Slack Is Just The Tip Of The Iceberg For Enterprise Tech

TECHCRUNCH: Slack’s valuation soared to $2.8 billion in less than two years, and has doubled in the past six months alone — all without any big marketing campaigns. The startup’s adoption curve and rave reviews are something many founders and investors dream about, but few actually achieve.

Enterprise startups in general have been on a tear over the past few years as the “consumerization” trend continues to churn and the ascendance of Big Data continues to transform the way business gets done. Slack is by no means the first enterprise collaboration tool to gain serious traction, but the startup has made strategic choices — from product design to enterprise contract structure — that have put it on track to generate massive adoption and add value to companies across verticals.

So while Slack has become the model after which all other enterprise startups pattern themselves, it’s imperative this new class of startups think critically about a few key factors that will shape their product offering, and ultimately position them to be the next unicorns of the enterprise. Read the full article

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Fast Company: Slack just keeps blowing up. The super buzzworthy work—and dating?—chat app just surpassed 1.1 million active users and $25 million in annual revenue. Sure, that’s a fraction of Yammer’s 8 million users, but Slack is only 16 months old and its momentum shows no sign of stopping. To keep that growth going, Slack now wants to become a platform for all your work communication needs.

Slack has hired April Underwood, an alumnus of Google and Twitter, as its new head of Platform. In that role, Underwood will oversee Slack’s API, integrations, and developer relations.

To date, Slack has worked with about 100 partners to build third-party services directly into Slack’s suite of mobile and desktop apps. Teams using Slack have collectively activated 900,000 of those integrations. With Underwood’s arrival, the company aims to dramatically increase those numbers, making Slack more of a one-stop-shop for work and productivity. Read the full article 

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