Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. Image: Slack
Workplace messaging giant Slack announces major growth in daily active users.
Just ahead of the fifth anniversary of its launch, Slack has revealed that it now has more than 10m daily active users (DAUs), an increase from 8m DAUs in May 2018. Notably, more than half of these users are located outside of the the US. In February 2014, the platform had just 16,000 DAUs.
Increase in paying customers
The company says that the number of paying customers worldwide has grown by more than 50pc over the last year and now tops 85,000.
Slack also noted the growing number of apps in its directory and cited integrations it has with companies such as Atlassian, Salesforce and Google. 65 of the current Fortune 500 companies use Slack among their teams.
Company data analysis shows that Japan is Slack’s second largest market, as well as one seeing rapid growth.
Following a non-traditional IPO path
In September 2018, reports emerged that Slack was making plans to go public at some stage this year. At its last valuation, the company stood at more than $7bn, following a Series H funding round led by Dragoneer Investment Group and General Atlantic worth approximately $427m.
According to The Information, the company intends to go public via a direct listing, in which it does not sell new shares to raise money. While some may be concerned about this unorthodox method, the company apparently had approximately $900m on its balance sheet as of October 2018. A person familiar with the matter told Forbes that Slack does not require the capital or publicity that comes along with a traditional IPO.
The last major company to go the direct listing route was music streaming platform Spotify, which went public on the New York Stock Exchange in April of 2018. Forbes also said that Slack plans to go public in the first half of the year.
Image search giant Pinterest is another major firm set to go public this year. Reuters reported earlier in the month that Pinterest had hired JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs to lead proceedings. It is estimated the company could raise around $1.5bn in the IPO. Uber, Airbnb and Lyft are also gearing up to go public in 2019.
