Because my reaction isn't based on Slack - it's based on my experience of nearly everything that goes public shifting to growth at the cost of user contentment.

Because my reaction isn't based on Slack - it's based on my experience of nearly everything that goes public shifting to growth at the cost of user contentment. Everything gets loaded with ads, pages start offering me solutions I don't want - the product that I was happy to pay for becomes one I don't want to pay for. That's likely a degree of hyperbole - I'm sure there are plenty of companies with products I've liked that have gone public and the product has remained great or even improved. But my gut reaction on hearing something go public is not "Yay, now they can improve their features" it's "Oh no, it is going to get screwed up", and that seems NOT to be the reaction I'm supposed to get.