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Stride And HipChatĪtlassian, a public software company that develops collaboration tools like JIRA aimed at developers, was once in possession of two Slack competitors: HipChat and Stride. Slack has, according to Crunchbase, acquired five known companies and products since 2014, most of which have added core functionality to Slack’s product over the years. (A Slack representative declined to comment on how its recent raise may impact acquisition strategy.) And while a good chunk of its $427 million Series H will likely be spent preserving market dominance, the additional capital presumably gives the enterprise chat service more room to acquire what it needs to scale. Slack has raised another huge tranche of money.

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Freelance Writers: How To Pitch Crunchbase News.The companies that he's most interested in are the ones that can grow in that new, direct-to-user kind of way.Īnd while Slack and Trello found success by focusing on a broad set of office workers, Sabet says that there's room for other companies, like Mark43 - a Spark-funded tool for law enforcement officers - to find similar success in different industries.Īs for fears that companies like Microsoft and Amazon could crush these work-focused startups with their own ever-growing rosters of apps and services, well, Sabet isn't worried. Indeed, Sabet says, it's a 'red flag' when startups come to Spark with a business model that's a little more old-fashioned, with revenue that comes from selling professional services like setup, installation, and training. 'We're seeing very creative founders,' Sabet says.

And the really great companies, including Spark portfolio companies Trello and Slack, are the ones who are applying a similar relentless focus on the user.

It's the same network effect that powers the growth of social networks like Snapchat or Facebook, Sabet says, and now it's starting to hit the workplace, too. If a small team at a company uses Slack, and their coworkers see them, they're going to want to use Slack, too. Companies could sell straight to their users, not the IT department. This was 'liberating,' Sabet says, because it meant that suddenly, those 'gatekeepers' were listed. And with that latitude came the opportunity for employees to figure out the best tools they need to get stuff done, choosing apps and services 'naturally.'

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Suddenly, people were allowed and encouraged to bring iPhones and Android phones to work. The thing that changed, Sabet says, is the rise of Apple and the app economy.

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'You literally had to take a meeting before you could get a trial version,' Sabet says.

There wasn't an easy way to try business software before you buy, Sabet says we may be used to lots of web-based productivity tools having free-to-use services now, but that wasn't always the case. Trello was an early exception, but he says that even popular enterprise software like Salesforce is 'not a very inspiring product.' When Sabet looked at Salesforce for the first time, he says, 'we didn't get goosebumps like we did when we saw Tumblr.'įurthermore, Sabet says, the way that business software was historically sold created 'natural gatekeepers' - the IT department dictated what hardware and software could be used by employees, meaning that there weren't a lot of ways that even the scrappiest startup could compete. It's that, historically, it was hard to find any that fit their criteria. So it wasn't exactly that Spark was avoiding business software companies, Sabet says. Historically, Sabet says, Spark's interest has really been in companies that combine cutting-edge technology with good design, because those are the products that people actually enjoy using. Here's why Sabet thinks there's a huge 'acceleration' in the market for startups that have more to do with your work life than your personal life - and why Spark is putting its money where its mouth is after years of having it the other way around. Plus, Spark is also an investor in Slack, the $3.8 billion chat app that recently staked its claim to the Fortune 500-grade software market with Slack Enterprise Grid, a new product intended for larger teams.

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