[nbs_tar]

It COULD compete with tech giants, it COULDN'T live up to the valuation and had a fiduciary duty to take the offer.

Slack's worth $27bn (which is in the top 100 GDPs by country) and was FCF positive. With the right cap table it could stay private and self fund. But it went public, and by the rules of the game it chose to play ended up valued at like 30x forward revenue. To maintain that valuation it had to sell.

[paxys]

Yeah, while I agree with the article overall Slack is a bad example to use. It sold not because it was on its last legs but because Salesforce made an absurd offer. There are plenty of smaller companies that die or get acquired because they have no other choice.