The primary reason for doing a direct listing is because you don't need to raise capital. It's mostly reserved for the case where you want your pre-existing sha

The primary reason for doing a direct listing is because you don't need to raise capital. It's mostly reserved for the case where you want your pre-existing shareholders to access the liquidity of the public markets. In contrast, if you're actually going public to raise more capital, direct listings are a lot riskier. Basically the point of the IPO, and paying investment banks huge fees, is to select and handhold the new investors. The investment bankers perform a lot of work around actually getting supply to meet demand. They're doing roadshows in front of potential investors, getting feedback on the best way to present the company, trying to determine what the market would price the company, etc. They're also making some effort to curate a higher-quality investor base, i.e. those who actually believe in the company's vision and aren't likely to flip the shares for easy money or sell out at the first sign of trouble. The reason for the traditional IPO pop mostly has to do with compensating these types of investors for making a commitment and taking a risk on an unproven stock. Now if it's definitely debatable whether what the company pays in the form of investment banking fees and systematic underpricing is actually worth it. But the point is that for a company like Slack, which isn't raising capital, it's almost certainly not worth it. On the flip side the success of this particular doesn't necessarily tell you anything about how much value a traditional IPO does or doesn't add.