Slack’s Big Month

Slacking their way to big deals

It’s been quite a month for Slack and since we’ve been working on a lot of Microsoft features (Bing and Teams) we would be remiss if we didn’t talk a little bit about this amazing Q1 Slack is having.

In case you missed it, Slack’s stock ($WORK) is up over 30% in the past month. So what happened?

Let’s start at the beginning… Slack went with a non-traditional public offering, a DPO rather than an IPO. After a decent start, their stock price really took a hit after their first quarter earnings revealed lackluster numbers, slowing revenue growth, failure to disclose some key financials, and, if that wasn’t enough, legit competition from Microsoft. (read more here)

Uber Blue

Never fear! Just when we thought Microsoft might own corporate enterprise deals, thereby religating Slack to mid-market and SMB’s, they went ahead and signed two whoppers: Uber and IBM. It’s not just big blue for Slack, it’s Uber Blue!

To be sure, Slack continues to face intense competition from Microsoft. We’ve seen this first hand in the marketing agency arena where large advertising firms like Dentsu and GroupM are pushing MS Teams in and Slack out. Meanwhile, almost all independent agencies are not only on Slack, but many run their entire business through Slack.

This isn’t, and shouldn’t, be surprising as this is the same tactic Microsoft used when it was caught off guard by Netscape in the 90’s. The only difference is that MS Team is a decent product whereas Internet Explorer was garbage. The parallels don’t end there…

Parallels with Facebook

I’ve talked about this in the past, but I continue to sense so many parallels between today’s rise of Slack and that of Facebook a decade earlier. I have been fortunate to work with both companies during their early growth and maturity and it’s eerie how similar they both feel.

Facebook changed how we interact socially.
Slack is changing how we work professionally.

And when a new medium disrupts the status quo as quickly as a Facebook or a Slack there is an inevitable blowback. I remember in the early days of Facebook Marketing I heard the same things over and over: “It’s a fad”, “It’s MySpace 2.0”, “I don’t use it, only the kids do.”

That sounds a lot like what I hear about Slack lately. “Email is never going to die.”, “Only the developers use Slack.”, “I don’t get it.”

Well when hundreds of thousands of employees at IBM get it, I think it is safe to assume that you should get Slack too, or at least what Slack (and MS Teams) represent: A generational shift in how we do business.

And if that wasn’t enough, compare the first 2 quarters of trading between $FB and $WORK ?

Is Slack the next Facebook? Who knows, but one thing I can say for certain is that messaging platforms are every bit as transformational as the browser, the smartphone and the social network.

Exciting times! We have lots of additional company and product updates this month which you can read below.

Until next time!

– Michael

P.S. Did you get the Marketer’s Guide To Last Mile Analytics??

? Download the guide: elety.pe/last-mile-guide
? Read the blog post: What Is Last Mile Analytics?