Following its acquisition of rival HipChat last month, Slack has this week announced a new funding round. The company drew a massive $427 million from a funding round led by Dragoneer investment Group and General Atlantic. The take away from round is that Slack has now surpassed a market value of $7 billion ($7.1 billion) and is now better placed to compete with Microsoft. When discussing the successful round, Slack took the time to discuss its overall platform growth. Now with 8 million daily active users (DAUs), Slack has increased its DAUs from 6 million last September. There are now 70,000 paid teams using the service, up from 50,000 a year ago. Is Slack worth a $10 billion investment for a larger company?
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft has admitted the platform is a direct competitor. It also seems that there may be room in the market for both companies. Slack will likely continue to play the role of successful start-up while Microsoft’s Office 365/Teams bundle continue to wield the company’s considerable might in the market. There’s no doubt Microsoft has been placing a crosshair on Slack. The very inception of Teams two years ago was a direct response to Slack’s growing popularity. In response, the start-up took out a full page in the New York Times that showed the company was worried about Teams. This year, Microsoft’s push against Slack continued with a free version of Microsoft Teams.
