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 $841 million, the enterprise messaging operator said in an emailed statement.
The fund provides resources which will help Slack to run as a cash-generating company and the raise will reduce its dependence on outside financing, Slack Chief Executive Stewart Butterfield said.
Also at TechCrunch and Bloomberg.
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:41AM (8 children)
It's mostly a solution in search of a problem. As others have already noted this is just another VC bubble. It's from a company that's done little but marketing and hype. What they have is this:
Chat software is like having a perpetual meeting. It completely zaps concentration and productivity until you turn it off. With it off, since it claims that its strength is synchronous communication, there is no point in having it. Stick with e-mail and a real mail client with proper filtering and sorting to get any work done. No, M$ Outlook does not fall into that category, especially since it is tied to M$ Exchange [blogspot.com].
If there is a percieved need for sychronous chat, then there is always the original: IRC.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday September 19 2017, @12:34PM
How else are decentralized web devs supposed to do pair programming?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by zocalo on Tuesday September 19 2017, @12:59PM (6 children)
Frankly, I think a lot of it is just down to the mindset that newer must be better which tends to be stronger when you are younger and like to be seen as on the cutting edge of things. It's a phase most of us go through from teens-to-whenever, and it tends to pass in favour of whatever lets you get a given task done with the least resistance, regardless of how "hip" it is. Some things gain enough traction to carry on lumbering along (Facebook, maybe), others whither on the vine (MySpace), but if your primary userbase is the current generation of hipsters, then I'd be paying a LOT of attention to whether or not the next "generation" (e.g. those 5 years or so younger) is adopting your product, because if they're not it's almost certainly time to strap on that golden parachute and pull the cord.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:44PM
And scrolling back to what was said earlier while you were gone without everybody having to lease a server to run his own ZNC.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:07PM
ChatZilla?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:11PM (3 children)
What does Slack have that XMPP/Jabber doesn't have, and what can we do to implement it for the open source/fuck VC ecosystem?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:29PM
Hype and buzzwords.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @05:13PM
Slack has nothing really special about it.
What can be done? Make an open / free version that is dead simple to set up on a server so that companies can run their own infrastructure. There is just this magical FAITH people have that these SaaS businesses will not sell their data or spy on them. Shit, want to do corporate espionage? Work for slack!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @08:15PM
None of the FOSS(preferably agpl) xmpp web GUIs that i've seen really got good enough or gained enough traction. I would like to find one though.