The breakdown of Slack DAUs: 47% US & Canada, 30% Europe, 20% Asia

Quantifying the value of Slack in the organization: 50% fewer emails, 25% fewer meetings, 80% increase in transparency, 32% - in productivity

Slack buys software from ~50 SaaS vendors

At Slack, 250 strong team produces 20K messages/day, bots & machines produce another 80K-100K

Slack gets 25K Zendesk tickets, 25K tweets a month

The all inclusive software suite approach of Enterprise software (a la Microsoft) no longer possible

Companies need software for all different kinds of reasons, therefore a suite would be too broad for one company to build.

Slack is successful because there is no 1 place where all software comes together.

For as long as there has been software we have had this collective hope -- maybe more of a desire -- that software will make all kinds of work easier, more productive, and more creative.  Spreadsheets, computer-aided design tools, digital publishing platforms, though never perfect, are examples of software that have definitely changed how we work and what is possible. Still, you find very few people enthusing about Excel over cocktails.

So what is going on with Slack? The messaging app crops up in conversation at dinner parties. It’s become a kind of cultural signifier of a tech savvy workforce that is always looking for better ways to connect -- inside and outside of work. 

In this segment of the podcast we discuss Slack with its founder Stewart Butterfield. Why Slack has resonated so well across all types of people, from engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab to dentists, and what that says about how we work today and about our ongoing quest for the perfect tools and services to get the job done.

The conversation happened as part of a16z’s Capital Summit.

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a16z Podcast: Nobody Discusses Work Software Outside of Work -- and Then There’s Slack

The a16z Podcast discusses tech and culture trends, news, and the future -- especially as ‘software eats the world’. It features industry experts, business leaders, and other interesting thinkers and voices from around the world. This podcast is produced by Andreessen Horowitz (aka “a16z”), a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm. Multiple episodes are released every week; visit a16z.com for more details and to sign up for our newsletters and other content as well!

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