We Don’t Sell Saddles Here

The best — maybe the only? — real, direct measure of “innovation” is change in human behaviour.In fact, it is useful to take this way of thinking as definitional: innovation is the sum of change across the whole system, not a thing which causes a change in how people behave. No small innovation ever caused a large shift in how people spend their ti... See more

We are unlikely to be able to sell “a group chat system” very well: there are just not enough people shopping for group chat system (and, as pointed out elsewhere, our current fax machine works fine).  That’s why what we’re selling is organizational transformation.  What we are selling is not the software product — the set of all the feat... See more

Our position is different than the one many new companies find themselves in: we are not battling it out in a large, well-defined market with clear incumbents (which is why we can’t get away with “Other group chat products are poisonous. Slack is toasted.”). Despite the fact that there are a handful of direct competitors and a muddled history of su... See more

our job is also to understand what people think they want and then translate the value of Slack into their terms.

It is almost inevitable that centralized internal communication systems will gradually replace email for most organizations over the next 10-20 years and we should do what we can to accelerate the trend and “own it”.

That’s why what we’re selling is organizational transformation.

It is always harder to do this with one’s own product: we skip over the bad parts knowing that we plan to fix it later. We already know the model we’re using and the terms we use to describe it. It is very difficult to approach Slack with beginner’s mind. But we have to, all of us, and we have to do it every day, over and over and polish every roug... See more

Sell the innovation, not the product

Putting yourself in the mind of someone who is coming to Slack for the first time — especially a real someone, who is being made to try this thing by their boss, who is already a bit hangry because they didn’t have time for breakfast, and who is anxious about finishing off a project before they take off for the long weekend — putting yourself in th... See more

There’s no point doing this to be small. We should go big, if only because there are a lot of people in the world who deserve Slack. Going big also means that it will have to be really, really good. But that’s convenient, since there’s also no point doing it if it is not really, really good. Life is too short to do mediocre work and it is definitel... See more