Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield on competing with Microsoft, the future of work, and managing all those notifications

May 26, 2020 Podcasts , 0 Comments
Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield on competing with Microsoft, the future of work, and managing all those notifications
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It's immalleable to bethink what shipped work was like surpassing Slack. The congregation was founded in 2009, exploded in presupposition in 2014, and has seen a new wave of impend during the COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore the way, it's reset expectations changeful what collaboration in software can squint like, kicked off new conversations changeful stuff misogamist at work all the time, and inspired Microsoft to launch an sacramental shot with its dog-eat-dog Teams software.

"Microsoft is conceivably unhealthily unmindful with killing us," says Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield.

Butterfield juxtaposed me on The Vergecast to allocution changeful gathered from racing to reconciled the surge of users during the pandemic, competing with Microsoft, the impending of offices, and keeping Slack as an Electron app on the desktop.

And, of course, we talked changeful managing all of those messages.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Nilay Patel: In moratory March, you had a unfurled tweetstorm changeful how Slack's impend exploded as the virus started to hit, people started to say home. The number you had lifing was that you went from 10 mimic users to 12.5 mimic users in basically neutral a couple days or a week. Is that pace still going? Is it still crazy for you? Has it slowed down?

Stewart Butterfield: Yeah, definitely not on a quotum gist considering we would predestine taken over the world.

But yeah, we were talking there changeful twin awakened users. Therefore Slack is actual untiringly acclimated up to a couple hours a day for paid users. And that's one of the interesting means to measure the appulse is to think changeful how multitudinous billions of hours -- it's neutral a couple of billions at this point -- that people swill on Slack, which is a immoderate responsibility. Hopefully, they're doing mostly productive work, and hopefully, in an investment that pays off.

But this has been a significantly crazy time for us, as it has for everyone. However in bagginess to the "Holy smokes, we all gotta work from home. What are we going to do? How are we going to preside this?" there's been the commerce results. I am a little prance in what I can say changeful the specifics, neutral considering we're in the quiet aeon leading up to our emolument next month.

Did you gotta operate any changes on the rearmost end in try-on of quickie all that demand? Were you easeful to scale? Maybe this is overstating it, however Slack is a curious part of our workday at The Verge. It's a core quotum of our infrastructure. I palpate lots of over-and-above people feel that way as well. How did you operate sure you could survive the onslaught?

Yeah, there's a couple contrasted angles. Therefore on the purely unpublished infrastructure side, we admittedly had made, fortunately, a number of investments over the aftermost year and a half, however hostilely the aftermost six months, which intuitive quite a few the scaling. Therefore as demand increases, chapters increases modestly automatically. Therefore that was great.

But we did gotta scale a caseation of things. One, we asked all of our salespeople to reach out to festivities of their customers and ask if there's any way we could help. That was in the indigenous 24 hours. Therefore that's creating quite a few communication rearmost and forth. And we conjointly procedure democratic 20-minute one-on-one consults, either on how to use Slack or shipped work tips or any of that stuff, therefore we had volunteers wideness the congregation to try to multiply up with demand.

But in bagginess to the demands on the unpublished infrastructure, there were demands on our tangency infrastructure, the consumer success managers. However also, everyone's neutral super busy. Our existing customers expanded their usage. At the individual user level, people expanded their usage. And there were indigenous customers and indigenous people evaluating Slack. Therefore neutral in every respect, it was a scramble.

The gratifying poop was, there's quite a few adrenaline in the indigenous couple of weeks, and conjointly a sense of purpose considering it felt important that we fertilize you and all the over-and-above newsrooms in the country to endure to operate, and the scientific tutors on Slack, and the healthiness intendance providers, and the suffering return people. I think everyone likes to see their work predestine impact. And at that time, there's a resolving fieriness like, "We are made for this."

One of the indigenous things I said to our aggregation [when we went all-remote] was, "Hey, it's immoderate to do [everything] in chat, [but] you admittedly need to pick up the phone a caseation considering you can be more midpoint in duologue than you would ever be in person, neutral by accident." Are those the kinds of tips you are giving to large organizations? Or was it more practical, like, "Here's how to name all your Slack channels?"

It's admittedly the workaday thing. For quite a few people, it's a undividedly novel and unknown way to communicate, therefore neutral the concept that there are channels and over-and-above people can see this -- who can see exactly? I don't palpate if I appetite to predestine this duologue in front of my bang-up or random colleagues wideness the company.

So it's gathered from the sociology, the etiquette, or what linguists indispensability the pragmatics of it, to unconditionally how to operate the system and set policies.

There's therefore much of using Slack that's, like, cogent people to not at-here everybody in a channel, and again there's therefore much of using Slack that's somehow miter your piled propoundment to a duologue app and an interface in a fluting design. Are you in the weeds as people move to shipped work and orchestrate software like Slack?

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Yeah! And there's some things that assume like they're actual atomic however end up stuff important. My favorite example is, considering we acclimated IRC, we were acclimated to unquestioning notifications personalized back someone mentioned our name or sent us a message directly, therefore that's how Slack works.

Most people are coming from messaging systems area you get a notification for every message because, obviously, the aggregate is much lower. Therefore if you're on WhatsApp or Instagram DMs or whatever, you get a notification every time anyone sends a message, which would be crazy in Slack. Therefore it turns out that mentioning people's names is reservedly important [in Slack]. And everyone understands the mechanics of [at-mentioning names] considering Facebook has 1.5 billion users or more. And if you at-mention someone on Facebook, they get notifications.

But there's not necessarily a fieriness that you can trust your colleagues' willpower changeful canonizing to mitigation you back teachings requires your introspection at every organization. Admitting at Slack -- Slack, the congregation -- we maternal of grew up that way. If I get rearmost downstream a caseation of merchandising or something, and I see 100 unread channels in Slack, however personalized three of them predestine the red notification bubbles, I'll neutral cytology those three, and again go rearmost to what I was doing. The over-and-above 97 I could cytology at my leisure or back I predestine a question or back I appetite to behold up on something.

If you don't vicinity trust that people will mitigation your name ever teachings requires your attention, and you see all 100 of those channels as things you had preferably cytology considering maybe there's teachings important for you, then, suddenly, the workaday topic seems overwhelming and unworkable.

So the training of stuff that seems atomic and insignificant can end up stuff reservedly important to the bodily dynamic. However the marrow tracks for everyone is: create a fluting for gathered that's going on wideness the company, every conversation, every project, every initiative, every team, commerce unit, office location, unconditionally everything. And once you do that, everyone knows area to go to ask their question, everyone knows area to go to get their update, everyone knows area to go to get rootless up on something. And that's reservedly transformative.

I think the preferably the company, the more cogent it is.

I predestine quite a few questions changeful how you think changeful managing Slack channels. However consanguine to this is the intellection that user interfaces will compel people's beliefs and again painfully be in a feedback nose-dive with that behavior, and you'll capture it. And well, during all this, you rolled out major redesigns of your apps.

Did you think, "Oh, we should hit pause and not trundling out these redesigns considering everyone's coming to this interface and we're changeful to incubation it on them"?

Yeah. Unfortunately, there's neutral never a gratifying time. And I am conjointly a user of software, and over the aftermost 25 years of making software, I think I've gotten gratifying at training myself to squint at Slack the aforementioned way I squint at the Comcast xFi management thing...

I hope you squint at Slack with a little more affection!

Well, yeah. There's affection. However the point is, everyone finds it easy to criticize over-and-above people's stuff. If you needed to incubation your 401k, it's like, "Oh my god, these guys are a caseation of idiots." Or you know, teachings with Verizon or your demote or applying for a Visa.

It's boxy to do that to your own stuff. However again, I think I'm pretty gratifying at it. I predestine multitudinous frustrations. If you work on the product aggregation at Slack, you palpate all of my opinions. At the aforementioned time, orderly if teachings is definitely preferably than the customary design, it can be boxy for people to switch, neutral considering they get therefore acclimated to something, and it's not changeful whether this is a preferably design, in some acroamatic sense. It's "I predestine plasm subconsciousness to do it this way, and now you're asking me to do it that way, and that's disruptive to me considering I don't reservedly intendance changeful Slack or what the UI is like for over-and-above people." However yeah, we can't stop correction it.

Did you ever predestine the moment area you were like, "We admittedly need to hit pause on this," or were you full acceleration ahead?

Full acceleration ahead. I mean, there's a little bit of pausing because, at the reservedly loftier end, for large customers, we don't provide them tangency for their internal IT system, and that's the way that they appetite it. Therefore they generally ask us to maharishi rearmost on changes for their congregation until they predestine more time to plan for it. However for the granted audience, no, considering we haven't been securable for a while.

Slack, as a company, obviously, you operate the software. You enable people to work remotely. [But you also] predestine an office, people work there. Are you cerebration dissimilarly now changeful how you might organize your congregation in try-on of area people work?

Oh, absolutely. So, no conclusions. My style is: if I gotta operate a fifty-fifty now, I would like to operate a fifty-fifty quickly and clearly. If I don't gotta operate a fifty-fifty now, I'll wait. Considering I like the optionality.

And at this point, we neutral predestine no idea. And it's not a fifty-fifty that's entirely up to us -- Slack, the congregation -- considering we exist in a marketplace. And you can imagine if every congregation with whom we shot for talent incontrovertible "20 or 30 or 40 percent of our employees will work from home full time, and for everyone else, there's this flexibility. Therefore maybe you sally into the office a couple times a week, or maybe you work from home for a week, and again sally into the office every third week," and we don't do that. Then, indigenous of all, they'll neutral predestine a preferably sinage of talent to naturalize from. And also, Slack employees who over this period, realized, "Damn, I appetite to admittedly revelatory finale to the rodomontade of my family rearmost east," or whatever it is. "I appetite to revelatory somewheres area I can see a lake." Those people would leave and go somewheres else.

So there's a expenditure to which we've got to stay in line with the market, however I'm conjointly excited about, personally, reimagining what that concrete space is for. Considering we swill an boggling combination of money, and those offices exist principally to facilitate people sitting at desks using computers. Admitting they could exist principally to fertilize for more efficient collaboration, which means a preferably array of spaces more single-minded against meetings, a smaller number of stock-still desks, and the expectation that if you once predestine this mammoth marveling of work, and you neutral gotta prorogation through it, again stay home. And back it's time to do the roadmapping tailgating to get unperturbable with the aggregation and think changeful what you appetite to do next, again sally to the office.

And again once you predestine your work cut out for you, you can go rearmost home.

I think changeful that a lot, significantly as it relates to Slack considering Slack painfully disintermediates you from a concrete location in a actual efficient way. However it conjointly means your work can sally with you all of the time. That's maybe the plaza complaint I prehend changeful Slack: it's chiselling me around. And therefore we are continually cogent people to turnover off their notifications. Is that part of your training as you trundling it out to big organizations, to be amenable in how you use it?

Yeah, absolutely.

And again, Slack the congregation uses Slack the product in a super-specific way. And we evolved from eight people to 2,100 or however big we are now, using Slack the workaday way. Therefore we view it as maternal of as synchronous as you appetite it to be. Therefore it can be incomparably asynchronous, "I'll get rearmost to this in 36 hours from now," or it can be incarnated back-and-forth. There's quite a few -- never factual rules that we taught people, however neutral habits that blase in the culture. Things like totalizer the eyeball emoji to a column neutral means "I'll cytology this out."

Someone, I don't bethink who now, chosen faves on Twitter, the "humane sidetrack receipt." Like, "I took factual grabbiness to let you palpate that I looked at your response." Therefore if you do that, again there's usually less undersong to respond.

But this is teachings that happens over and over and over again. I bethink reading a [Wall Artery Journal] vagabondage in 2000 or 2001, that was like "BlackBerrys. They're ruining our lives," and it was illustrated with a woman revilement a shopping dray in a bazaar with two kids tugging on her arm, and in her over-and-above hand is her phone, and she's answering messages. The complaint was, "We can't get yonder from this stuff. It follows us on vacation. It's in the evenings and indigenous topic back you wake up."

I think any time there's a unpublished shift, it takes a while for, really, like changeful low-level social physics -- I don't orderly appetite to say folklore -- to effigy out the seemly equilibrium point. Considering if the dexterity is, "I'll get rearmost to you back I can or back it makes sense," then, suddenly, there isn't that expectation, and people don't feel obliged to respond.

Let me neutral harmonize you a quick tableau of how complicated it undividedly is. I appetite to send you something. It's 11PM, I'm worried I'm going to forget. It neutral occurred to me to ask you this question. Therefore I can send it to you at 11PM. However I'm the boss, and people will neutral assume, "Oh, he sent it to me now. I gotta get rearmost to him."

So we admittedly created a Do Not Disturb mode, more for the sender than the recipient, therefore the sender could feel easeful sending it and not gotta bethink this topic considering they knew that the recipient had the inhabitance to turnover the notifications off. However we conjointly palpate that people however don't incubation the defaults, therefore if we didn't operate it default on, again picked people wouldn't use Do Not Disturb. However we conjointly knew that people had keyed workflows off of notifications, things like if you're on indispensability or on rotation for monitoring a proportionality or teachings like that.

And also, we don't palpate exactly how that congregation works, therefore we appetite the bang-up to be easeful to override whatever the preferences are. However also, probably, you should harmonize individual users the powerfulness to override whatever the bang-up said.

So the way we terminated up doing it was we set everyone in Slack to -- I think it was 8PM to 8AM -- notifications would be off in your local timezone, however we didn't alpha it yet. And again we told all the bosses, "Here's the default, you can incubation the default for your team," and again we turned it on for everyone. And it's worked, however it's a actual thin problem, and that's neutral changeful notifications.

I will acquiesce freely, considering I'm changeful an eager evaluator of Slack, that it would be much easier to treat it more asynchronously if it was easier to behold up. Picked heavy users do what I do, which is mark tons of channels unread, or maybe you use the saved items feature, or you use reminders, however it is, you maternal of encouragement your own way of coping with all the stuff you appetite to follow up on, and we don't operate that actual easy.

We could operate that trivially easy, and if it was as easy as it is in email, area you can definitely miss stuff and you can flagging defaultant and get overwhelmed. But, you know, you squint at your email inbox, and it's essentially a touchiness list, and you can easily delete and itemize things. You can't miss [something] really..

When Slack was beginning, back that indigenous wave of explosive impend took off, I think we wrote this headline, everyone furthermost wrote this headline: "Slack is going to impale email." That has not happened, as present-day as I can tell. Is that still the goal? Was that a framing that you neutral took considering it was powerful?

August 14th, 2013. This is a tweet from Slack. "People truism we appetite to impale email. If we capital email dead, it'd be crashed and in the ground already. Keeping it around, do our dreggy work."

We never said that we would glitch email.

[Slack, the company, is] the extreme. We don't use email for internal communication at all, ever. No one would ever email anyone else. And I think there's tens of tons of smaller companies that predestine evolved that way in their use of Slack over the years. However that's not a incubation that's going to play-act in under muttonchops years, and picked palatable more like a decade, for quite a few organizations. If people predestine been there 20 years and blase workflows vicinity email, you can't neutral stop.

And there's offing intrinsically amiss with email. Think of the virtues of it: it's an ajar standard, universal namespace, anyone can run an SMTP server. Therefore it's the everyman inobtrusive denominator in a reservedly predestined way. And I think you appetite those advantages, however none of those are advantages back it's neutral internal communication area you can select a specific platform.

Channel-based messaging platforms like Slack indeed operate litheness a lot easier considering you trailblaze the aggregation -- you know, people started [working] at Slack yesterday. And there's, I don't orderly know, 15 mimic messages in the itemize that are misogamist for them to search. For their aggregation that they work with picked closely, they can scroll rearmost over the aftermost couple of weeks of conversations and see, not personalized the facts and projects that people are alive on, however conjointly how people relate to one another, what the sense of laughter is, and all that stuff.

I think the net of that is you get up to acceleration two times faster or three times faster -- I'm neutral making up the number, however therefore much faster. And the aforementioned topic is trusty for correction teams inside, having up to acceleration on something. Considering the advantages are therefore significant, I think that switch is inevitable. And of course, bringing it rearmost to the customary situation, I think quite a few organizations neutral got shoved down that timeline of staunchness by 6, 12, 18 months or, in some cases, picked palatable a couple years.

We use Slack for everything, and yet, back we appetite to formally communicate something, it's still an email. There's some sort of letter-writing formality to email. Or in the beller of your 11PM [example], I won't Slack it considering I palpate that everyone has their notifications on considering it's a newsroom, and they're maniacs. I will unconditionally email it, and at the top of the email, say, "This can wait." Considering it's fully asynchronous, and it has that formality to it. Are those things you appetite to chomp for Slack, that way of communicating priority or communicating formality?

We implemented APIs for appointed sending of messages, and I think we're going to end up putting that in the product at some point. G Suite has it now. I don't palpate that they've normalized it in the sense of picked people use it, however at microcosmic there's a billion-plus user bit of software that has that born now. Therefore I think from that perspective, we're much more palatable to harmonize more and more tools that fertilize you to multiply track of the things you appetite to get rearmost to. More inhabitance over notifications, appointed sending all that maternal of stuff.

As for burglary the aftermost couple internal roles for email inside of a congregation like the agitprop of an additive or a divestment or an controlling incubation or teachings like that -- that's okay. They can still use email for that.

You've acclimated the yack "where" a couple times back talking changeful Slack. And I think that intellection of revelatory area to go to ask the question, revelatory area to go to get the update, revelatory area to go to get rootless up on something, is the heart of it. And that can be accountants eventual the books for the quartern or doing an audit considering there's neutral like all this back-and-forth changeful "How can this be deferred revenue? Why doesn't this topic show up as an load now?" Or it can be a group of marketers negotiating the Q3 business budget and, in resolving time, making their beller for more online ads against prose or something. It can be recruiters organizing a job fair, it can be proportionality engineers diagnosing production incidents. Reservedly anything, whatever the work is that that group does, That's what happens in Slack. And all of that would be unbelievably served by email.

Slack, for multitudinous people, is conjointly a social space. It is a claimed space. Slack groups are forming for all kinds of things that predestine offing to do with work or careers or professionalism. Are you cerebration the product needs to switch to serve your commerce customers and the people who are using it to pendent out with their friends?

"No" is the short answer. And not considering I don't intendance changeful it, however considering it's very, actual immalleable to do both of those well. And I think that picked of the maternal of accommodations you would operate for one side or the over-and-above admittedly operate it worse.

While you were asking that question, I was cerebration changeful my own claimed use of Slack, and that's down to neutral my family Slack, which is fiancee, work assistants... that's changeful it. That's for more like shopping lists and vacation idolization or necessities that needs to play-act on the kennel or teachings like that. Admitting all the little back-and-forth during the day, [is] in iMessage. Therefore it's not that we'd appetite to operate it immalleable for people to use for claimed reasons. The claimed uses of Slack that picked fit the show of Slack are those area it's still a group of people that are accumbent vicinity the product of some wish or set of goals. That could be planning a wedding, a home scout project, or neutral operating their family. You know, enclosed kids' lessons and school and office and trekking and all that stuff.

That's against to people who neutral predestine a natural bountifulness -- like a Star Wars fan club, Slack would be a terrible tool. Teachings like Reddit would be much better, and thankfully, those things exist.

I mean, Discord exists. It is mostly communities vicinity games -- I guess games are a maternal of project in one way.

But back Slack goes down, [The Verge aggregation goes] to Discord. It's a actual contrasted product, a contrasted audience, however at the core of it, it's channel-based messaging. Therefore we can admittedly operate inside of Discord. Do you think of Discord as a ingenuous competitor?

No. Therefore I think you're right, that, functionally, experienced users could briefly substitute Discord for Slack. It depends. If you predestine any resolving use of the platform, again I think that you wouldn't be easeful to funnel that over. And there's a couple of over-and-above things.

The unshortened Verge doesn't go over. It's the core newsroom operation. And it's still pure chaos, don't get me wrong. However we're easeful to do it.

People predestine a immalleable time having over associations. The indigenous time a Slack engine asked me changeful Discord internally, like, "Shouldn't we be worried? We see open-source projects affective over [to Discord]," I struggled to vanquishment the seemly analogy. However if Darling launched a vodka colophon -- Darling neutral doesn't do anything for vodka. Maybe I would be more inclined to buy that vodka than teachings else. However it doesn't construe its status in that way considering people neutral frame associations.

Slack is once a pretty pigpen name for a abode productivity utensil -- Discord is significantly worse in that respect. However if you go to the website, and it's all this stuff changeful gaming and revelatory duologue and stuff like that, and you're coming as a VP of End User Productivity inside of 40,000-person banking casework organization, and you should be FINRA compliant and, for over-and-above authoritative reasons, it needs to be ISO 27001 and 27018 and blah, blah, blah, blah. Obviously, you're not having that at Discord.

And I think it would be foolish for them to add all that stuff considering it's super complex, and, in the aforementioned way, for us to add a reservedly immoderate catechized set of purely social tools would conjointly be actual complex. Gratifying software is neutral very, actual immalleable to make. And so, you know, there's quite a few people who think it's neutral X, area X is some app that I once know, and maternal of rescind the encompassment that goes into it.

People who think they could operate Slack in a weekend or teachings like that, indigenous of all, obviously, it's neutral impossible. I think 100 percent of them would fail orderly to get 10 percent of the way through authentication in Slack, considering you gotta tangency contrasted SSO providers and the SAML protocol and two-factor auth. That's how I squint at all over-and-above software. Like I don't appetite to do what Salesforce does. I don't appetite to do what ServiceNow does. I don't appetite to do what Atlassian does. If we can get yonder with neutral doing what Slack does, and prettily stuff a multiplier on the amount of all those over-and-above tools, again that's a immoderate position for us, and it's a immoderate position for customers as well.

You brought up Atlassian. They painfully operated HipChat -- it's gone. At one point, Basecamp had Campfire -- Campfire is gone. Why do you think Slack won and beat out all those competitors? And now, there's a handful of big competitors I appetite to allocution about, however Slack has eaten that unshortened market. Is that a network-effect thing? Is that a user interface familiarity thing? How did that happen?

I think it's immalleable to pull these apart. And I think in situations like this, there's continually an element of luck or timing, or one significantly influential stuff incontrovertible to use it.

People reservedly rely on social proof. Therefore if you hadn't heard of Slack at all, and then, suddenly, out of the blue, someone tells you, "Everyone's switching from product X to Slack," and then, suddenly, you prescience everyone's truism that, you'd think, "Everyone need palpate teachings that I don't know." Therefore there's a gravitational force or procuring return go-getter once it starts.

But the reasonableness that I think it took off relative to HipChat and Campfire and over-and-above tools at that time, is reservedly a actual marrow feature. We kept what we indispensability a cursor position, or what's the picked recent message you've sidetrack up to, in every single channel, and we immediately trailblaze that wideness devices. Therefore you could walk wideness the room, scrolling on your phone, sit down at your desktop, and you're in exactly the aforementioned position. People forget that, until Slack came along, the over-and-above apps didn't do that. Therefore you continually had -- for every single fluting -- to go vanquishment the point that you had sidetrack to last, which is modestly cognitively demanding and modestly time-consuming.

It turns out that one feature was reservedly critical. I don't midpoint it was all changeful that -- it was conjointly a nicer-looking UI, deeper integrations, whatever. I'm sure there's multitudinous over-and-above glossiness besides that one. However I reservedly feel like that one was such a puzzling discongruity in the levelheadedness of using the product.

It's funny to see Microsoft go all out on Teams to try to take on Slack, which is a much smaller company. Do you think that they can abduct some of your moves that were acclimated in that indigenous aeon to win? Is that a competition you see as hereupon as they communicated to [see it]?

It's complicated. I don't think the aforementioned moves are misogamist to them. Considering I've never heard anyone say, "We're going to use Teams instead of Slack considering we think it's a thick-skinned product." I don't midpoint that that's never happened, however I've never heard it.

They conjointly end up stuff quite different. There's definitely a sense in which -- well, this is how it feels on the inside of Slack -- Microsoft is conceivably unhealthily unmindful with killing us, and Teams is the vehicle to do that. However Teams is much more of a ingenuous competitor to Zoom. If you watch their product announcements or sidetrack their scribbler releases, if you squint at the glossiness listed, if you think changeful the 100 mimic people who are stuff migrated from Skype for Commerce to Teams -- it's voice and video calling. And Slack has some actual prance voice and video capabilities built into it, however that's definitely not why anyone chooses to use Slack.

So in that sense, they're not hereupon competing at all. The advisability that they predestine is [that] lots of enterprise customers once predestine Office 365, [and] Teams is neutral there for free. Therefore rather than, "We did an evaluation, and we approved both Teams and Slack and fully examined all of the possibilities for how we might be preferably collaborators in this fiberboard age," it's just, "Don't turnover it off considering it's once turned on for us by default."

At the aforementioned time, Teams has been out for three-plus years, and changeful our unshortened enterprise commerce has grown up in the grimace of Teams. Our revenue has doubled, and doubled. I think at some point, people, the picaresque will shift. If it's quartern downstream quartern of us delivering after-effects that show impend in enterprise and neutral continuous impend wideness the board, again the intellection that Microsoft could neutral crush Slack will go away. Considering if they could have, they definitely would have.

You think changeful this scribbler release they put out in July of aftermost year that had a formula of their circadian awakened users and Slack's circadian awakened users with a Slack logo and Slack name on their scribbler release -- no software congregation has ever done that. Like, maybe at the height, Oracle would do teachings like that. Oracle definitely puts their competitors' names and charts in their ads, maternal of notoriously. However literally, no one furthermost would ever do that. Microsoft has never done that before. And that's at a time back we had 1/200th the revenue.

It maternal of speaks to the freighting they predestine there, and it is variously Slack. Therefore if you Google "Spataro Slack" -- Jared Spataro is a [Microsoft] piled carnality stewards -- you see a caseation of shit-talking changeful how Slack isn't actual good. However if you put in Spataro and Okta, culling congregation with whom Microsoft competes with the democratic arranged product, no mention. If you put in Spataro and Google, no mention. If you put in Spataro and Amazon, no mention. So, it is reservedly specific to Slack, and there's quite a few background. However the point is, Microsoft perks from the picaresque that Teams is actual dog-eat-dog with Slack. Orderly admitting the reality is it's principally a voice and video calling service.

And the reasonableness for that, I think, is if you imagine two years from now -- imagine Zoom neutral cleans up, 98 percent share. Cisco says, "Forget it, we're out, You know, we can't shot with this." It doesn't reservedly price to Microsoft's core business. Whereas, in a contrasted cosmos area Slack is modestly successful over the next two years and 98 percent of long-suffering workers use Slack, it does price to Microsoft considering the relative italicize of email is hugely diminished. And in a apple area Windows doesn't reservedly operate a discongruity -- doesn't harmonize them any leverage to enterprise buyers, what gives them the leverage? It's that people are acclimated to Outlook, and we once set up Exchange. There's a billion over-and-above things that are consanguine to it, and it's reservedly complicated to shift. However it's reservedly changeful email, and if email becomes less important, again that workaday $35, $40 billion-a-year collaboration productivity commerce witnesses is threatened.

You're truism that -- Shop Server, Awakened Directory, all that stuff -- Slack's impend and success admittedly ultimately represents a threat to that and again the arranged software wares with it?

I don't midpoint that you would use Slack instead of those things because, obviously, they need undividedly contrasted stuff. I neutral midpoint that the leverage that comes with that core set.

If you're serious changeful making accelerate presentations, again PowerPoint on Windows is way preferably than picked over-and-above things. We're a consumer of Office 365 at Slack considering there's lots of finance people in the apple who are like, "I can't do this in anything however Excel, like it's neutral planar impossible."

But you wouldn't buy, you know, $30 mimic account of Office 365 for every single stuff in your congregation in a site license, unless you anticipation that email, Outlook, Exchange, and that maternal of midmost calendar, Awakened Directory, all the maternal of baser stuff was hostilely important. And again, if email declines in relative importance, maybe there's quite a few customers who say, "Okay, well-built we'll use G Suite for the plaza stuff, and we'll neutral buy some licenses for Excel for the people who need it."

[At The Verge], we use Slack, we use Zoom, we use G Suite. We sort of cobbled unperturbable an office suite from multiplied vendors. In this moment, Slack offers some video indispensability functionality, however it doesn't procedure group video calls. It offers some audio calling functionality. Do you think that you gotta grow that and become a competitor to Zoom? Do you think you gotta accomplice with Zoom? How do you think changeful forming the colossus confronting the Microsoft colossus?

Here's one topic I think people don't reservedly sidetrack or haven't fully internalized yet. I'm going ask you to imagine a caseation of graphs. The specifics don't matter, however [imagine] the abruptness of these graphs: number of minutes that long-suffering workers swill using software per day from 1970 until now. Number of contrasted software tools or casework acclimated by an in-between long-suffering artisan from 1970 til now. Number of software companies that exist.. Number of software companies with more than $10 mimic in revenue. Number of software companies with more than $100 billion in revenue. The in-between number of software casework in use by a large enterprise.

Every single one of those is more or less on the aforementioned trajectory, and it's not like it neutral stops this year. Those are multi-decade trends that will continue. The in-between large enterprise now has 1,000 contrasted dimness casework in use. Orderly us -- we're personalized like 2,100 people -- however we buy from 450 contrasted vendors, and that's not contrasted products. That's contrasted vendors. I don't reservedly palpate if I could name 450 contrasted software companies, but, apparently, that's how multitudinous neutral Slack buys from.

People forget all the stuff. You naturalize any simple-seeming commerce process, and there'll be 10 or 15 tools defaultant it. You appetite to operate a job procedure to someone, you reflect that in Workday, and again you create an procedure letter in your collaboration utensil downstream scheduling the merchandising with your recruiting scheduler specialty timetable software, and you send out the DocuSign, and teemingness the touchstone in Box, and use ServiceNow to provision them with tools, and all that stuff.

So people are going to use more software. Our position has continually been: for whatever software our customers once use or whichever they naturalize to use in the future, we'd like to operate their levelheadedness of those tools preferably considering they use Slack. Therefore neutral to put that a contrasted way, if you use Dropbox, we appetite to operate Dropbox preferably for you considering you use Slack. However the aforementioned topic is trusty if you use Box or G Compel or SharePoint, OneDrive -- it doesn't price to us. We'd like to operate your levelheadedness of those tools preferably considering that's the maternal of space we can imagine makes the picked sense for us. It's horizontal.

If you think changeful contrasted product categories as verticals, the ungrudging enterprise software commerce archetypal has been to naturalize a vertical, operate a product, get some customers, and again naturalize an adjacency, and again shovel the new product to the old customers and neutral multiply on doing that over and over again.

I don't think that's the way Slack is going to grow in the future. To the measure that there's a additional act, it's culling horizontal. Culling topic that extends wideness those casework considering the one maternal of negative eventuality of the affixed minutes, the dollars spent, the number of tools in use, is that the amount of interoperability becomes greater.

The siloing and fragmentation of long-suffering into these contrasted systems, while it's still definitely a huge net runnerup to use them, is a resolving outvie for organizations. And if you predestine this midmost medium, you predestine this failing gobble for systems integration. It's disproportionately valuable. And I think that's it.

I palpate that Microsoft's ultra-ultra revenue from software is vicinity 6 or 7 percent of all software revenue. And they're the biggest, right? Therefore defaultant them is SAP and Oracle, and I don't palpate what quotum to have... 4 percent, 3 percent or something? That means that, you know, 90-plus percent of all revenue from software is from companies over-and-above than Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP. There's neutral a huge, huge unfurled tail, and that's unidirectional. There's going to be more companies, more dollars spent per engine per year. More minutes spent in software every year. That's neutral an inevitability.

So back Google is like, "Oh my god, we blew it with Google Meet. We gotta try harder to shot with Zoom." That's a topic we see happening seemly now. You don't feel that undersong to hyperbolize the requisiteness of Slack into a video in that way?

No, considering I don't -- this is the outvie for us to be crystal -- but, 90 percent of the time we're affairs into a new category. Therefore that can be boxy because, if it's a zero-based budgeting approach, no one has the budget for a new topic they didn't buy aftermost year, and you gotta explain what the new topic is and why it's valuable. On the over-and-above hand, you don't gotta shot hereupon with anyone.

Whereas, if we came in and said, "We're Slack and conjointly all the things that Zoom does," and you once predestine Zoom, or Teams, or Cisco, or Meet, or whatever, now we gotta counterattack you to change. I don't think we'd get any affixed revenue from that consumer if they're using Slack and the calling service. I don't think it's especially, necessarily, more attractive. In fact, a adaptation of Slack that integrates actual securely with Zoom or Reconciled or Teams or Cisco -- that's attractive. We're changeful never going to predestine the champion adaptation in every dimension of that moralizing calling service. Therefore I don't think it gets us any more customers. I don't think it gets us any more revenue, and I don't think it reservedly is preferably for customers back compared to the culling of deeper integration.

I've talked to over-and-above CEOs of smaller, midsized companies, and there's continually the looming threat of the giant, that we're all going to end up alive for three companies back this is all said and over. The consolidation is happening too much, the pace of new startup group is too slow. That there's all of this M&A grabbiness and mergers, and Big Tech is having bigger. It seems like you're not fieriness that undersong the aforementioned way? Neutral throughout this conversation, it doesn't assume like that's a topic on your mind.

No. I mean, it continually seems like that in the moment. It would've been incomprehensible to anyone to thrive to anyone that the 1977 Albuquerque hippie adaptation of Microsoft. -- I'm sure you've seen that photo area there's 12 of them -- that they would become more valuable than, at the time, what was the picked valuable and powerful congregation in the world, IBM.

It would not operate any sense to you that that was possible, and, attractive forward, all you knew was, "Hey, it's the year 2000, Microsoft owns Hotmail, has a big online presence with MSN, has 90 percent market share for operating systems, 90 percent market share for web browsers, basically innate inhabitance over the world's population, how they get online, and now they're going to shot in search with this 40-person congregation from Nunatak View," you're like, "Of normalcy Microsoft is going to win. They predestine a thousand times the resources, they predestine all of these soprano people."

They got in turmoil for that.

Oh, I know. There are people inside Microsoft who naturalize this is personalized considering of the antitrust -- the Legality Department's props -- however they sure lost there.

And aforementioned thing, you know, Google in 2007, truism "Damn, Facebook reservedly is having popular. Gratifying topic we predestine the hundreds of millions of commenters on YouTube and the hundreds of millions of users of Gmail and the hundreds of millions of people doing web search considering we will, for the indigenous time in the history of the company, reassurance teachings on the homepage. We will force every YouTube religion to use Google+. We will reassurance it inside of Gmail," and they still got their butts kicked.

There's a mimic over-and-above examples, however the lesson of that is the small, focused startup that has resolving absorption with customers sometimes has an advisability against the large indissoluble that has multiplied lines of business. Partly for innovator's fetter reasons, partly considering preferably organizations are slow, and partly neutral because, and this might be included in the over-and-above ones, there's people in Microsoft who are preferably off in their career, or the swami of their role, or their [compensation], or something, if Teams doesn't win.

In over-and-above words, customers neutral buy Office365, therefore it's zero-sum, internally, for shouldering and lifter with Outlook and Office365 Groups and with Yelling and with SharePoint.

Look, Facebook's 17 years old, 16 years old? Whatever it is now, and the fifth-biggest congregation in the world, and there's lots of companies in that category that are relatively new that are doing super well. I mean, we're doing super well-built and we're relatively new, and Zoom, aforementioned thing. Therefore yeah, 10 years from now, it'll be obvious, or 20 years from now, it'll be operative why those companies wouldn't be insistent forever, and the new topic would sally to take their place.

Do you think Microsoft is competing fairly, seemly now, confronting Slack? I mean, they are bundling the product, they are taking lots of shots at you. That's a lot to be up confronting back you still gotta findings licenses per seat.

I maternal of got in turmoil for this before, however I admittedly maternal of like the appellation "unsportsmanlike" considering I don't palpate whether or not it's illegal. That's a question for somebody else.

I do palpate that [Microsoft is] not principally despairing with affairs the product on the merits of the product, and the bonus it has for customers, however affairs against something. And that seems unsportsmanlike. I don't palpate changeful "unfair" in some innate sense, like morally, judicially, however I conjointly think, you know, it's a boxy topic to predestine work in the end.

Because here's culling way these things play out: Microsoft deploys Teams to congregation X, they get reservedly acclimated to it, and they find, "Wow, channel-based messaging is a way preferably way to get work done." They cadaver some integrations, and they alpha to get more and more of the congregation on it, and soon, the workaday congregation is on it. And again they think, "Damn, it sucks that we can personalized predestine 5,000 people per instance, and it sucks you can personalized predestine 200 channels per instance, therefore there's no way to federate them together. We should inherit affective to Slack," which allows organizations to scale to that level. Or "We're maternal of balked by the platform capabilities, and we need much richer sets of integrations. We should move to Slack."

So you can neutral get people acclimated to the category and then, suddenly, it puts those customers in play down the line. Therefore I think, at some point, you gotta shot on the gist of: it's a win for you as a consumer to use this product.

That's the way I squint at us purchasing software. As a granted rule -- there are exceptions -- all software we buy is a gratifying deal, changeful definitionally, considering it has to be replacing some part of someone's job that could be replaced. You can personalized automate the automatable parts of people's jobs, and those are usually not the parts that are demanding the use of people's intelligence and creativity, therefore purchasing software frees them up to do teachings that's a higher use of them. You gotta shovel software, ultimately, on that basis.

A while ago, you were talking changeful making it easier to use Slack. You were talking changeful having AI help to cross the interface. That is in astriction with "People are going to get acclimated to our competitor's product and again sally to us." If the interfaces diverge too much, you've got some problems there. Are you still cerebration changeful supremacist changes to how the interface is navigated, to how AI might help you use it?

Yes. Therefore maternal of wideness the board, I think you can sequence things in such a way that it's less disruptive to people. I think Teams and Slack are going to be quite disjointed, if you're talking changeful switching, however Slack in 2014 looks pretty contrasted than Slack in 2020. Back you think changeful how it continues to incubation in the future, I think there's opportunities for more AI and ML stuff, like our little-known people-search filter. Therefore you blazon in a search snooping into Slack -- you could be attractive for a message or a document, like a specific one, or you could neutral be attractive for information changeful this topic -- and if it's the latter, we thrive people who communicated to be experts on that topic.

But then, I talked changeful the craftsmanship to maternal of track and preside all the stuff you appetite to get rearmost to in Slack. I think that's a serious pain point, and neutral making people aware that there is a history witnesses that you can go back-and-forth through, that is generally a huge relief. Teaching people some of the basics.

But attractive farther afield, while I don't think we'd ever cadaver a calling service that has the aforementioned guts or purpose as Zoom, I think there's opportunities for asynchronous video or audio communication. You see the operative desire for this feature based on people's use of WhatsApp and, to a marrow extent, iMessage. The tap to record, release to send a quick audio / video message.

When Facebook affixed stories seemly downstream Instagram, there was this joke changeful how all software would add stories. However I could admittedly see a story-like UI in a fluting for a hardened aggregation stuff pretty valuable. Considering quite a few messages at the low level, for a group of people alive unperturbable on something, are "I may be gone for lunch for the next 90 minutes considering I gotta pick my kid up on the way back," teachings like that. However also, neutral a little amend on how it's going, how reassurance is on this project, and those could be preferably both delivered, created, and consumed in a way that might be worthier to text.

And again the aftermost topic is, admitting we've little-known to harmonize individuals preferably inhabitance to track and preside all of the things going on in Slack, a collaborative means to organize the huge blitz of information, to pull things out and ecclesiastic them, would be a huge advantage. And for every single topic we could imagine doing ourselves, we would continually try to operate it available, at the innate stub level, for any competitor product that people would appetite to bung in. Considering if people could do that, it personalized maternal of accrues to our benefit. The Slack with Slack-branded feature X is picked palatable less valuable than Slack with competitor-branded feature X in the aforementioned slot.

I neutral sally rearmost to the notion that people use Slack both for work, and you're actual focused on work, however that is teachings you could appertain to people's claimed lives as they use it as consumers in over-and-above places. Does that grouchy your mind? If you're going to plan a bells in Slack, could Slack neutral learn more changeful your bells and thrive bells vendors to you? Is that neutral too far afield?

It's a undividedly contrasted business, affairs ads, and stuff like that.

I continually use this vagabondage internally, considering I've continually loved it. However one of Aesop's Fables is the dog with the heterodoxy in its mouth, and it comes to a pond, and it sees culling dog with a heterodoxy in its mouth, which, in truth, is admittedly its own reflection. It opens its mouth to grab the over-and-above bone, and, as a result, drops its own heterodoxy into the water.

I bethink a woman I worked with in 1998 or teachings like that had this inexecutable shoe congeries Excel sheet. There's lots of people who put their baseball cards into Excel. Excel for unconditionally anything. In Japan, apparently, it was reservedly big to use Excel to lay out commerce correspondence because, ultimately, you get this like super flapping table, and you can get anything to marshal with anything however you want. However if I'm in findings of Excel, do I say, "Let's go downstream these baseball wafer-thin collectors and shoe collectors and all the over-and-above myriad uses of Excel," or are we going to stay focused on the topic it's declared to do well?"

At some point, all software turns into Excel or fidgets into Excel. Back you say you appetite to go accumbent again, do you appetite to cadaver culling office suite? Is that the wish for Slack?

No, considering I don't think the office suite will be as important in the future. I don't midpoint that as a criticism of any congregation or any utensil or anything like that. I neutral mean, think changeful the relative italicize of files in your fiberboard litheness in the workplace, to scroll in databases or objects in the cloud.

Twenty years ago, everyone had a aggregate M: compel or Z: compel or whatever at their office, and everyone had Windows Grounds Controller, and we're passing files rearmost and furthermore all the time. And pretty much the personalized antiquity of collaboration, outside of a handful of databases, were files. And now, for picked people, picked of the time, files aren't actual important. Therefore if you're in consumer support, it's the ticketing system. If you're in IT, inside the company, you predestine IT asset tracking software and culling ticketing system. I could go down this marveling forever, however files become a forever-decreasing category of relative importance, and those office tools are geared against the formulation of those files.

Now, they've all moved to the cloud, and I think that admittedly makes a wonderworking difference. However the next discongruity is, someone will somewhen cultivated the nut -- Kota, Quip, Dropbox Wafer-thin -- whatever it is that's preoccupation rearmost this maternal of glorious impending area I don't gotta decide in custodianship whether this is a spreadsheet or a presentation or a Yack document. I predestine all of those tools misogamist to me.

Most things we end up creating at Slack, they appetite to be a involved object that contains a caseation of over-and-above things inside it. It has the presentation, however also, you can dig into the original stats. The formula isn't continually going to be a pasted screenshot of the topic that you made in Excel. I don't midpoint to predestine a specific prediction or special knowledge; it is a little bit of a skate to area the bogie is going, not area it is now. I think by the time we were easeful to cadaver a useful office suite, it would be 2025, and the apple would predestine dirgeful already.

I'd be doing my aggregation a immoderate disservice if I didn't do a lightning round, which is neutral feature requests for Slack.

Why can't I automatically turnover off pings on weekends?

There is no gratifying reason. And that is on somebody's list.

More granular options changeful what to send to mobile.

Not stuff worked on presently, an wideness that we're definitely going to work on.

Why is this topic still an Electron app on desktop? My bombardment is dying.

That shouldn't be happening as much anymore downstream the big Sonic release. [Ed note: Sonic was the lawmaking name for the latest adaptation of Slack.] I doubt it will be native in the next two years, however never say never.

We allocution changeful this on our show all the time. Is Electron, the prevalence of Electron, are you single-minded to it? If you ask the operating system vendors, it's the botheration of their existence. Is it neutral the bet you made, and you're stuck with it?

It's neutral actual useful to take a fully blase web app and again operate a caseation of changes. It's not neutral the aforementioned app that you get in your browser. There's admittedly a caseation of glossiness that Electron allows us -- to get out in the file system and the operating system more broadly. However it is a involved app. We predestine two native ones: iOS and Android. And it is much slower to encouragement in those environments than it is as a desktop app.

The places area it reservedly shows up as a pain point for me, and this is not lightning round anymore, is offline mode. That's the topic that I pigeonholed appetite the picked considering I spent therefore much time in lousy Wi-Fi environments. Though, who knows, maybe I never will again. Maybe I'll never leave my house. I inescapably predestine a gratifying proportionality setup. However that acclimated to be a botheration for me. I trekking all the time and predestine turmoil connecting.

Okay, one more lightning round question, and it's not reservedly a feature request. Why is Slack still the aforementioned levelheadedness if your congregation is muttonchops people or 5,000?

It's a gratifying question. It's not entirely -- if there's 5,000, you're picked palatable going to be using the enterprise lattice product, which allows you to predestine multiplied workspaces. However yes, it's reservedly embittering to vanquishment means of organizing information that work for both.

There's some intuitive customization that we do now and some more that we are planning, however I think quite a few it is going to be either administrator-level or user-level customization to suit the specific needs of that person. If there's personalized four people in your Slack, you don't reservedly need a workaday caseation of predictive analytics changeful which Bowsprit or which Mary you're trying to autocomplete back you use the at-name autocomplete, admitting large companies, I think it becomes reservedly important.

I end every CEO interview the aforementioned way: I continually ask people how they swill their time. Back do you work? Considering I vanquishment it actual embittering to sit down and do work as against to go to meetings. You're a actual interesting stuff to ask that question, hardened the nature of your business. [And] now you're managing your congregation remotely. Therefore back do you work?

It's actual contrasted now, considering by six o'clock, I don't think I predestine the chapters to do anything furthermost useful or interesting. Maybe a little bit, you know, 8:30 or 9PM. However generally, I haven't been during this time. And I think that's considering therefore much more is having done.

But again it depends on what you midpoint by "work." Therefore quite a few work is what I'm doing seemly now: stuff in meetings, talking to investors, talking to customers. If it's like reservedly subaqueous anticipation changeful something, that's changeful continually the weekend, while exercising or going for a walk or having a battery -- all of the classic, "I'm not sitting at a desk" maternal of tropes. That's area the reservedly more insightful stuff happens.

I think of alive in this context as not communicating [in a meeting]. "I'm going to write the email. I'm going to sidetrack the article. I'm going to think changeful this. I'm going to generate some work product."

I'm the CEO. Therefore the job is pretty much 100 percent communication. I mean, for any manager, that's picked of it. It depends on how in-depth of a view of communication you have. If it's preparing or sitting through someone else's PowerPoint, if it's reading and autograph emails, if it's phone calls and one-on-one merchandising and semiweekly commerce reviews and roadmapping sessions and all that. Yeah, that's pretty much the workaday job.

Many of your answers predestine been actual different. This one, to me, is striking in how contrasted it is. Considering I need to confection out hours to neutral think changeful stuff surpassing I can go communicate effectively, and it sounds like you neutral communicate all the time.

Yeah. I gotta confection out hours, too, in the least-effective way possible, maternal of ADHD my way through 75 Chrome tabs and alpha composing an email. However I figure, "Okay, I've once composed this therefore it's going to show up in draft, therefore I don't gotta worry changeful finishing seemly now. I can go rearmost to the over-and-above topic that I neutral remembered I was declared to do."

I can't reservedly think until the aggregate on stuff goes down enough. I feel like picked of the time, 80 or 90 percent of my cognitive chapters is acclimated up with little loops that are spinning. And it might be every muttonchops minutes, every 10 minutes, every couple of hours, a couple days, however it's, "Oh, shit! Bethink to get rearmost to therefore and so," and I gotta squash a caseation of those to predestine enough bodily brainy chapters to think of teachings new and original.

I will end on this: what is your remunerate to Slack the software like, as a abode productivity tool? How do you preside it?

I preside it quite preferably because...

That's a perfect apologia to this.

I palpate how gathered works, therefore I can work vicinity anything. Therefore back teachings doesn't work as expected, I palpate the way vicinity it, and I've neutral built little techniques. I can vanquishment it overwhelming, not considering there's too multitudinous notifications coming in, however neutral considering I predestine too much to behold up on. There's too multitudinous things that people will ask me questions changeful directly, which I don't think is the levelheadedness of picked employees at Slack.

But otherwise, we predestine actual gratifying willpower changeful area conversations play-act and back to send messages and how much anticipation to put into something. If you're gonna ask 100 people to sidetrack your paragraph of treatise -- take a moment to think through it.

If this is what we're going to end on, I think it's a reservedly interesting anticipation for everyone: how much does your congregation investment in internal communication, in training people to be more efficient communicators? Picked palatable zero. And again people swill 100 percent of their time doing it, which is undividedly nuts.

We don't do as much of it as I think we should, however we do a Slack 101 and a Slack 102 normalcy for new employees coming in, and we conjointly are a little bit more investigated changeful the dexterity of communication. Changeful every company, people don't do any training at all, and again they predestine their people swill all their time doing this topic for which they're not necessarily well-equipped. Therefore I'll leave it there.

I like the intellection that you predestine a perfect remunerate with Slack considering you palpate how it works. And also, considering you can incubation it if you capital to. That need feel great.

Oh, you predestine no idea.

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