[jesselawson]

Hi team--and hello Fred! You and I had some great conversations about Slack's direction--as well as its missed opportunities--back when we worked there together. I was leading developer education at the time, and frustrated with the decisions that were coming down that caused us to pivot away from what we agreed on was the "true core experience" of a collaborative messaging system: connecting users with the knowledge they need without having to parse through other knowledge that may be important in different contexts.

I'm genuinely excited that you're in this space now, too, as I myself have had my nose to the grindstone building out what the collaboration app for distributed teams that I've always wanted. We need options/competition in this space; just this year alone, I've had a little over a a dozen conversations with interested folks in teams across the United States working in industries from agricultural sensors manufacturing to game studios for hire, and the same pain points that you and I were reasoning about back at Slack are the same pain points that users still unwillingly tolerate.

See you around--and good luck out there!

PS. As an English major I'd be remiss to not share that I love the name emdash. :D

[fred_h]

:wave: Great to hear from you, Jesse — and so interesting that we’re both still thinking about these same challenges all these years later. Collaboration is tough to get right, and we’ve definitely heard plenty of painful stories along the way too.

Wishing you the best with your work — I’ll be keeping an eye out for your launch. Good luck!