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

I use both (HipChat with a small group for some side projects, Slack for my local maker space), so I can summarize my experiences with them:

For the general functionality, they're the same thing. It's IRC rooms and direct messages with persistent state across devices and support for pasting images and files.

HipChat does have a native Windows client, but it's months behind the OS X version, doesn't work with touchscreens and has known issues that take months to get fixed. I generally end up using a Chrome wrapper on their web client, which is how Slack does multiplatform anyway. Not a great solution (Chrome has a tendency to pop the software keyboard up all the time, even when you have one plugged in), but it works. If you're an OS X shop, the native clients may be a plus for HipChat.

As far as functionality goes, one feature that (AFAIK) is missing from HipChat is the ability to log in to multiple organizations. If you use it at work and at home, you'll be logging out and in on every device every time you want to change modes. One of my side project HipChatters uses it for his day job and has this issue. Slack's client lets you sign in to multiple teams (haven't tried it, but I see it in the menu).

I've spent much more time in HipChat, so I've experienced a lot more random issues there. Stuff like several hours of chat history being skipped when I scroll up (fixed by relaunch if you notice it happened), constant failures to reconnect after waking from sleep (again, fixed by relaunching), phone notifications popping up for every message even though you're currently in the chatroom on your phone having a conversation with someone, etc. It's possible that Slack has similar bugginess that I would have hit if I used it as much as I use HipChat, but I don't have enough time in it to say.

I've not used Slack. How does it differ from Yammer and Jive? I ask, because those two work collaboration platforms have their own valuations. Yammer was bought for $1 billion by Microsoft. Jive Software's current market cap is $404 million.

I'm curious what the key differences are that drive a $2.8 billion valuation relative to the lower valuations of those two companies.

IMO, the cool thing about slack is integration with other services for "real-time" notifications. At my previous job, we had this tool built internally in irc chat room to notify whenever client connected/disconnected a session, breached some risk limit, etc. It was super helpful to be on top of stuff in real-time. And once you have something like this it's hard to let go of it.

Honestly, I can't... I know what I like about Slack, but I can't really articulate what I didn't like about HipChat. I think it lacked something that made it interesting, but also HipChat was somewhat foisted on me initially.

That's the TL;DR; - here is a story which may give you no more information than that:

I was working out of AlleyNYC when HipChat was getting big and they started using it internally and told all their companies that they needed to get on HipChat so they could get door/package notifications, announcements and talk to the staff... "by the way, it's awesome!".

We installed it, setup our accounts and the whole nine yards, but can't remember any point where I found HipChat showing me any value over Google Hangouts.

When one of my colleagues mentioned Slack (weeks later) it was very casual and when I signed up I found lots of interesting things readily available to me that I hadn't found other places (integrations, style, notifications, slick mobile apps, etc.).

Now, that's my subjective experience... was I in a bad mood that day I was told I needed to use HipChat and din't like being told what to do? What I in a particular good and open mood when Slack happened to be mentioned? If this had happened the other way around would I be a HipChat user?

I have no idea... my hunch is that the Slack style interested me more and that their startup tutorial presented their value more plainly and obviously than HipChat - but it could be as simple as the different context that I was exposed to them in.

How are companies like this valued so much, it's just a fancy chat computer program. I don't understand the economics behind this.