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posted by martyb on Tuesday September 19 2017, @08:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the picking-up-the-slack dept.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-slack-fundraising/slack-valued-at-5-1-billion-after-new-funding-led-by-softbank-idUSKCN1BT0KO

Software startup Slack Technologies Inc said it raised $250 million from SoftBank Group Corp and other investors in its latest funding round, boosting the company's valuation to $5.1 billion.

The latest fund-raising, led by SoftBank through its giant Vision Fund and joined by Accel and other investors, lifted Slack's total funds raised to $841 million, the enterprise messaging operator said in an emailed statement.

The fund provides resources which will help Slack to run as a cash-generating company and the raise will reduce its dependence on outside financing, Slack Chief Executive Stewart Butterfield said.

Also at TechCrunch and Bloomberg.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Wootery on Tuesday September 19 2017, @08:44AM (7 children)

    by Wootery (2341) on Tuesday September 19 2017, @08:44AM (#570116)

    The ultimate demonstration that a good implementation is more important than a good business idea.

    Or, at least, that you can make good money making a solid implementation of an idea that goes back decades. Even UI wise, it's not far from MSN Messenger, which seemed pretty neat back in 1999.

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  • (Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Tuesday September 19 2017, @10:19AM (5 children)

    by stormwyrm (717) on Tuesday September 19 2017, @10:19AM (#570133) Journal

    Or, at least, that you can make good money making a solid implementation of an idea that goes back decades.

    Very true. Look at where doing that got Apple. The idea of the modern smartphone goes back to the nineties with Palm and Microsoft but it was Apple that made the first real solid implementation that got the concept mostly right. Does Slack's UI design at least have something close to the level of improvement from a late 1990s Windows CE phone vs. the first iPhone? Your comment seems to indicate that the answer is no.

    --
    Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Wootery on Tuesday September 19 2017, @11:52AM (3 children)

      by Wootery (2341) on Tuesday September 19 2017, @11:52AM (#570148)

      It's essentially [wordpress.com] the same [imfiles.com], unless we count it as a major UI development to combine the windows into one.

      Slack has good persistence (it remembers conversations, but with limitations) and good support for 'channels' (group conversations), but at heart it's awfully similar to MSN Messenger.

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by WillR on Tuesday September 19 2017, @01:14PM

        by WillR (2012) on Tuesday September 19 2017, @01:14PM (#570170)
        It's literally IRC (or at least it used to be, I think they wrote their own backend at some point).
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Pino P on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:41PM

        by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:41PM (#570194) Journal

        That looks like Discord, except Discord lets the user switch among multiple communities through icons in the left column [wordpress.com]. And Discord isn't paywalled.

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:43PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:43PM (#570377)

        Good Marketing > Good Implementation > Good Idea

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:42PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:42PM (#570223)

      Bad brain! Bad!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @05:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @05:09PM (#570260)

    More like the ultimate demonstration that good marketing is more important than a good implementation or a good business idea. As another comment said, look where that got Apple,