Archive & Data Protection

Must-Know Slack Facts for 2023

How the collaboration tool has transformed workplace communication and productivity

by Emily Schwenke

Nov 20, 2024

Key Points

This blog was originally posted on the Aware website, but with the acquisition of Aware by Mimecast, we are ensuring it is also available to visitors to the Mimecast website.

Everything you need to know about Slack in 2023 and beyond

Slack is an essential part of modern work life for many companies around the globe. The enterprise collaboration tool helps break down silos between teams and departments, unite colleagues across time zones, and cut through red tape to help people work faster and more effectively. But how big is Slack? What is Slack worth? And how many users does Slack really have? Find out now!

Slack statistics at a glance

Slack release date: August 14, 2013
Slack total users: 12 million (2019)
Percent of the Fortune 100 using Slack: 77%
Slack company value: $27.7 billion (2021)
Slack total revenue: $902.6 million (2021)
Slack HQ location: San Francisco, California

Source: Slack, Business of Apps, New York Times

Where did Slack come from?

Despite being a $27 billion company today, Slack almost never existed. The messaging software was designed as in internal tool for the gaming company Tiny Speck during the development of Glitch, an MMORPG game. Glitch was short-lived — it launched September 27, 2011, and closed on December 9, 2012 — but the messaging software, then named Linefeed, lived on. Realizing its potential as an independent collaboration tool, Tiny Speck rebranded Linefeed as Slack and launched the software in August 2013.

The name Slack is an acronym. It stands for "Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge."

Source: Wikipedia

Slack development timeline

2009: Tiny Speck founded in Vancouver, British Columbia, by Stewart Butterfield and Cal Henderson
2011: Tiny Speck releases the online game Glitch, developed with the help of collaboration tool Linefeed
2012: Glitch closes down
2013: Linefeed is renamed Slack and launched to the public
2014: Tiny Speck rebrands as Slack Technologies LLC

Source: Wikipedia

Slack funding timeline

Since launching as Tiny Speck in 2009, Slack has received $1.4 billion in venture capital and other investments. Slack went public in 2019. In 2021, Slack was acquired by Salesforce for $27 billion.

YEAR	FUNDING	SERIES	LED BY	PRE-MONEY VALUATION
2009	$1.5 million	Angel
2010	$5 million	Series A	Accel and Andreessen Horowitz
2011	$10.7 million	Series B	Accel and Andreessen Horowitz
2014 (April)	$42.8 million	Series C	Social Capital
2014 (October)	$110.8 million	Series D	Kleiner Perkins and GV	$912 million
2015	$172.7 million	Series E	Social Capital	$2.6 billion
2016	$208 million	Series F	Thrive Capital	$3.6 billion
2017	$412.7 million	Series G	Softbank Vision Fund	$4.7 billion
2018	$427 million	Series H	General Atlantic and Dragoneer Investment Group	$6.7 billion

Source: Crunchbase

Slack goes public

Slack went public via direct listing process (DLP) on June 20, 2019. The share reference price at the start of trading was $26. Within hours, it had risen to over $41. Slack was delisted in June 2021 after being acquired by Salesforce. At the time, the company had a market cap of $26.52 billion. Shareholders were compensated with Salesforce stock.

Slack ticker: WORK
Slack highest share price: $45.64
Slack lowest share price: $15.10

Source: Investing.com, Companies Market Cap

Salesforce acquires Slack

The acquisition of Slack by Salesforce was first reported in the Wall Street Journal in November 2020. The formal announcement of the purchase was made on December 1, 2020, for a final price of $27.7 billion.

Source: The Verge

Slack user growth

In its first 24 hours, Slack signed up 8000 users.
By February 2015, Slack was attracting 10,000 new daily active users each week and had more than 135,000 paying customers.
In April 2015, Slack announced it had 750,000 daily active users and 200,000 paid subscribers.
By the end of 2015, Slack reached its first million daily active users.
In May 2018, Slack revealed it had over 8 million daily active users and 3 million paid subscribers.
By 2019, that had risen to 12 million daily active users.

Source: Business of Apps

Slack Fortune 500 customers

Slack says that 77% of the Fortune 100 use its software.

Some of the biggest brands to use Slack include Amazon, PayPal, Target, Airbnb, Shopify and Pinterest.

In total, more than 750,000 organizations use Slack.

In 2020, IBM announced that it would roll out Slack to all 350,000 of its employees, making it Slack’s biggest customer to date.

Source: Stackshare, Business of Apps, Business Insider

Slack for highly regulated industries

Out of the box, Slack is not HIPAA or FINRA compliant. However, enterprise-grade security for highly-regulated industries is available for Slack through business intelligence platforms like Aware. Aware helps to support security programs that meet industry-specific regulations and requirements when it comes to data retention, search and eDiscovery, and regulatory compliance.

In 2022, Slack announced the launch of GovSlack, a secure collaboration tool built for US government agencies and contractors. GovSlack is FedRAMP High, ITAR and DoD SRG IL4 certified. Aware is an official security and compliance vendor for GovSlack.

Source: Slack