Originally names ‘Little Speck’, Slack Technologies are a collaborative software company that were founded in 2009. Based in Canada, Slack Technologies entered the list of famed unicorn companies (that’s those firms with a greater value than a billion USD) in 2014. Since then they have grown in worth and are now estimated to have a corporate value of $7.1 billion. With a revenue of greater than 64 million a year; we wanted to know how Slack make their money and how they stay so wealthy!
Slack Technologies Inc.
Remember Flikr? Well Slack Technologies is made up from most of the engineers responsible for making that site famous. Although Canadian born and bred, this company have now moved HQ to San Francisco, California, in keeping with the corporate times. Although they began in the west Slack now have offices in ten different cities and cater to a worldwide audience through the power of the World Wide Web.
Slack Tech was co-founded by Stewart Butterfield, Cal Henderson, Serguei Mourachov and Eric Costello, it was originally intended to produce video games but quickly outgrew its own limitations. Their first video gae was an MMO called ‘Glitch’ which never made it as far as proper publication. Rather, it was the technology the company used internally to collaborate the game which has become famous, and has turned into Slack Technologies number one product.
Slack is a set of cloud based team collaboration tools which allow members of the same group to work on a collaborative project where all involved can make real-time adjustments, have access to all the information and are able to clock in from anywhere in the world. This revolutionary format for collaborative working has led to millions of companies around the world head-hunting team member’s from half the world away – why? Because when a team is online together they might never need t physically meet in person but still have the capacity to get their jobs done…
As well as being highly useful to corporations Slack works with all operating systems and has been running for around five years now. Their cloud based group platform is even available on mobile phone to help you stay up-to-date with your workload even when you’re nowhere near your desk. Big industry loves slack – and pay for it through monthly premiums. The ongoing usefulness of this technology is what has made it so successful: a fact unlikely to change over the coming years.
List of Services
Slack only really have that one product – albeit a truly fantastic one. Slack stands for a Searchable Log of All Conversations and Knowledge, and it contains numerous features:
- Slack teams allow for group work.
- Slack Messaging allows everyone to reach each other in private or as part of the group
- Slack integrates with many different services such as Drop Box and Drive.
- Data is stored on Cloud servers for easy access.
With initial investments from Andreesen Horowitz and secondary funding from the likes of Google Ventures, Index Ventures and the Institutional Venture Partners it is fairly safe to say that Slack Technologies have enough support to carry on their work well into the future. With no sign of the current digital era drawing to a close it is conceivable that more and more users will flock to the Cloud for data solutions. When they do, they will probably do it using a Slack system…
Further Information
If you would like to read more about Slack Industries you can find out all about them by visiting their website, here.