Did you know that one of the biggest SaaS startup growth stories in history started almost unintentionally?
It's hard to believe, but when the idea to create Slack, which was acquired by Salesforce for $27.7 billion in 2021, was first suggested, there was no commercial prospect for this product.
But it was no coincidence that Slack became one of the fastest-growing startups in history.
It was the result of strategic moves that revolutionised serious and deep-rooted business communication culture with modern dynamics and a user-oriented perspective.
Let's discover the miracle created by a genius but confused team led by Stewart Butterfield.
Stewart Butterfield, the founder of Tiny Speck, which is the company that created Slack, first announced his name with the photo-sharing platform called Flickr.
Flickr was a photo-sharing feature in a computer game developed by Butterfield.
But after the game's relative failure, he adapted Flickr to real life. Flickr turned into a very successful project, and in the following period, it was sold to Yahoo for a significant amount of money.
Butterfield left Flickr and started working on a massive, multiplayer online game called Glitch with the Tiny Speck team.
The team used traditional chat applications to communicate with each other during the game's development phase.
However, these applications were far from meeting their needs and expectations. For this reason, they needed a tool that would increase their coordination within the team. So they started creating a primitive version of Slack.
While creating and developing this tool, they always prioritised the team's needs and added core features according to requests of the team members.
Although Glitch received good investments, it failed to create a sufficient player base and the project was terminated. However, this situation, which could have meant disaster for many companies, was the turning point in Tiny Stack's story.
The team announced they were working on a unique messaging app project after closing the game. In fact, they had been using this messaging tool, which they described as new, among themselves for a long time. However, it took time for them to add any commercial value to it.
After a small chain of brainstorming, Butterfield and the team came up with ideas for their path. They decided to test the usability of their existing tool in medium and large teams and improve the tool in line with the feedback.
They convinced several teams to use Slack through people close to them. The first signals from teams were that Slack was not yet good enough for large teams. However, with their persistent improvements based on feedback, they managed to get their product ready for launch.
Before launch, Slack introduced an invite-only preview release in August 2013. You had to request an invitation to use the product during this time, and the demand was unbelievable. This allowed the team to realise the potential of the product.
The product, which was finally released as a full version in 2014, quickly gained significant investments, with its user base reaching 500,000 daily active users in a short time.
source: slack
Slack had a quick introduction to the market, but the product category was somewhat unclear. The team wanted to position the product as enterprise software. But making messaging apps attractive for a company was much more complex than making them for individual users.
Other business communication tools were often developed by powerful companies with many products. The Slack team had to be smart to survive the competition. This is why they identified their primary target audience as teams within companies.
Slack's freemium model allowed small teams to use the tool without lengthy decision-making processes. And so the leaders of small teams started to persuade their teams to use the tool as they saw the usefulness of the application and its contribution to a modern business communication environment.
Moreover, switching to Slack's paid packages was not making a radical difference, and the package fees were very cheap compared to equivalent products. So the teams had nothing to hesitate about.
The Slack team, on the other hand, was constantly receiving feedback from users and making rapid improvements.
They had to create a product that better responded to modern needs than traditional products.
First, they set a brand tone for Slack. They've shaped all their user experience enhancements around this uniquely fun tone. The Slack app was offering a much warmer visual structure, while its competitor products were conveying the message that business communication is a serious issue and should have a cold tone.
The next step was to provide users with the easiest-to-use experience possible. For this, they created an effective onboarding structure. They started to work on integrating the product with collaboration tools and other platforms frequently used in business processes.
In a short time, Slack started to offer integration support to dozens of essential platforms. This made Slack an ecosystem that was the core of a routine business day.
In 2015, Slack was valued at $2.8 billion thanks to its successful growth strategies, and over the years, this value has continued to increase.
Over the years, the Slack team has stuck to their motto: “Create the messaging app you want to use”
While continuing the development process that puts the user at the centre, they developed marketing strategies that would perfectly reflect Slack’s unique tone.
Over the years, they have continued to use the most innovative technologies in order not to become obsolete. Today, many artificial intelligence-supported bots that fully strengthen the Slack experience are waiting for users in the application. And the Slack team is expected to leverage AI and machine learning technologies at a much deeper level as time goes on.
In 2021, Slack was acquired by Salesforce, an important player in the CRM field.
The Slack team, which not too long ago was trying to persuade small teams to gather feedback, now carries out commercial collaborations with very big actors from all sectors.
But it doesn't look like Slack's unique growth journey will end here. Because judging by the data, Slack hasn't reached its peak yet.
Despite its rapid growth in a short time, Slack's success was driven by a solid growth mindset, not short-term growth hacking practices. Each of Slack's unique growth strategies consists of an effective combination of long and short-term plans.
Slack has never reported a profit but has consistently received significant investments. This is because Slack was consistently advancing toward long-term goals.
Slack's pricing policy was fair enough to create a strong bond between themselves and the customer.
The unique tone they created matched perfectly with the future of work culture.
They have developed integration possibilities exactly as users need them.
All of these technical details strengthened their growth strategy. But the real magic of Slack lies in making its users feel more valued than ever.
For example, Slack instantly compensates users with credits or other incentives when they experience application-related problems. Another example is the huge customer support team they have created to listen to user feedback.
The success of Slack proves that when you don't see failed attempts as a loss and find the right growth strategy, even the most significant failures can create miraculous journeys.
Can there be a more inspiring story than this for entrepreneurs who cannot establish their dream start-up due to fear of failure?
