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Translation: 1. The Slack team didn't need to generate revenue at all for a solid year so they could ignore commercial considerations that would harm product d

Translation: 1. The Slack team didn't need to generate revenue at all for a solid year so they could ignore commercial considerations that would harm product development. 2. The Slack founders had the industry clout and interpersonal relationships to not just get beta users for their app, but to get the RIGHT beta users for their app, ones that would give valuable, relevant, on point feedback reflective of the concerns of a large valuable addressable audience.

deleted 12y ago
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dasil003 12y ago
This comment is so reductive, and the GP is so dismissive of Slack's accomplishment that it is actually making me angry. This is like all the kids in 2006 claiming they could build Basecamp in a weekend because it was a "simple" app. What you're saying here is technically true, but these things are only 20% of the story. Most companies given these gifts (and let's face it #1 is pretty easy in today's fundraising environment) would not be able to create a product with the polish of Slack. To paraphrase calinet6, it's not just the feedback, it's knowing what it means and using it to drive a cohesive UX vision. I've worked on some extremely talented teams, and I've created some great products, but let me tell you it's very very difficult to actually take a large amount of feedback and polish something so it works as well as Slack. It's difficult because if you pay attention to the wrong comments, or you come up with the wrong solution you end up off in the weeds with a product that can never regain its cohesion. Even if you have a strong visionary making all the calls, it becomes increasingly difficult for that one person to maintain the whole picture as the userbase and use cases grow. Even if you have all the right people and no poor decision makers, you still find things can get lost in the communication layers and you end up with a suboptimal product. If you actually use Slack in anger with multiple teams and purposes and you pay attention to the UX, it is at a level of polish that is astounding. We've seen apps with this level of UX before, but they tend to me much simpler (eg. Instagram), there are also more complex apps with impressive aspects in their UX, but they reach anything approaching this level of cohesion (eg. Facebook). Slack is not just a story of good strategy and positioning, it's a story of phenomenal execution, and people who miss that are not going to take away the right lessons.

deleted 12y ago

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dasil003 12y ago

This comment is so reductive, and the GP is so dismissive of Slack's accomplishment that it is actually making me angry. This is like all the kids in 2006 claiming they could build Basecamp in a weekend because it was a "simple" app. What you're saying here is technically true, but these things are only 20% of the story. Most companies given these gifts (and let's face it #1 is pretty easy in today's fundraising environment) would not be able to create a product with the polish of Slack. To paraphrase calinet6, it's not just the feedback, it's knowing what it means and using it to drive a cohesive UX vision. I've worked on some extremely talented teams, and I've created some great products, but let me tell you it's very very difficult to actually take a large amount of feedback and polish something so it works as well as Slack. It's difficult because if you pay attention to the wrong comments, or you come up with the wrong solution you end up off in the weeds with a product that can never regain its cohesion. Even if you have a strong visionary making all the calls, it becomes increasingly difficult for that one person to maintain the whole picture as the userbase and use cases grow. Even if you have all the right people and no poor decision makers, you still find things can get lost in the communication layers and you end up with a suboptimal product. If you actually use Slack in anger with multiple teams and purposes and you pay attention to the UX, it is at a level of polish that is astounding. We've seen apps with this level of UX before, but they tend to me much simpler (eg. Instagram), there are also more complex apps with impressive aspects in their UX, but they reach anything approaching this level of cohesion (eg. Facebook). Slack is not just a story of good strategy and positioning, it's a story of phenomenal execution, and people who miss that are not going to take away the right lessons.