Why Slack may live to regret its smarmy letter to Microsoft

Slack has always been easy to like. The fast-growing team communication startup had a classic underdog story, with its founders falling ass-backwards into enterprise software following a failed effort to build a video game. It’s led by Stewart Butterfield, one of the kindest and most self-aware founders in Silicon Valley, who had previously given the world Flickr and then gone through the wringer after its acquisition by Yahoo. And it makes a genuinely useful product — the company may not have killed email yet, but it does seem to be reducing the volume.

Today 4 million people use Slack every day, the company is on pace to generate $100 million in revenue this year, and investors have valued it at $3.8 billion. But as of this week, it...

Continue reading…



Continue reading...