[natural219]

Out of all the software this validly applies to, Slack has the most solid business model I've seen in software since Microsoft Office. Almost every modern organization is inclined to stress over whether $6.66 / user / month is worth the price of the substantially enhanced collaboration Slack provides for anywhere between small teams and 1000+ - person companies.

Not a Slack employee or anything, just love the software.

[AstralStorm]

The real question is: why buy Slack when relatively equivalent solutions such as Mattermost or even Discord exist?

Seriously, the only thing that could convince a company is either lower admin cost (vs Mattermost) and way better customer service when something fails. (vs Discord) Pretty sure big co mc corp wouldn't like a potential competitor running its comms.

Additionally a strong competitor is as always email. Perhaps enhanced with scheduling and mailing lists. If you don't like to set it up, you could pay Google for example. And both Google and MS are improving their chat/IM offerings.

They can and will undercut such a start-up instead of buying it, unless they see enough value in an acquihire.

[owenwil]

Because with Mattermost or Discord you have to maintain it yourself, and their tooling isn't very good?

[raesene6]

The major difference, to me, between Slack and Office is that Slack lacks user lock-in.

Companies that make heavy use of office would find it very difficult to move over to another office suite (if they could find one that meets their needs), whereas moving off slack to one of the many alternatives, doesn't seem that hard.