This article aims to highlight the early traction of slack. Slack joined the unicorn club just two years after their initial product launch. With roots as an internal corporate communication tool slack has blossomed into a cloud-based tool for teams globally. Following Slack’s success, naturally everyone is trying to connect the dots, and find slack’s rainbow road to success.
Andrew Wilkinson of Metalab, slacks design agency wrote Slack’s $2.8 Billion Dollar Secret Sauce . The designer explains the marketplace for chat tools were crowded, attributes slack’s success to its vibrant design.
3 key takeaways from his post:
In summary, The chat took on a charismatic personality, and we all know how captivating a charismatic personality can be.
Steward Butterfield posted his own experience. From 0 to $1B — Slack’s Founder Shares Their Epic Launch Strategy.
3 key takeaways from his post:
Taking a holistic look at the slack growth case, shows that apart from some nice colors and customer feedback, there are a few more variables for success which you too may be able to learn from.
For slack, finding their focus was an issue at first. The market was overcrowded - offices globally all had different communication tools set up with varying teams and team members. Whilst competitors were everywhere, solutions were missing. To define their value add slack went straight to the market. “we started inviting teams in batches and watched what happened. then we made some changes, watched what happened, made some more changes…”
Precisely the saturated market made it clear for slack that their focus on simplicity would define them. Slack worked on implementing feedback fast, and by the time they launched they had created a perfect product market fit.
Slack wanted to win. To do so they focused on key software features by talking to customer to find out what they needed most. Winning big instead of a distributed focus across the board was a fundamental pillar for success. When they heard feedback on file sharing, they focused on designing the smoothest core interactions specifically for this. They used this customer challenging as an opportunity to come out on top. “Every customer interaction is a marketing opportunity. if you go above and beyond on the customer service side, people are much more likely to recommend you.”
How do you convince a group of professionals, in work environment, that they will benefit from a a chat tool designed colorfully to look like a video game… How could this possibly contribute to productivity? And if it’s about fun at the workplace, why is this chat tool better than all the other chats and social media tools already out there?
Somehow Slack got 8000 people to request access to the platform on the first day of launch. Clearly, they had a brilliant marketing strategy. ‘We created materials to explain Slack to individuals – what it was for, how it worked, what you’re supposed to do – but we also built resources for team administrators.’ They focused on marketing to individual teams, and not just firms as a whole.
How did they communicate their unique selling position? A few marketing strategy tricks right out of slacks handbook: