Slack IPO, What the Team Collaboration App Could Mean for the Market

An IPO for a tech company usually signals that it is not only a solid company with consistent earnings, but also that it is ready to be taken as seriously as companies such as Google and Facebook. A Slack IPO was a possibility for the software company that has grown steadily since its inception in 2013. It is important to note that Slack has already listed publicly, however, they did not proceed with standard fundraising through an IPO.

What is Slack?

Slack is a business communication platform such as Skype Business, and its replacement Microsoft Teams. Slack began rising in popularity after being used by companies such as Facebook. In 2016 the company use began growing exponentially growing to over 12 Million users as of late 2019. The nice features of slack are that it comes in both Desktop and Mobile options, ease of use, and group texts that are searchable for files, previous messages, and people. The software has seen many tech companies using it due to its ease of use with sharing code snippets as well.

Can a Slack IPO Compete?

Slack is competing in a market that is dominated by one of the largest tech companies in the world: Microsoft. Can Slack come close to competing with Microsoft when it comes down to Skype and Teams? The answer that we’ve been seeing recently is that yes, it can compete, and while a lot of people are switching to Teams or Skype due to the fact, they come standard with all Windows 10 machines. Still, Slack has seen no slowing since the introduction of Teams in 2017 even though Teams boasts many of the same features as Slack.

What’s Different about Slack?

Slack was the first to do what many people who used Skype before always wanted: create a quick, easy way of looking through previous chats and finding documents and messages. There have been many copycats such as Discord, which has grown just as quickly in popularity for social and business communication, but the only difference between Discord and Slack is that Slack is older and by the time Discord was released already had over a million users. Discord, however, after being launched in 2015, saw its userbase grow to over 100 million by the same time Slack had seen 12 million. This rise in popularity of Discord could show that Slack’s days are numbered. Only time will tell if Slack will continue to grow and become a dominant force in the market filled with other business communication applications.

Should you Invest in a Slack IPO?

A Slack IPO is likely never happening, Slack was able to raise more than enough through a public listing without it. However, should you invest in Slack? It is this author’s opinion that when a fairly new tech stock goes up against large companies like Microsoft and still sees smaller companies such as Discord outpacing it, it is not worth investing in.

Sources:

https://finance.yahoo.com

https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

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