Slack reports on 12/3.
First a little review of the numbers:
Q1WORK. 49.6%. 87.3%.
custs +28%, custs>100k +49%, $NER 132%; ;RPO+92% ;Guidance FY21 $863m
CalcBill$206m+38%y/y
Q2. 49%. 88%
Custs.+30%, cust>100k. +37% y/y, $NER 125%; RPO +80%; Guidance FY21 $873m 38.5%
Cust >1M 87 up 78% y/y;Calc Bill$215m +25%y/y (11m or10% in COVID concessions
Best Article I’ve seen seen on Slack, and current, is behind paywalls at Seeking Alpha: Slack: The Bulls Are Typing… (NYSE:WORK)
TLDWR
For now, Slack needs to take Discord seriously and steal its tricks in order to truly become the meta-layer that enhances people’s ability to do their best work instead of the distraction that it can often become. It should do three things to improve its customers’ ability to do work and dig a deeper moat to prepare for the inevitability that Discord, or a similar work-focused product, comes after it.
First, it should consider opening up its API to power the next wave of collaborative productivity tools. Call it Slack-as-a-Service (“SlaaS”). Imagine Airtable or Webflow with Slack voice calls and chat built in, for example. Teams could chat directly within the software while working in it, and even employees who aren’t in the software could participate in the conversation from inside of the Slack app, just like Discord users can be a part of the conversation with their friends whether or not they’re playing the game.
Extending its position as the hub for thousands of integrations, it might even serve as the pipe that allows products that integrate with Slack to integrate with the products that embed Slack-as-a-Service. So, if Loom integrates with Slack, and Airtable uses Slack-as-a-Service, Loom could integrate with Airtable via Slack.
Second, like Tencent (TCEHY), it should double down on leveraging its position in the value chain to identify the workplace collaboration and productivity tools that its customers love the most, and provide capital via an expanded Slack Fund and traffic via its app directory and integrations.
Finally, it should double and triple down on Slack Connect to acquire more customers more quickly and efficiently, and create network effects that new entrants can’t compete with. If Slack can serve as both the connective tissue among companies, and between companies and the products that they use, all within their existing workflows, it will be in a position to compound its advantage for years to come.
(Update: Butterfield went on 20 Minute VC with Harry Stebbings this morning (!!) and said that Slack is working on Huddles, always-on audio channels (like Discord!), Stories (like Instagram) and allowing companies to host code within Slack. He said, “Slack five years from now will function much more like the lightweight fabric for systems integration that we’ve always believed it can be on the platform side, and will come to encompass most of the people you communicate most frequently with even if they’re outside of your organization, because that’s something that’s exploding right now.” Slack is executing on points one and three - smart!)
Picking Up the Slack.
I’ve been wrong on Slack so far. I have no idea if I’m right now, and if I am right, I don’t know if that will express itself in the stock price in the next week, the next month, or even the next year. Compounding is slow before it gets fast.
Jason