Slack's Explosive IPO & the Value of UX

People discovered that Slack could genuinely improve productivity, transforming the internal communication landscape from a tangled mess of silos into a unified and easy-to-manage environment.

Rather than just providing companies with yet another set of tools to learn and implement, Slack built off the communication experiences that we already had in the consumer world. That meant it could bring us something fun and easy. As our publisher, Rob Scott said:

"If something is enjoyable, we learn it fast, adopt it, and it makes us smile. If technology is going to continue helping us be more productive, making us better team players and happier serving our customers, then  it needs to start with the fun factor before anything else"

Slack has certainly remembered to focus on the "fun factor." As Stewart Butterfield said himself, while it might have been challenging to bring something as new and unique as Slack into the market, once people started using it, "They rarely stopped."

A Track Record of Incredible Growth

While some technology companies have floundered with their IPO entries, it seems unlikely that Slack will experience the same results. As the fastest growing business app in the world, Slack is hugely compelling. Its parabolic growth levels have always presented the business as something worth getting behind.

Slack didn't just bring new tech to the market; it focused on creating a way for people's working lives to be simpler and more productive. That commitment to user experience is what makes the app so successful today.

The CEO of Dialpad, Craig Walker, said: “Zoom’s IPO and Slack’s direct listing are realisations that workplaces are evolving, and workers are changing — from what they value to even where they do their jobs."

"Work is becoming more remote, more dynamic, and the age of a fixed workplace is officially gone. So, the tools we use to do our jobs are getting smarter, too"

"In Slack’s case, it boils down to user experience: even in the age of consumerised IT, enterprise tools are so often complicated and hidden in a black box. Slack is nothing like this; it’s easy to use and, importantly, actually fun. They’ve worked pieces of how we communicate outside of work, like GIFs and humour, into the way we now operate as teams. And if Zoom’s IPO in April is any indication, team collaboration companies will be market movers in 2019. Slack’s direct listing is an important one to watch.”