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I'm having a bit of trouble buying the growth story. 750k users on a messaging service is small. And the service has been going for at least 20 months and the c

• jonknee 12y ago
  750k users on a free messaging service is indeed small. Slack is a paid messaging service and that's a whole other valuation. Slack generates more revenue than Whatsapp for example, despite being itty bitty in comparison of user base.
  • pbreit 12y ago
    Pretty sure WhatsApp makes more money than Slack. It made $15m in first 6 months of 2014. In theory it's on track to make 100s of millions of $ per year with the $1/year fee. Slack might make $1-2m/month with the 200k paying customers.
• notahacker 12y ago
  Yeah, the only number that impresses me there is the proportion of paying vs non-paying users which seems on the high side for a freemium product. 200k users could be achieved by signing up 3 or 4 megacorps (obviously at enterprise rates far lower than $10 per user) and having a business on that scale that doesn't make you a unicorn, even if you have a decent product and profitable business model. In fairness to Slack, the revenue run rates not mentioned in the article are more impressive, though I haven't seen how much they're spending to acquire those users. Skype had well over 50x the user base of Slack - achieved over a similar timescale - when they sold for a similar valuation back in 2005. Frankly, I was far more impressed with how circumspect Butterfield was about his startup's prospects than the growth figures.