While the switch might seem random at first, the team had basically already built Slack for their own internal communication use during the three years they were running Tiny Speck. When Tiny Speck shut Glitch down in 2012, the creative team decided to launch Slack instead to help solve workplace communication issues. That funding valued Slack at $5.1 billion.The look and feel of the platform makes sense considering Slack was first a game developer company called Tiny Speck, known for the nonviolent fantasy game Glitch. In 2015, when Slack was worth $2.8 billion, Stewart Butterfield, the company’s chief executive and a co-founder, said it was “the best time to raise money ever.” Last year, Slack raised $250 million in capital from SoftBank Group’s Vision Fund, among other investors. Slack’s growth has made it a darling among investors and potential acquirers. More than 70,000 groups pay, the company said.

Many of its users do not pay for access to the service. In the first seven months of the year, 268 companies raised “mega-rounds” of $100 million or more, a record pace.īased in San Francisco and Vancouver, British Columbia, Slack says it has eight million daily users, double its total from around a year ago. Slack’s appetite for funding and its eye-popping leaps in valuation are becoming normal in the private investment market, where giant funds are eager to write oversize checks to start-ups with momentum and scale. The latest round values the company at $7.1 billion. Slack, the four-year-old workplace messaging company, said on Tuesday that it had raised $427 million in new funding, just a year after its last huge infusion of money.

Slack value