…

> It's about comprehensive search and combatting organizational forgetfulness and knowledge drain. They are far from achieving that vision. I agree that company-searchable chat (and email) is valuable, but I doubt it will ever replace proper internal documentation--any other approach is far too noisy, and without a lot of context it's impossible to know if correspondence about an issue from two years ago is still rel…

Post by pbreit » Thu, Apr 16, 2015, 11:21 PM UTC

fweespeech wrote: post #94

facetube wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly one: getting all of your organization's non-technical users to use it.

Anyone I work with that can't use IRC I wouldn't want in our chat. I'd prefer they use email or do face to face meetings simply because of the sheer volume of information I'd need to convey to communicate effectively.

Post by pbreit » Thu, Apr 16, 2015, 11:26 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #60

RaphiePS wrote: post #56

My favorite thing about Slack is how they've thought of all the little things. My go-to example is that when they send you a notification email, it includes links to silence further emails with a single click. Obviously, this isn't a big "feature." It's not going to show up on their marketing materials. Nobody will ever say "hey, you should try out Slack because they let you silence emails." But it's this sort of UX…

Isn't this a legal requirement? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003#Unsubscrib... Technically the law is only that you have to honor them within 10 days, but I've seen a bunch of sites with one-click unsubscribe nowadays.

Post by pbreit » Thu, Apr 16, 2015, 11:32 PM UTC

jewel wrote: post #67

Can someone with more experience comment on the terms of the investment itself? Why would people invest in this company if they haven't even begun to spend the $120M of their series D money yet? For those of us outside of Silicon Valley who don't have the same funding climate, what's it like?